Wolf by Wolf
Juvenile Fiction
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
October 20, 2015
Hardcover
400
Code Name Verity meets Inglourious Basterds in this fast-paced novel from the author of The Walled City. The year is 1956, and the Axis powers of the Third Reich and Imperial Japan rule the world. To commemorate their Great Victory over Britain and Russia, Hitler and Emperor Hirohito host the Axis Tour: an annual motorcycle race across their conjoined continents. The victor is awarded an audience with the highly reclusive Adolf Hitler at the Victor's ball. Yael, who escaped from a death camp, has one goal: Win the race and kill Hitler. A survivor of painful human experimentation, Yael has the power to skinshift and must complete her mission by impersonating last year's only female victor, Adele Wolfe. This deception becomes more difficult when Felix, Adele twin's brother, and Luka, her former love interest, enter the race and watch Yael's every move. But as Yael begins to get closer to the other competitors, can she bring herself to be as ruthless as she needs to be to avoid discovery and complete her mission?
WrensReads Review:
What if Hitler won the war? What if Hitler tried to make everyone have blonde hair and blue eyes? What if this actually created a shape-shifter?
Yael was mutated. She was born a normal human being, got experimented on in a concentration camp, and can no take the shape of whomever she wants. Grant it, she doesn’t really change mass or anything so guys are harder for this small girl to take form, but she can still try.
After a series of events, Yael ends up in the hands of The Resistance, a group trying to kill Hitler and crumble his reign, and they have a plan: disguise herself as Adele Wolf, the only female to win the Axis Tour, and kill Hitler at the Victor’s Ball.
The Axis Tour is a motorcycle race. So she learns how to ride a bike in 9 months, and is good at it and better than any of her competitors who have been training all their lives (not a fan of that part, but moving on). She also studied Adele’s life and all who are in it. The only thing left is to win the Axis Tour and come face to face with the man she loathes the most.
The Fuhrer. Hitler himself.
As expected, a lot of things were not in the files she studied. Like the relationship Adele has with her brother Felix and how protective he is. Or the history she has with another Axis Tour winner Luka and the complicated relationship Yael forms with him as Adele.
All her studying won’t get her to the Victor’s Ball, she has to improvise.
Graudin has written a masterpiece.
Don’t let the fact that the setting is a motorcycle race. Usually, that would make me automatically go to sleep; but that isn’t what happened here. You are focused on the characters and Yael trying to figure out what Adele felt, how Yael herself feels and how to react and… it’s really hard to pretend to be someone else when that someone else has a lot of history with them that wasn’t in the folders.
I loved this series. It needs to get more hype than it has.
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