Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin

Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin

• ISBN-10: 0316405124 - Hardcover $18
• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (October 20, 2015), 400 pages.
• Review copy courtesy of the Amazon Vine Reviewers Program.
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The blurb:
The year is 1956, and the Axis powers of the Third Reich and Imperial Japan rule the world.  To commemorate their Great Victory over Britain and Russia, Hitler and Emperor Hirohito host the Axis Tour, an annual mtorcycle race across their conjoined continents.  The victor is awarded an audience with the highly reclusive Adolf Hitler at the Victor's Ball.

Yael, who escaped from a death camp, has one goal:  Win the race and kill Hitler.  A survivor of painful human experimentation, Yael has the power to skinshift and must complete her mission by impersonating last year's only female victor, Adele Wolfe.  This deception becomes more difficult when Felix, Adele's twin brother, and Luka, her former love interest, enter the race and watch Yael's every move.  But as Yael begins to get closer to the other competitors, can she bring herself to be as ruthless as she needs to be to avoid discovery and complete her mission?

Review:
Wolf by Wolf is set in a world where Adolf Hitler's Third Reich goes on to control half the world alongside the Japanese Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere. Our heroine Yael survives a death camp after having been singled out by the concentration camp's doctor for his skin changing experiments.  Yael's buried her entire family and many of those closest to her.  Her overriding goal is to destroy the Third Reich's control and to bring about Hitler's end.

The Resistance has planned an elaborate mission that requires her to first win the Axis Tour - a deadly race over the conjoined continents of what had been Europe, Russia, and Asia.  It is only as the winner of the contest that she'll have the opportunity to come close enough to Hitler to make her move.

I loved Wolf by Wolf. Yael enters the Axis Tour with a dossier on each of her competitors and quickly finds that there is much that her files fail to cover.  She must decipher their shared histories without revealing her identity or her mission and play to win.  Yael is strong, deadly, and with a strict code and as she goes through one of the most difficult challenges in her world, we can't help but root for her.

About the Author:
Ryan Graudin was born in Charleston, South Carolina.  She's the author of All That Glows and The Walled City.  She lives in South Carolina with her husband and wolf dog.