Code Name Helene by Ariel Lawhon – 4 Stars (Rounded up)

[Hannah]

I had read a biography of Nancy Wake earlier this week that I was so disappointed by, that I picked up this book to try to get a better understanding of who she was like and her contribution during WW2. Obviously with this book being a work of fiction I knew a lot of what would be written would be done for the effect and to help to move the story along, but I decided to try this book anyway. This story covers Nancy’s life from when she was a journalist based in Paris in the early 1930s through to her time with the French Resistance and the SOE. The main focus is on her time with the French Resistance and the SOE, and the earlier bits are told through flashbacks, which can be quite distracting from the story with the non-chronological moving back and forward in time. The book has lots of elements that I tend to really enjoy in historical fiction – a strong female character, espionage and WW2 – and there are also some quite tense scenes during the book, and whilst a lot of the book is unbelievable upon reading it, the story told is also true.