While Valya's hunkered down in the bombed-out shell of her Stalingrad home, she's desperate to join her sister, a pilot with the Night Witches, named for their relentless, near-silent nighttime attacks on Nazi troops. After a few daring escapes, Valya makes her way to the temporary airfield where her sister is stationed. Much to her chagrin, Valya ends up stuck among the ground crew, but before long, she and her fellow aviatrixes flit though the sky, dodging bulky German planes and bombing supply reserves and searchlights. Though her prose is occasionally florid and moments of expository dialogue seem shoehorned in, Lasky shines when describing the Witches' bombing missions and amplifies the suspense when Valya is shot down behind enemy lines. The daring young women are all dynamically well rounded, particularly Valya, who oscillates between caring for and competing with her sister. Perhaps most thrilling of all is that the Night Witches were a real, all-women regiment, a fact that might encourage young readers to seek out the history of these daredevil heroes.

A rarely told story of sisterhood, passion, and survival during World War II.Valya, 16, has always struggled with feelings of jealousy toward her older sister, Tatyana. When their mother allows Tatyana to join the Soviet military and become a Night Witch, a fighter pilot of the 588th Regiment, and forces Valya to stay home, it is almost too much for Valya to bear. A naturally skilled flier, taught by her father, she knows she was born for the sky and feels her talents are desperately wasted on the ground: Stalingrad in 1941 is besieged on three sides by Nazi forces, and she knows she could make a difference. When her mother and grandmother are killed and her father declared MIA, Valya's time arrives, and she starts her journey to become a Night Witch. Occasional infodumps slow the narrative momentum but provide interesting context to readers who may not be familiar with the Soviet Union's involvement in World War II. Repeated references to American and British children's literature feel forced and clunky in Valya's first-person narration, and oddly absent are either ideological commentary on them or references to beloved Russian children's literature. Though this inevitably begs comparison to Code Name Verity, it's a different book: a fast-paced slice of history for younger teens. Despite quibbles, it's sure to satisfy fans of Carolyn Meyer, Dear America, and Lasky's own previous World War II fiction. (Historical fiction. 12-15)