Rose Under Fire

"While flying an Allied fighter plane from Paris to England, American ATA pilot and amateur poet, Rose Justice, is captured by the Nazis and sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious women's concentration camp. Trapped in horrific circumstances, Rose finds hope in the impossible through the loyalty, bravery and friendship of her fellow prisoners: a once glamorous French novelist whose Jewish husband and three young sons have been killed, a resilient young Polish girl who has been used as a human guinea pig by Nazi doctors, and a female fighter pilot and military ace for the Soviet air force. But will that be enough to endure the fate that's in store for her?"I've been waiting so long and have been so excited for Rose Under Fire, the companion to the brilliant Code Name Verity. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get my hands on an ARC, but the book finally came out September 10th. Like Code Name Verity, Rose Under Fire takes a little while to actually get into, before it becomes the amazing, touching, heartbreaking book I knew it would be. As other reviewers have said, Rose Under Fire is less emotionally intense and less intense in general than Code Name Verity, but it's still a great book, and might be a better one depending on what your preferences are. Oddly enough, I didn't cry during Code Name Verity, or Rose Under Fire for that matter, but to me, Rose Under Fire felt much more close, more real, perhaps because before Rose is captured there are lots of descriptions of daily life and that makes her experiences in the concentration camp all the more awful in comparison. Still, I felt very emotionally wrought and rung out after reading both of these books. They're the kind of books where you need to read something light right afterwards to recover.Rose Justice is an interesting and good new character. I'm glad that we got to meet an amazing new narrator, who I really fell in love with. That said, I didn't love most of the poems that were in the book, though a few of them were pretty good. It was a nice idea, but it didn't work very well for me; I'm not exactly sure why.There were lots of excellent anecdotes in Rose Under Fire; maybe it was less sensational, but in some ways that made it a better read. I really enjoyed a lot of the descriptions, and it was a lot of the small things that Rose writes about that really got me, that hit me, and made me feel like crying or laughing or both. The very first one was Rose's description of the barrage balloons: "I can't get over how beautiful the barrage balloons are. I can't even talk about it to anyone - they all think I am crazy. But when you're in the air, and the sky above you is a sea of gray mist and the land below you is all green, the silver balloons float in between like a school of shining silver whales, bobbing a little in the wind. They are as big as buses, and I and every other pilot have a healthy fear of them because their tethering cables are loaded with explosives to try to snarl up enemy aircraft. But they are just magical from above, great big silver bubbles filling the sky. Incredible. It is just incredible that you can notice something like that when your face is so cold you can't feel it anymore, and you know perfectly well you are surrounded by death, and the only way to stay alive is to endure the howling wind and hold your course. And still the sky is beautiful." I loved those two paragraphs. I also loved the scene where Maddie and Rose confront the boys who are trying to take apart the bomb.I mentioned the little things that hit me really hard. One of those was just a candlewick bedspread. Here's part of the passage: "It was the stupid candlewick bedspread's fault! Mrs. Hatch's bedspreads feel the same as the ones Mother has out on the sleeping porch. Anyway, I had the candlewick on my bed pulled up to my chin last night, and after I thought about the house party, I started thinking about the sleeping porch...I got so homesick I began to cry. I just couldn't stop thinking about the sleeping porch. It's funny what sets you off. You miss people the most - really it is Polly and Alice and Sandy and Fran whom I am lonely for - but it is the candlewick bedspread that makes me ache with longing to be home."There was also another really poignant small moment, when Rose is first captured by the Germans: "Someone came in and gave me a cup of fake coffee and something a lot like a bologna sandwich, which I would have eaten if I had realized it was the last bologna sandwich I was ever going to see. But I just couldn't eat. I have dreams about that sandwich." That was so awful, as well as being a great piece of foreshadowing.Wein also includes some good descriptions of the war itself. "They've [the Germans] lost. They must know they've lost - that they're on the run. It's all so pointless. It shouldn't take another year. But I bet it will. It's not desperation - there is something inhuman in it. That is what I find so creepy. Five years of destruction and mayhem, lives lost everywhere, shortages of food and fuel and clothing -- and the insane mind behind it just urges us all on and on to more destruction. And we all keep playing." It was very chilling.I had tons of passages marked in the book, but I can't spout all the of the amazing quotes in Rose Under Fire; it would just take too long. It was somehow more emotional to me, not necessarily better, but more relatable. Both of these books are definitely among my favorites. Just like Code Name Verity, there are great female friendships in Rose Under Fire: between Maddie and Rose before Rose is captured, and between the woman suffering in the concentration camp. Really, just as many awful things happen in Rose Under Fire as in Code Name Verity: torture and worse. It's just, I suppose, a more quiet book. And the ending is happier, at least in some ways.I loved that Rose was an American; it was a different take and one that makes sense. I enjoyed reading from her perspective a lot; she can kind of look at England and Germany with an impartial eye, but she cares just as deeply about the war and about flying. She narrates the story of her experiences in the camp from after she's rescued, so we know she doesn't die. But she's been deeply scarred, inwardly and outwardly.Elizabeth Wein's writing style is so distinctive and easily recognizable, and yet I can't quite put my finger down on what it is that makes her writing her's and makes it so deeply moving. Any ideas? Like in Code Name Verity, the book is narrated through personal writings and some letters, although the set-up is different, and it's not as ingeniously plotted or thriller-like. Because, you know, Code Name Verity had that whole mystery which took your breath away, which is a whole level of complexity that Rose Under Fire didn't really have. Still, I just freaking loved it.The book has some great similes and metaphors, such as in the passage about the barrage balloons. The writing is just beautiful, and it captured this amazing story. I would highly, highly recommend Rose Under Fire, whether or not you've read Code Name Verity (although it will spoil the ending of CNV).

I knew there were political prisoners at concentration camps. I knew there were medical experiments performed on prisoners. (Josef Mengele was the infamous "Angel of Death" that performed horrific experiments on twins.) I didn't know that experiments were conducted by OTHER doctors and their victims were known as "rabbits." There were trials held for these doctors at Nuremberg. I thought all of the trials were for the Nazi soldiers and Hitler's inner circle. There is so much more to learn.

This is part of the author’s Code Name Verity series. Rose has grown up flying planes in the U.S. and volunteers to be part of the auxiliary force to transport military planes in the U.K. during WWII. She gets an assignment to take a flight of passengers over to Paris. As she is bringing a plane back, she encounters a V-1 flying bomb and attempts to knock it off course. This act leads her to be captured by German forces who are shocked to find a female pilot once she is on the ground. Due to confusion on the ground, she ends up with a group of French female political prisoners and is incarcerated at the Ravensbrűck concentration camp. Her story is told via letters and flashbacks after her escape and liberation and the follow-up trials for crimes against humanity. The author portrays the girls and women that were experimented on at the camp with horrific surgical procedures and infected with various agents, known as "the Rabbits". While her story is fiction, it is based on actual events at the camp and is a moving and horrifying portrayal of what went on during the war, with both the depths and the heights of the human experience.

This is one of my favorite books, the language used by the author gives such a raw feeling with the emotion. It had me tearing up at parts

This book is just beautiful in its emotional wallop and engrossing story telling. And when I say beautiful, I definitely don't mean the world our characters are in. The author does not pull the punches in dropping her readers into the harsh and gritty world of the concentration camp our characters are in. Within that horrific world, though, she's able to shine a light on the camaraderie between these women as they struggle for survival and the light of hope they refuse to let extinguish.Our main character, Rose Justice, at first made me raise an eyebrow. I had a hard time believing that the British government would hire an 18 year old girl to do any kind of flying for them, no matter what training she had. But overall, whether that point is true or not, Rose won me over with her pluck, her determination, her strength of character, and her courage. Despite the truly horrid circumstances she finds herself in, she won't give up the struggle to survive.The other women in the camp were extremely three-dimensional to me. They were all unique individuals caught up in this atrocious place and struggling to survive it in their own unique ways. Some used sarcasm, some used sheer grit, some used emotions, and some used intelligence. I liked that variety as it gave the everyone their own personality and made it so that no one was a background character.The horrors of the setting and the emotions they evoked were definitely not glossed over. Whether it was bombed-out London, the interior of the camp, or the Nuremburg trials, everything was vivid and stark in its reality. I felt the emotions inspired by the setting that the characters experienced. I experienced the settings with the characters: the horror of the camp, the freedom of flying for Rose, the tenseness in the courtroom, and the moments of readjusting and panic in the Hotel Ritz. Everything was vivid and stark in its realism and emotional wallop.This book was an incredible look at WWII, the Holocaust, and its effects on the individuals that experienced both. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who isn't afraid to read this subject matter and be emotionally moved. It's a book to savor and contemplate long after reading.

I read Code Name Verity, Wein’s first YA WWII novel about women during the war, quite a few years ago now. At the time, I loved it, as the World Wars are a time period I’m very interested in learning about. So, when I stumbled across the fact Wein had published another similar novel, I was over the moon. However, part of me worried it wouldn’t live up to the expectations of the first book.That worry was pretty stupid, because of course Rose Under Fire was great. It tells the story of a young American girl who puts her passion for flying to use as she delivers planes for the allies in Britain, taking them to where they need to be for repairs or where fighter pilots need them. Rose is frustrated by the fact that the female ATA pilots cannot travel abroad. However, she has a few family connections, and strings are pulled that allow her to fly to a part of France recently liberated by the allies. That’s where something goes wrong.The story has a slow start, but it’s not a bad kind of slow. It sets up Rose’s character well, the position of women in the air force, and what it was like for those in Britain during the Blitz. Wein is brilliant at crafting a believable voice for her first-person narrators. Both Code Name Verity and Rose Under Fire are written in diary format. The little descriptions Wein throws in of Rose’s childhood are detailed yet short, building up a believable portrait of Rose Justice.Rose is headstrong yet romantic, and it’s these qualities that get her through the horrors of the war as one headstrong mistake lands her in enemy territory, away from the relative safety she has known in Britain and America.We don’t initially find out quite what’s happened to Rose. Her diary ends abruptly a quarter of the way through when she is supposed to be heading home from France and the voice changes to a friend. From this section, we glean that Rose has gone missing, presumed dead. Then, Rose’s voice returns some six months later. She has made it back from Ravensbruck, the concentration camp for women.The rest of the book follows Rose as she writes about the horrors she has witnessed and endured, as well as the struggles she faces readjusting to life after the war. Wein details a horrific and vivid depiction of Ravensbruck, making sure not to dress-up the story in a way that makes it easier to read. This part of the story is harrowing, yet tinged with hope, as Rose finds a surrogate family in the camp, with two stand-out characters being Roza and Irina.Roza in particular was a captivating character, especially because of who she was. Roza is one of the Rabbits, Polish girls who were experimented on by the Nazis in Ravensbruck. These experiments involved, in very simple terms, cutting into the girls legs and studying infection, as well as removing parts of bones. As a result, Roza struggles to walk, but what has been done to her only enhances her already feisty, and sometimes heartless, nature. Roza can be really quite rude and spiteful, and it seems these are qualities she has had since childhood. Yet, despite the fact she can say some very nasty things, I really warmed to her. She’s determined, vicious, intent on justice for what has happened to the Rabbits. You can’t entirely blame her for her sometimes savage remarks after the way she’s been treated since her capture at age 14. She was definitely the most nuanced, as well as flawed yet likeable, character.Then there is Irina, who is a Soviet fighter pilot. Like Roza, she can also be a bit hard, but together with Rose she is instrumental in the survival of this ragtag family of girls: Rose, Roza, Irina, Karolina and Lisette. They are determined that the world will know what has gone on here, that the world will find out what was done to the Rabbits. As the American, Rose is singled out as the one with the connections to get the story out there.I really grew to love these characters. Even at the darkest moments, they stick together, intent on getting Roza and the other Rabbits’ story out of the camp. Sometimes when reading, I struggled with the fact that this all really happened. Whilst Rose’s personal story or Karolina’s or Lisette’s didn’t specifically happen, Ravensbruck did exist, and so did the Rabbits.I thought the story was brilliantly written. Harrowing, hopeful, and not afraid to shy away from the realities of the war and the lengths these women would go to to make sure the world knew, to make sure that at least some of them got out alive.Perhaps my only criticism, which is not actually a criticism, is that it ended too soon. I was so engrossed that when I turned the final page, I was shocked to see the notes from the author. I turned back and forth, confused, and then re-read the final passage, in disbelief that I wouldn’t find out any more.I cannot recommend Rose Under Fire and Code Name Verity enough. Even if you’re not a fan of WWII fiction, I urge you to read them. The writing and characterisation is great, and the stories open your eyes to the atrocities that have been committed, and the hope that endured.

Following "Code Name Verity" was always going to be a huge challenge, I'll make no bones about that. Sadly "Rose Under Fire" suffered not only from following a great act but also from not being as painfully/wonderfully gripping as its predecessor. The most obvious problem was that the main part of the story is told in retrospect. Despite the appalling things Rose experiences, somehow the edge was taken off for me because we knew her ultimate fate was freedom and a return to the people she knew.There was still the fate of all Rose's friends and even passing acquaintances to add tension, but there was never anything like the terror from Verity of not knowing until the very end what happened to Julie.That said, the harrowing representation of the camp was absorbing and terrifying and literally awe-inspiring. If Wein's mission was to tell the world, that she most certainly did. And that in itself earned the 4th star for this review. It may not give the 5-star dizzying highs of Verity, but I would still highly recommend reading it nonetheless. The story of the Rabbits deserves to be told, to be remembered. Lest we ever forget.

I'd not heard of this author until last week. I was watching a book review video and this was one of the books mentioned. This is quite a harrowing, but compelling tale about the atrocities that occurred in one of the WW2 camps for women. The book draws you into the characters, and at times I shed tears over events that happened to the women. A story about friendship, sacrifice, determination, strength, compassion etc. I knew very little about the camp in question. Perhaps many other people do not either, as perhaps we tend to hear more about some of the other concentration camps. After reading this book, I did further research on the internet about the camp, the experimental 'rabbits', the Nuremburg trials etc.I've now ordered a copy of the author's new book which is released in a few days. Let's hope this is another excellent read.

Another gripping novel from Elizabeth Wein, one again focusing on the work of female pilots during the Second World War.The principal character of this book is Rose Justice, a young American woman ho has been working flying planes around Britain. Shortly after the D Day invasions she finds herself flying some luminaries to Paris. There she is scheduled to collect a spitfire to be flown back to Britain where it will be refitted as a reconnaissance plane. However, on her journey back she spots, and successfully deflects, a V1 bomb that had been launched against Paris. However, her diversion to tackle the V1 has disastrous consequences as it takes her beyond the front line, and while she si struggling to reorient herself she finds herself by two German jet-powered fighter planes.Like Wein's previous novels, this is peopled with some very engaging characters, and Rose's plight is described in grim, but never sensationalist, detail.

Having wolfed down Elizabeth Wein's previous novel  Code Name Verity  and totally adored it, I was hungry for more. Rose Under Fire did not disappoint.Rose Justice, a young American pilot (and amateur poet),is working for the ATA delivering planes and ferrying pilots for the RAF during World War 2. Whilst trying to bring down a 'pilotless plane' during one of her missions, she looses her way and ends up in the hands of the enemy. In Ravensbruck concentration camp she meets the 'Rabbits' - girls experimented on by Nazi doctors.It's a chilling tale, but also one of bravery and friendship in the face of pure evil. Wonderfully told - Elizabeth Wein is a master story teller, and this book is un-put-downable. Code Name Verity