Girl in the Blue Coat

I don’t normally read historical fiction, so The Girl in the Blue Coat was a nice change of pace and I enjoyed how the author, Monica Hesse, weaved a story with so much mystery and detailed description. It really seemed like a very researched book.
The girl in the blue coat follows the quest of Hanneke, a young woman who lives during 1943, when the Germans invaded Amsterdam. In order to provide for her family, she deals in black market goods, secretly smuggling illegal things such as cigarettes and coffee to her customers. Her own life is risky, but this time is even more dangerous for her friends and neighbors who are jews, as they are forced to go into hiding in order not to be taken to transit camps. One day on a delivery, Hanneke is asked to find a missing jewish girl, who at any time could be captured by the Nazis. It is an almost impossible task, but Hanneke takes it on partly as a small rebellion against the Nazis. She feels that her boyfriend, Bas, who was killed at war with the Germans, would want her to try to save the girl. Throughout the book, she becomes overwhelmed with feelings of sadness for Bas, which encourages her to continue looking for the missing girl.
Hanneke is a very detail oriented, independant, do-what-you-have-to-to-survive type of person, and an expert at finding things such as all her black market goods. Hanneke’s determination and focused personality help her a lot a she reaches dead end after dead end and new mystery after new mystery while trying to locate Mirjam, the missing girl and as she gets deeper and deeper into her quest and things gradually get more dangerous.
Some parts of this book did get confusing, especially at the end, when Hanneke was trying to figure out what really happened to Mirjam, but besides that it seemed like a very realistic book and had a strong main character to admire. Any fans of historical fiction would enjoy this book, as well as any fans of mystery.