I enjoyed learning more and more about them as the story went on and Martin peeled back those layers as the characters developed. You wanted to see them succeed and I found myself holding my breath every time they were in danger. They were real and vulnerable and likeable. These women were written so well that I feel Madeline Martin had to have based them on women in her own life. She really was a housewife thrust into the center of the story. Elaine was a married woman who had to endure some hard realities when her husband goes missing. Ava was a single woman librarian who was sent to collect and scan papers to give hints on what Hitler and his men were doing. Two women from vastly different walks of life that were brought to the center of World War II by situations mostly out of their control, but made huge differences because of their work. We follow two women in this book, Ava and Elaine. The Librarian Spy was one of those stories. They could go places men couldn’t go and get away with it without being detected. These women were pertinent to ending the Nazi regime because they were jobs that men simply could not do. My favorite type of historical fiction is those that talk about the women who didn’t have to step in, but made the choice to take on jobs that were dangerous and put them far outside their comfort zones. **A copy of the book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.** Yet she knows that the Nazis are searching for the press and its printer in order to silence them.Īs the battle in Europe rages, Ava and Elaine find themselves connecting through coded messages and discovering hope in the face of war. It’s a job usually reserved for men, but in the war, those rules have been forgotten. Meanwhile, in occupied France, Elaine has begun an apprenticeship at a printing press run by members of the Resistance.

But an unexpected offer from the US military has brought her to Lisbon with a new mission: posing as a librarian while working undercover as a spy gathering intelligence. Ava thought her job as a librarian at the Library of Congress would mean a quiet, routine existence.

The Librarian Spy by Madeline Martin