Hello, everyone! Isabelle Knight back here again with another book review!! 🙂 But before we do this book review, I first want to share some exciting news/updates!! Book one in my middle-grade fantasy series, Enchantria, was featured on Carol Baldwin’s blog on Saturday with a review from guest blogger, Journey Bloomfield, which was quite exciting to see! 🙂 Huge thanks to Carol Baldwin and Journey Bloomfield for featuring my book, and you can check out the review here! I’m also doing a giveaway of the eBook edition (one eBook!!) of the book, so if you want to enter, leave a comment by June 10th! And yes, the giveaway is international, so don’t worry if y I was also very glad to be interviewed by a friend of mine, and that interview will be going up on my YT channel a few days later!
Summer has officially come around here in China, and it is hot! Flowers are blooming though, and it’s officially been two years since I’ve started writing!! 😮 Which is wild! And honestly proves that a lot can change in two years… I also now have six official, confirmed blog tour dates for the release of Enchantria: The Last Hope, and the book trailer (which gave me chills) is going up on my YT channel on June 11th!
Now onto the book review!!!!!
This book review is actually kind of different from my other book reviews. If you’ve read my other book reviews, then you’ll no doubt know that what I mostly read (and write!) is middle-grade fantasy, adventure, contemporary, magic realism, the occasional horror (haven’t reviewed any horror yet, but Lora Senf’s The Clackity is a wonderful book!!). But mostly fiction. And to be honest, I’ve never been a huge fan of nonfiction, and I’ve never been that interested in reading it.
But this book that I am reviewing today is actually a nonfiction book, and oh my stars, it blew me away! It was such a fantastic book, full of interesting and fun facts, and I could not put it down! And that book is The Mysterious Virginia Hall by Claudia Friddell!
The Mysterious Virginia Hall is a nonfiction book about Virginia Hall, an American spy and secret agent in World War II, and also one of the Gestapo’s most wanted spies… It’s basically a biography about her, and it was so much fun to read!! This is the blurb from the publisher:
How did a young lady from a wealthy family in Maryland end up as the Gestapo’s most wanted spy? This biography of Virginia Hall, World War II’s most successful female spy, will inspire reluctant readers and budding history buffs alike.
Virginia Hall, known to her family as “Dindy,” was an athletic, outdoorsy girl who dreamed of joining the foreign service and becoming an ambassador. Despite numerous setbacks, including losing her leg to gangrene after an accident, Virginia never wavered in her determination to serve her country. After the outbreak of World War II, a chance meeting on a train changed her life—George Bellows, an agent of the British Special Operations Executive, recruited her as one of its first women agents. Working for Allied intelligence services in France, Virginia Hall organized French resistance fighters, performed daring rescues, and provided the Allies with intelligence that was key for ousting the Nazis and earned her numerous medals, including the US Army’s Distinguished Service Cross.
With chapters titled for each of the many aliases and nicknames used by Virginia Hall, this book takes readers through her extraordinary life and her evolution as a resistance fighter and intelligence operative. Award-winning author Claudia Friddell brings Virginia Hall’s bravery, intelligence, and determination to life in this thoroughly researched and photo-filled biography endorsed by Hall’s family.
I loved this book so much!! It was so detailed and carefully written, and I also really loved the layout of the text — it had a lot of great pictures to go along with it! Friddell managed to recount Virginia’s various adventures with such detail and through this book I actually really started to care about what happened to Virginia Hall like I would care about a character! And as someone who isn’t a huge reader of nonfiction, this book had me hooked by page 10!
I just loved how this nonfiction book really managed to pull me into Virginia Hall’s life instead of just telling the reader facts. And honestly, after reading this book, I think I have a new favorite person in history now. Virginia Hall is so incredibly brave, and honestly, I am in awe of everything she managed to do in her life!
And now, I know I normally will tell you guys about my favorite scene in a review. But this isn’t a fiction book, so we don’t have an exact “scene”. But I do have a favorite part of the book! And honestly, it’s not exactly my favorite part (because I have a lot of parts I love), but this section just had me laughing out loud. Virginia Hall had a sort of prosthetic leg that she named Cuthbert, and Cuthbert was rather tiresome while trying to travel across the Pyrenees. And she said so in a radio message that was sent back to London — “CUTHBERT IS BEING TIRESOME, BUT I CAN COPE.” And the receiving agent in London, who was not aware of Hall’s disability or the name of her wooden leg replied, “IF CUTHBERT IS BEING TIRESOME, HAVE HIM ELIMINATED.“
…Even looking back now I’m still in peals of laughter over that. Although I was mildly concerned by what the receiving agent meant by “eliminated”…
Then again, what other definition of eliminated is there?
The whole pacing of this book is also really fast and vivid, but not too rushed either, and it’s just really perfectly balanced!! It takes us through Virginia Hall’s life and through all her struggles, and the book never lagged or felt like it was just telling us boring facts.
And while the book technically is labeled as YA, I do think that this also feels like a middle-grade read (it may just be me, since I don’t read that much nonfiction), and I am very sure that a lot of middle-grade readers will love this book, as well as teen readers! It’s also really great for reluctant readers of nonfiction and also for people looking to learn more about World War II and extraordinary people during that time, like Virginia Hall!! You can really see how much work went into researching and writing this book, and it was just so fun and so interesting! I could not put this book down, and I actually finished the whole book in one sitting while having dinner….
For any family member wondering why it was taking me that long to get upstairs, even though I was done eating……
You now have your answer. 🙃
But yeah! This is just such a fantastic book, and I’m definitely giving this book six stars out of five! (wow, looking back now, it’s been a while since I used that rating…. But for anyone who doesn’t remember, six stars out of five is a special rating only given to some of the bestest books I have read). This is a must-read for anyone interested in nonfiction (or not interested! Who knows, maybe this book will get them into reading nonfiction!), and I shall definitely be looking for more of Claudia Friddell’s books in the future!!
I think this probably wraps up my review now! Thank you guys so much for coming, I hope you enjoyed this review, and I also hope that you will check out this book! It’s a marvelous one! For anyone curious, this book comes out June 24, 2025, and you can find all the places to pre-order the hardcover and/or ebook here!
And if you’re also looking for more book reviews, author interviews, and whatnot, do check out Marvelous Middle Grade Monday! It’s full of those things! 🙂
Isabelle
Great review, Isabelle, and she sounds an amazing woman. I like the scene you chose, but wow, the callousness of the British agent! Spying is a loathsome profession, but very interesting to read about 🙂 I find the real world very inspiring for my fantasy fiction, so well worth reading non-fiction. Thanks for the recommendation!
Yes, Virginia Hall is definitely such an amazing woman! And haha, indeed — spying can definitely be rather loathsome if you’re actually involved in it! Reading about it however… It’s ever so thrilling! Non-fiction is definitely worth reading, and I shall definitely be trying to find more of Claudia Friddell’s books now! Thanks for reading, and I’m glad you liked the review! I hope you’ll read this book someday!
I’ll add it to my TBR 🙂
Hoorah! 🙂
Virginia Hall sounds like an amazing person. Thanks for featuring her story this week. I’m glad your blog tour is shaping up. And I didn’t know you live in China. My daughter’s adopted from there, and I’ve been there twice, once to get her and another to take her on a heritage tour.
She definitely is! Yes, definitely glad my blog tour is shaping up as well! And it’s really cool that your daughter is adopted from there!
This sounds like an intriguing book and person! I loved the part you shared about “Cuthbert” too. That’s hilarious! I’d never heard of Virginia, but now I really want to read about her.
Haha, yes — that was one of my favorite parts! I laughed out loud at that! You definitely should check this book out! I think you’ll like it! ^^
Biography is a great form of non-fiction if you like a good story. I read a lot of non-fiction, and you might find more of it is exciting and gripping than you expected. (History can also have a good story line, once you get away from textbooks). I’d like to read this book; Virginia Hall sounds like an amazing young woman!
Definitely — I agree! I’ll be looking for more of Claudia Friddell’s books in the future. Thanks for reading!
This is a book I would probably not pick up to read, but your enthusiastic review has me adding it to my TBR list. Pulling a reader into a non-fiction book beyond dumping facts on every page isn’t easy. Glad this one keeps readers glued to the page. Thanks for featuring the book on this week’s MMGM.
Not every book is for everyone. But I’m glad that you’ve added it to your TBR! ^^ I do hope that you will give it a try though — I was definitely pulled in! Thanks for reading and for having me on this week’s MMGM!
This does sound like a fascinating book. One doesn’t often name their prosthetics! I’ll try to check it out.
Indeed! Thanks for reading! I’m glad you liked the review!
Awesome review! I’m so glad you liked the book. I will repost it on my blog for next week. Claudia will be thrilled. BTW- check out the rest of your comments on my blog!
Sounds great!! ^^ I’m glad you liked the review! It really was a FANTASTIC book!!! I enjoyed it so much!