Title: Orphan Monster Spy
Author: Matt Killeen
Rating: ★★★

ARC provided by Penguin First to Read.

“I am Ursula Bettine Haller, she answered. Good little, dumb National Socialist monster. Nobody’s enemy. Everybody’s friend.”

I love historical fiction and books set during WWII so when I read the synopsis for Orphan Monster Spy, it sounded exactly like the kind of book I would want to read. The plot was well done and intriguing, and I was interested in the characters – especially Sarah – but I feel like a lot of things were just glossed over in the story. Parts of Sarah’s history were briefly mentioned and then never brought up again, which left me with a lot of questions by the end of the book. For a majority of the story, we follow Sarah as she attempts espionage by attending a Nazi boarding school for girls. There isn’t a whole lot going on during these parts, other than the horrifying conflicts and struggles Sarah has with the teachers and fellow students. The action picks up towards the end of the book, and that’s when things really become chilling and intense. The events in the last portion of the story are disturbing, and yet I didn’t want to stop reading. The story starts out fast-paced, slows down for a good chunk of the book, and then picks back up again.

Matt Killeen clearly put a lot of research and effort into writing a historical fiction novel full of details and accuracies. Orphan Monster Spy is an engaging story, but I think the book moved almost a little too fast at times and left a lot of loose ends and questions after the ending for me to be fully captivated by it.