Faceless

Gr 5 Up–Spies during World War II are front and center in Lasky’s fourth story on this period. It’s 1944 and Europe is struggling through the war. Thirteen-year-old Alice Winfield comes from a long line of spies, a special group of people called the Tabula Rasa who are skilled in many areas—but their distinctive feature is that they have faces one can’t remember. Alice and her family fly from their native England to Nazi Germany, where she and her parents all have different intelligence assignments. Alice’s older sister Louise has been left behind, as she retired from the family business and has undergone facial cosmetic surgery. Our main heroine performs her role impeccably, and she manages to get closer and closer to Hitler for her mission. After years of training, does she have what it takes to succeed and bring down Germany’s most powerful and dangerous man? The storyline is very promising, but the text is difficult at times, with period words that are not often understood in context, plus a lot of German that readers might struggle with. The intended audience is middle grade, but at times the slow pace of the book and overall plot might be a hard sell for children in this age bracket. There are a few instances of body- and fat-shaming that are very off-putting, so readers should be forewarned.