While this book is devastatingly beautiful in it’s honest portrayal, what I loved most about it was it’s refreshing perspective on a WWII story. I love reading tales from the war, especially ones filled with great struggle and devotion the lay bare the sacrifice and struggle faced by so many during this difficult time. But one topic that has been relatively untouched in my reading of WWII books is the story of the resistance and those fighting behind the scenes, in secret, risking their lives on a daily basis to bring something as simple as cigarettes to a neighbour, or as great as trying to save lives.

Hanneke is a smuggler. She’s used to charming the German soldiers and lying to get around security checks, but her world turns upside-down when she is asked to smuggle something entirely new: a person. The plea of love exposes Hanneke to a world that she never knew existed, a world of people fighting back against the Nazis one little bit at a time. This small move of agreeing to help out a neighbour bring Hanneke closer to death than she’s ever been. It brings up terrible memories of the past and shocking revelations of the world that she is living in.

This story is open and honest. It touched me closely because of my own family’s history in the war. My grandmother was born and raise in The Netherlands. She was a young woman surviving during the Nazi occupation and met my grandfather, a Canadian soldier, during the Liberation. Hanneke is a woman who, in my mind, could so easily be my own Oma. I felt a personal connection to Hesse’s story, which added a whole new level to my reading.

Even without my own personal connection, The Girl in the Blue Coat, is a fantastic story that provides the reader with a glimpse into a story that’s not told nearly as often as it should be. Firstly the resistance, and secondly to Nazi occupied Holland. Hesse’s style is clear and captivating, and quite breathtaking to read.

Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse

Holocaust novels always hit me differently, and I have to prepare myself before beginning a story like this. I have to expect that parts of it will break my heart, but I always know I will find a piece of the story to help bandage my heart up a little as well. The Holocaust is heartbreaking, but the stories that come out of it are inspirational and you see what humans are capable of enduring. Hanneke is a wonderful character, and I loved watching her grow through her grief. She's determined, and strong, and I loved her. The writing is lovely, and the research that went into this must have been a lot. I'm so impressed.

Hanneke lives in Holland with her mother and father. She’s a young woman who has lost her boyfriend in the war, who works as the undertaker’s receptionist and also helps the undertaker with black market dealings. Her jobs support her family. On one of her deliveries, an elderly woman confides in Hanneke that she’d been hiding a Jewish teenage girl, in her home, in a secret compartment behind her pantry. The girl is missing and there’s no evidence of how she left the house. The woman pleads for Hanneke to help her find the teenage girl, Mirjam. Hanneke reluctantly agrees to help so she starts searching for any information she can find on Mirjam. As she’s searching, she inadvertently ends up at a resistance group meeting and becomes accidentally involved in a delivery of a Jewish baby, to an adoptive family, after the baby’s family had been detained by the Nazis. Hanneke learns about all of the ways that young adults around her have been helping with the resistance and she sees how selfish she was by keeping to herself and not becoming involved but that changes during her search for Mirjam. The young adults work together to find Mirjam and help everyone they can in this inspiring story of young heroism and perseverance. A wonderful character building historical fiction book, 4 stars!

The Girl in The Blue Coat, yes it is a story about the Holocaust , but it takes place in Amsterdam. It is a touching sweet plot about how the teenagers there became engrossed in helping the underground and rescuing their Jewish neighbors as the Nazis overtook their country and brought the war to their doorstep.

Hanneke is only sixteen when her boyfriend is killed fighting the encroaching German army. She leaves school and takes a job working for the local undertaker. Her main tasks are secretarial, but on the side he asks Hanneke to deliver some black market goods to different clients around the city. She never shares this part of her responsibilities with her parents. One day of the older ladies she delivers packages to asks for her help finding a girl in a blue coat who seems to have disappeared into thin air.

As Hanneke tries to locate the girl, she realizes there are people her age some of whom she went to school with , who are doing even more dangerous tasks to help the Jewish people being taken away from the city. her eyes are opened to the horrors of what is happening around her and they want her help.

She gets more involved as she tries to find out what happened to the girl in the blue coat. and help others in the Dutch resistance. She is awed by what some of the other teens are doing and she realizes there is no room for selfish behavior and looking away.

This is a beautiful coming of age story. Watching Hanneke grow up and find her voice and her inner strength. Hanneke's handling of moral decisions and responsibilities keep the reader emotionally engaged in this page turner.

I needed a book to re-energize my reading and bring me back to my lifelong favorite genre (historical fiction). Girl in the Blue Coat has been sitting on my bookshelf for a few years now and I can't believe I waited this long to pick it up! Beautifully written young adult novel that follows a young Dutch woman trying to provide for her family while also honoring the pre-war life she lost when the Nazis invaded her country. A quick read that kept me up at nights.

With people disappearing all the time, what difference would it make to save one, even if it were possible? And why should Henneke care, she who carries great guilt over her boyfriend’s death at the beginning of the war? These are the questions that Henneke, a young high school graduate living in occupied Amsterdam during World War II, struggles with.

The novel opens with Henneke supplementing her income at a funeral home by selling goods on the underground market, in tandem with her official employer. This gets her into people’s homes. She’s become an expert at navigating Nazi patrols with just the right blend of flirtation and innocence. She struggles with guilt and grief, because she encouraged her boyfriend to join up before it was necessary, and she also grieves the loss of her best friend from childhood, who went the other way and married a German soldier. When visiting one of her favorite clients one day, Henneke finds her upset–her husband has just been shot for hiding Jews in a secret room in her furniture store. The young daughter of the family happened to be out front when the Nazis arrived, and she was able to slip out, the only survivor, and make her way to her benefactor’s home, where the woman has been hiding her under the stairs. But the Jewish girl is gone, disappeared one day, and the Dutch woman wants help finding her.

Henneke’s decision to get involved, to try to make a difference for one girl while ignoring the plight of the many, leads her to a group of Dutch Resistance fighters, which include her boyfriend’s older brother. She is reluctant to throw her lot in with them; she prefers to stay on the edges, dabbling in black market items and helping just one girl, although they challenge her thinking and open her eyes to reality. We meet several courageous young people. Ultimately, she will have many choices to make and risks to accept or decline, in her search for the missing Jewish teenager who wears a distinctive blue coat. Can saving one girl bring her peace?

Girl in the Blue Coat is in many ways a coming-of-age tale, and it’s well done. I didn’t even realize it was a YA book, because Henneke, although young, is dealing with issues many adults never really have to face. The ending doesn’t go the way I expected it to, and the emotions are very real and deftly handled. Highly recommended. It would be fine for a mature 12 and up.

What a fantastic book! It is captivating and immersive. I felt like I was walking the streets of Amsterdam with the main character, searching for a young woman who had gone missing while trying to evade the Nazis. Our students loved it too.

You may think that all the stories of WWII have been told, yet this is one of the new ones. It looks at the experience of teens and young adults during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Author Monica Hesse maintains the suspense of the situation throughout the book and creates some surprising twists reminiscent of "Code Name Verity".

Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown Books for Young Readers for this free readers edition. In exchange I am providing an honest review.

"....I wanted to tell a story of small betrayals in the middle of a big war. I wanted to illustrate the split-second decisions we make of moral courage and cowardice, and how we are all heroes and villains." (Monica Hesse)
Hanneke Bakker lives in Amsterdam and it is the early 1940's. World War II is in full swing and the Germans have occupied the Netherlands. Hanneke has fallen into supporting her family through the black market with ration cards. They are the lucky ones. They have the right last name and the right looks so their lives aren't in danger. On a delivery one day Hanneke is asked to find something that ration cards can't procure. Despite her best efforts to not get involved, Hanneke can't stop herself. The pull of her humanity wins out over her fears. This sets Hanneke on a search for a girl in a blue coat and it sets her on a path she didn't intend to walk.
Hesse writes a story that highlights the tragedies of World War II and the courage it required and called forth in people. She also crafted a story that showed life still moving forward despite the Nazi chaos all around them. People were still going to school, getting married, preferring a certain brand of cigarettes, fighting with their parents, seeing the dentist for a toothache. It was a well-written book that showed yet another side to the war that changed the world forever.