Rose Under Fire (Code Name Verity, #3)

by Elizabeth Wein

When young American pilot Rose Justice is captured by Nazis and sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious women's concentration camp, she finds hope in the impossible through the loyalty, bravery, and friendship of her fellow prisoners.

• ISBN10: 1423183096
• ISBN13: 9781423183099
• Publish Date: 10 September 2013 (first published 2 January 2013)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[Amber]

This review was originally posted on Books of Amber

Happy New Year everyone! I'm kicking 2016 off as I mean to go on - by flailing about incredibly upsetting books that I enjoyed. Story of my life. So anyway, I'm a massive fan of Code Name Verity. It wasn't a perfect read for me, but it came pretty damn close and I am still broken over Julie and Maddie. OTP, guys, OTP. I had to wait a while before I could pick Rose Under Fire up because I was still pretty upset about the whole situation. But once I did, I was captivated, and I read this book in a matter of hours.

Rose Under Fire is very different to its predecessor. Firstly, there's no Julie. Obviously. But there is a little bit of Maddie and that made me both happy and distraught. It also introduces a new protagonist, Rose, who I actually really, really liked, despite going into this book a little bit worried that I wouldn't love her.

This book is also different in the sense that it takes place mostly in one setting: a concentration camp. Whereas with Code Name Verity, we got both Maddie's and Julie's points of view and thus a broader setting, Rose Under Fire is very much smaller and more focused. And the setting was an upsetting one, to say the least. You read about the people who were being tested on in the concentration camps - this particular one being Ravensbrück in northern Germany. It's disturbing, off-putting, and incredibly real.

I pretty much sobbed throughout the last fifty pages, wherein certain characters are trying to find their voices to talk about the events at the concentration camp in the Hamburg Ravensbrück trials. It was difficult to read, and I'm almost crying right now just thinking about it because the women of Ravensbrück went through so fucking much, it's almost unbelievable.

Read this book, guys. Read Code Name Verity first, of course, but then read this one. You (probably) won't regret it.

[Terri M. LeBlanc]

I finally exhausted the handful of SYNC audiobooks I downloaded this summer. While reviewing the books I listened to so far from that event, I kept coming back to Elizabeth Wein's Code Name Verity. That novel is by far and away the best audiobook I've ever listened to and I decided to purchase book two in the series, Rose Under Fire because I was so entranced with the characters Wein created and the tension she was able to convey.

Rose Under Fire is no Code Name Verity. While I did find Rose's plight as a P.O.W. engrossing, it wasn't nearly as emotional, for me, as Code Name Verity. While the story is told is the same fashion as book one in the series, due to how Wein handles Rose's disappearance, the reader knows that Rose's survival has already been determined. As a result, the stakes do not feel as high and it's just a matter of learning the sequence of events that lead to it.

What is unique about Rose Under Fire is the third part of the book. Once it is revealed how Rose survives, her reintegration into a war-torn Europe is gut wrenching and heartbreaking. While I have enjoyed several fictional novels and movies about World War II, until listening to "Rose," I had not encountered one that examined a survivor's point of view post incarceration. After living through the horrors of a concentration camp, I never had thought what it must have been like for those prisoners once they had been freed. This is where Wein shines in Rose Under Fire as I believe she captures a sliver of what it must have been like for so many once freedom was obtained.

While I did not connect to Rose Under Fire in the same way emotionally as Code Name Verity, I am giving it a thumbs up for giving me a peek into what it was like for survivors after they were released from concentration camps as they tried to reintegrate into society. It was a point of view I hadn't considered before and it was a unique and heartbreaking thing to consider.

This review was originally posted on Second Run Reviews.

[wyvernfriend]

Rose Justice is a ATA pilot, ferrying people and planes so that men can fight. One day, on a routine flight in Europe she tries to interfere with a doodlebug and ends up being escorted to an airport by some German pilots. From there she ends up in Ravensbruck where she witnesses some terrible things.

The book is laid out as diaries, at first she's full of enthusiasm and spirit and then when she's recalling what happened to her, it's heartbreaking and also there's her work on getting herself back to herself, that broke my heart. She's a smart girl who becomes a woman under terrible circumstances that would break most people and then she finds herself wanting different things from where she was earlier in the war. She's a character who develops and while she will never regain her former self is still a whole person.

Interesting and heartbreaking, the list of Ravensbruck rabbits in the title page would break your heart when you think about it and the author sucked me in and made me care. It's not Code Name Verity. It stands well alone without Code Name Verity, with some similar themes but if you're looking for a revisit of the same story you will be disappointed.