Orphan Monster Spy by Matt Killeen

When her mother is executed at a checkpoint, teenage Sarah is left alone in Nazi Germany. She’s blonde, she’s a Jew, and she has nowhere to go - but she’s also tough, elastic, and unstoppable.

Orphan Monster Spy is a tense, relentless thriller about survival, deception, and identity. Sarah is the daughter of an actress, and her mother’s voice echoes in her mind giving advice on appearance, performance, and cunning. For a Jew masquerading as a ‘little Aryan monster’ in a Nazi boarding school, pulling off the show is a matter of life or death.

As a heroine, Sarah is gung-ho from the outset: it’s not courage she gains through her journey, but a new sense of family, purpose, and place within her country: she moves from devoted countryman to saboteur - a role which she considers to be working for Germany not against it.

Sarah’s ally is mysterious British spy Captain Jeremy Floyd, my favourite character: he’s wonderfully deadpan. She latches herself to him from the start, and he quickly exploits her talents, using her as the ultimate spanner-in-the-works for his undercover mission. No more about that here!

I never warmed to Sarah, but it was impossible to stop turning the pages.