The Pearl Thief (Code Name Verity Series, book 3)

By Elizabeth Wein

Blurb: 
When fifteen-year-old Julia Beaufort-Stuart wakes up in the hospital, she knows the lazy summer break she’d imagined won’t be exactly like she anticipated. And once she returns to her grandfather’s estate, a bit banged up but alive, she begins to realize that her injury might not have been an accident. One of her family’s employees is missing, and he disappeared on the very same day she landed in the hospital.

Desperate to figure out what happened, she befriends Euan McEwen, the Scottish Traveller boy who found her when she was injured, and his standoffish sister, Ellen. As Julie grows closer to this family, she experiences some of the prejudices they’ve grown used to firsthand, a stark contrast to her own upbringing, and finds herself exploring thrilling new experiences that have nothing to do with a missing-person investigation.

Her memory of that day returns to her in pieces, and when a body is discovered, her new friends are caught in the crosshairs of long-held biases about Travellers. Julie must get to the bottom of the mystery in order to keep them from being framed for the crime.

Review: 
I listened to this book purely as an audio book as I subscribed to audible as they gave me a special offer for 3 months.

This book was based before the war, so it is a sequel to Code Name Verity. This book was based in Scotland, in the Perthshire area. There was also some references that were around Aberdeen. I found this pretty cool to be honest because me and my husband like to travel around Scotland a lot, so it's nice to read about areas and learn about some of the things that happened before the war.

There are 4 main characters that we follow throughout this book which is quite nice because we get to see how their daily lives differ from one another. There is two tinkers (travelers/gypsy's) and then you have Julie and Jamie who are from a rich family.

Julie's grandfather has just died and they are sorting through his possessions and the family heirlooms to try and make some money to pay for his debts. Their main possession are pearls from the river. Julie gets to the house early without her case and goes to try and find some of her old friends, we then jump to a part where she wakes up in hospital as she has been knocked out.

So the main part of this book is discovering what actually happened to Julie, and this other character who is also missing.

In a way this book is more of a thriller/mystery than historical because we learn different parts of what happened to her throughout the book and then a the end as suspected things are pieced together. 

Throughout this book the friendship/relationship between Julie and Ellen is quite complicated, I'm not too sure whether they actually like each other as friends or girlfriends or if they hate each other. But then I suppose some people hate each other and then start to love each other. But then what confuses me is Jamie, Julie's brother as Ellen seems to love him too and then Julie seems to like Euan. Aghh just so confusing.

But that aside the friendships between these 4 is quite strong and I love how Julie actually trusts these tinkers when no one else does and they discover the true mystery of the summer.

I loved how there was suspense throughout the story and little bits started to uncover as we went on. The only thing that sort of disturbed me was that Julie was trying to hit on an older man that was in his 40's I think he was, when she was only 15. I think that's just wrong in my eyes. But there again it was based before the war and I'm not from that time.

Other than that I feel like I could recommend this book because it was well wrote and it did seem fast paced even though I was listening to it. 

Favourite Character: Euan

Read: 18/03/20 - 22/03/20

4 stars out of 5

Written by Sammie