A teenage spy. A Nazi boarding school. The performance of a lifetime. Can she survive?

Orphan Monster Spy is the debut novel by Matt Killeen, and here’s the blurb on the back:

Sarah has played many roles – but now she faces her most challenging of all. Because there’s only one way for a Jewish orphan spy to survive at a school for the Nazi elite. And that’s to become a monster like them. They think she is just a little girl. But she is the weapon they never saw coming… with a mission to destroy them all.

Published in 2018, this is an unputdownable wartime thriller. Sarah is a captivating character, who experiences life as a Jewish child at the start of World War II. She gets caught up with a mysterious Captain who takes her under his wing and sends her off on an impossibly daring secret mission; to pretend to be a Nazi.

A sequel was published in 2020, Devil Darling Spy (which I have not read), but I would suggest Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein as a companion read; it’s another YA wartime thriller, about a young girl who gets sent to France to work as a spy. Both Orphan Monster Spy and Code Name Verity are highly recommended.