"Code Name Edelweiss" by Stephanie Landsem

I suspect this book will be on my list of favorite new reads for this year.  It is enthralling!

Liesl Weiss loses her job as a stenographer at a big Hollywood studio.  It's the middle of the Great Depression and, ever since her husband disappeared a couple of years earlier, it's been up to Liesl to support her two children, herself, her mother, and her brother.  While searching for a new workplace, she meets up with Leon Lewis, a Jewish lawyer who offers to pay her to spy on suspected Nazi agents in Los Angeles.

Liesl takes the job, sure she will discover that her fellow German-Americans are not up to anything nefarious.  Instead, she helps uncover a real-life plot to attack Jewish movie makers and take over the studios.  Sometimes, the book was almost too suspenseful for me -- I occasionally had to put it down and process everything that had happened.  But, in the end, I loved it.

I was absolutely fascinated by the historical notes at the end, which talked about the real history of Leon Lewis and his tireless efforts to stop Nazis from infiltrating the movie industry and Californian culture.

Landsem's writing style was engaging and appealing, and I loved the wealth of historical details that really made the story come alive.  The message of how good people need to stand up for what is good and decry what is bad was also very timely.  But it was the characters, particularly the mysterious Agent Thirteen, that I loved the best.

Particularly Good Bits:

This was war.  Not with guns and tanks--not yet at least--but with words and ideas, with ideology.  And wasn't that how war always started?

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for a lot of sexual harassment toward Liesl and other women, discussions of an unwed pregnancy, some violence, and lots of racism directed not just toward Jewish people, but many others as well.  No bad language or smutty scenes.

This is my first book read from my 10 Books of Summer list and my 39th read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.