Girl in the Blue Coat
“Natalia Payne’s flat narration captures the detached emotions of eighteen-year-old Hanneke…At the peak of the horror, Hanneke’s honesty emerges, and Payne’s reading becomes more emotional. Suzanne Toren’s authoritatively voiced author’s notes follow, as well as a conversation with the author, narrator, and editors.”
AudioFile
A 2016 Amazon Best Books of the Year So Far Selection for Teens & Young Adults
Winner of the 2017 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Young Adult Mystery
An All Iowa Reads selection
An Entertainment Weekly Best Book of 2016 for Young Adults
A 2016 Booklist Best Book for Young Adults
YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults
A 2016 YALSA Pick of Best Books for Young Adults
Finalist for the 2017 Indies Choice Book Award for Young Adults
A New York Public Library Book for Teens selection for 2016
Amsterdam, 1943. Hanneke spends her days procuring and delivering sought-after black market goods to paying customers, her nights hiding the true nature of her work from her concerned parents, and every waking moment mourning her boyfriend, who was killed on the Dutch front lines when the Germans invaded. She likes to think of her illegal work as a small act of rebellion.
On a routine delivery, a client asks Hanneke for help. Expecting to hear that Mrs. Janssen wants meat or kerosene, Hanneke is shocked by the older woman's frantic plea to find a person--a Jewish teenager Mrs. Janssen had been hiding, who has vanished without a trace from a secret room. Hanneke initially wants nothing to do with such dangerous work, but is ultimately drawn into a web of mysteries and stunning revelations that lead her into the heart of the resistance, open her eyes to the horrors of the Nazi war machine, and compel her to take desperate action.
Beautifully written, intricately plotted, and meticulously researched, Girl in the Blue Coat is an extraordinary novel about bravery, grief, and love in impossible times.
Praise