Get Ebooks The Darkest Hour
My name is Lucie Blaise.I am sixteen years old.I have many aliases, but I am none of the girls you see.What I am is the newest recruit of Covert Ops.And we are here to take down Hitler.After the Nazis killed my brother on the North African front, I volunteered at the Office of Strategic Services in Washington to do my part for the war effort. Only instead of a desk job at the OSS, I was tapped to join the Clandestine Operations--a secret espionage and sabotage organization of girls. Six months ago, I was deployed to German-occupied France to gather intelligence and eliminate Nazi targets.My current mission: Track down and interrogate a Nazi traitor about a weapon that threatens to wipe out all of Western Europe. Then find and dismantle the weapon before Hitler detonates it. But the deeper I investigate, the more danger I'm in. Because the fate of the free world hangs in the balance, and trusting the wrong person could cause millions of lives to be lost. Including my own.
Lexile Measure: 790 (What's this?)
Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Scholastic Press (July 26, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0545801273
ISBN-13: 978-0545801270
Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 1.2 x 8.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #79,768 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #68 in Books > Teens > Historical Fiction > Europe #81 in Books > Children's Books > Literature & Fiction > Historical Fiction > Europe #303 in Books > Teens > Literature & Fiction > Girls & Women
Age Range: 12 and up
Grade Level: 7 and up
Lucie Blaise, the heroine of "The Darkest Hour," is a French immigrant whose family moved to the U.S. and opened a bakery during her youth. Her father is an abusive alcoholic, but Lucie is close to her older brother, Theo, with whom she intends to run away to California (along with Theo's girlfriend, Ruth) and seek out a happier life. But after Theo enlists and is killed fighting in World War II, Lucie's plans change drastically. When she volunteers to help the war effort, she is sent to train in Europe in the "Covert Ops," an underground network of young women spies, like herself, dedicated to putting a serious crimp in the Nazi's plans, if not eliminating them outright. But Lucie, like her fellow spies, makes mistakes along the way as she learns her craft, and when the book opens, she is under a cloud with her supervisor, though still determined to prove herself.While assigning tasks for a new mission, Lucie's boss reluctantly agrees to let her accompany the more experienced Sabine to meet with an ex-Nazi by the name of Dorner (or so he claims) who hopes to trade crucial information for a chance to start a new life in England. During their meeting, he tells them about a facility, where the Nazis are performing medical experiments on prisoners of war, including young children. When the girls, along with a fellow spy and friend, set out to investigate this claim, they become entangled in a web of double-crossing, secrecy and assassination attempts. On her way to finding the truth, Lucie will be forced to change her perspective more than once on who is their ally and who their enemy.
I have no idea why, but I wasn't expecting much out of The Darkest Hour. On second thought, it might be the cover. I don't know. I feel like the cover is not befitting of what The Darkest Hour is about. It makes it look like a historical fiction chick lit. And OH MY GOD, chick lit this is not.The Good: The Darkest Hour is INTENSE. It's just non-stop action all the way through. This means that it's freaking IMPOSSIBLE to put this book down. I tried to numerous times. I even read through my commute (don't worry, I'm not driving) and I NEVER do that (mainly cause I get too car sick). I just had to see how this was going to end. I also loved Sabine. She was so flaw-filled and angsty and wonderful. Lucie and Tilly were great, too.More Good: THERE WAS NO ROMANCE IN THIS BOOK! And yes, that needs to be in all caps because it's so rare to see a YA novel that has no romance. We have tons of them with overwhelming romance, we have some with a smidgen of romance. But I can't think of a YA book at the top of my head that had NO romance whatsoever (though I admit, I was shipping Lucie and Sabine for a while there, but that's just me being me). It was so refreshing and made me love this book.The reason that this book doesn't get five stars is because I wanted to know more about the characters. I get that they're Covert Ops agents and therefore, they have to have this shroud of mystery surrounding them, but I feel like I didn't get to know much of anything about them. Tilly was somewhat of a blank slate. Sabine was a character who was so extremely interesting, but that interest wasn't fully explored, and while we get to know somethings about Lucie (she is the main character, after all), I wanted more. Oh, I also found it a tad predictable.
Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour Warriors #6: The Darkest Hour (Warriors: The Prophecies Begin) Better: How I Let Go of Control, Held On to Hope, and Found Joy in My Darkest Hour The Darkest Hour The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic Violins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust--Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind's Darkest Hour Estimator's Piping Man-Hour Manual, Fifth Edition (Estimator's Man-Hour Library) The 36-Hour Day, fourth edition, large print: The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People with Alzheimer Disease, Other Dementias, and Memory ... Life (A Johns Hopkins Press Health Book) One Hour Trading: Make Money With a Simple Strategy, One Hour Daily (Simple Setups Forex Price Action Stock Forex Trading Strategy) (Finance Business & Money Investing Decision Making) The 1 Hour Trade: Make Money With One Simple Strategy, One Hour Daily (Langham Trading) The 1 Hour Trade: Make Money With One Simple Strategy, One Hour Daily The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course: Lean Six Sigma (McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Courses) The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course Product Development (McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Courses) Start a Credit Repair Business-(5 hour Transcribed Interview Q&A Format): 100 Million Consumers Need Your Help - (5 hour Transcribed Interview Q&A Format) The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course: Finance for Non-Financial Managers 3/E (McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Courses) Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock's Darkest Day The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey The Darkest Day: The Washington-Baltimore Campaign During the War of 1812 The Darkest Part of the Forest Hollywood Babylon: The Legendary Underground Classic of Hollywood's Darkest and Best Kept Secrets
