Becoming Clementine by Jennifer Niven

Blurb:
After delivering a B-17 Flying Fortress to Britain, an American volunteers to copilot a plane carrying special agents to their drop spot over Normandy. Her personal mission: to find her brother, who is missing in action. Their plane is shot down, and only she and five agents survive. Now they are on the run for their lives.

As they head to Paris, the beautiful aviatrix Velva Jean Hart becomes Clementine Roux, a daring woman on an epic adventure with her team to capture an operative known only as "Swan." Once settled on Rue de la Néva, Clementine works as a spy with the Resistance and finds herself falling in love with her fellow agent, Émile, a handsome and mysterious Frenchman with secrets of his own. When Clementine ends up in the most brutal prison in Paris, trying to help Émile and the team rescue Swan, she discovers the depths of human cruelty, the triumph of her own spirit, and the bravery of her team, who will stop at nothing to carry out their mission.


Review:
Absolutely loved book two, Velva Jean Learns to Fly and so was super excited about this. So excited I broke my price rule and spent 9.99 on the Kindle edition.

But...if you're expecting lots of flying, you'll be disappointed. The story starts with her landing in England, then she crashes a plane and later steals a plane, but most of the book is her acting like a spy. I say "acting" cause really, she doesn't any real spying. I'll get to that.

She crashes in France, which in under the Germans so she's in enemy territory. Still searching for her brother, she insists on joining the resistance. She's mighty brave. I still love her. She ends up in Paris and has all these Resistance friends, even a French lover, but despite being surrounded by these people and making big plans, she does nothing.

She wears fancy lipstick, eats a map, PLANS to save a girl from prison, but gets arrested herself, wears knife bobby pins, but really, never once does she deliver pertinent information to anyone, just runs around with the Resistance. She can't even take credit for saving the girl in the end, because she didn't bomb the train and Eleanor is capable of escaping herself.

It's isn't until the very end of the book that Velva Jean aka Clementine does something worthwhile. Though I must give her credit for not caving under interrogation.

The beginning and ending was great, but the middle really dragged for me. As I said, she just runs around with these important people and spends time in prison.

So compared to Learns to Fly, it didn't wow me. But then again, that was more up my alley as I love aviation.

Three bikes.