Devil Darling Spy

Gr 10 Up–In the even-more-gripping sequel to Orphan Monster Spy, it’s 1940 and 16-year-old Jewish orphan Sarah Goldstein is living undercover in Berlin as the “niece” of high-society fixer Helmut Haller, the alias of British spy Jeremy Floyd. Jeremy and Sarah are still reeling from the aftermath of the previous book’s events, which left them both with PTSD and increased Sarah’s fear that fighting monsters may just turn her into one. But there is no time for recovery now that rumors of a powerful germ weapon being developed in the Congo have reached Berlin. Posing as German military intelligence, Jeremy and Sarah set off on a race across Africa to beat the S.S. from retrieving the disease samples from German missionaries. Accompanying them is Clementine, a brilliant and acerbic half-German, half-Senegalese maid with a hidden agenda. In the Congo, people speak of a White Devil that travels through the jungle and spreads a fatal disease called “the bleeding,” which missionaries claim they are trying to treat. Sarah gradually makes the agonizing realization that she (still) can trust no one—and that the Nazis are far from the only monsters out there. This installment retains the breakneck pace, rich imagery, and psychological nuance of the first book, while upping the stakes and increasing the moral complexity that confronts Sarah. The book’s historical setting and subject matter—atrocities perpetuated by European colonialists in Africa leading up to and during World War II—are both well handled and rarely depicted in YA, making this a strong purchase for high school collections. While the Ebola germ weapon is fictional, broader observations about colonial-era treatment of African populations and specific references to torture and genocide in the Belgian Congo and German Namibia are based in historical fact, and described in a lengthy author’s note. African characters are depicted as individuals with their own histories and goals rather than as mere objects of European brutality. The German language is heavily used and the complex plot demands some background knowledge about the war from readers, as well as a familiarity with the events of the first book.