When one of your very favorite YA fiction authors (Ruta Sepetys) joins one of your very favorite YA nonfiction authors (Steve Sheinken) to write a book together, there is just one possibility for what to do. I requested the advance copy from Net Galley and began what promised to be a good read.
The story is set in Bletchley Park in the summer of 1940 with World War II on the horizon. Protagonists are nineteen-year-old Jakob Novis and his quirky fourteen-year-old sister Lizzie. It opens with their father dead, and their mother missing and presumed dead. Their American grandmother demands that Lizzie come to America where she can find a more conventional life leading to a suitable marriage. Lizzie outwits the messenger sent for her and joins Jakob at Bletchley Park.
The setting, based on a real home for World War II codebreakers and using real codebreaking heroes as characters, is home to a riveting life for the two siblings. They switch, in a very normal manner, between bickering and supporting each other as they join forces to help the codebreakers and seek the true account of what happened to their mother. They begin to wonder if the two problems are connected and become engrossed in strange messages that are either clues or a trap. In this effort they must also sort out which people are trustworthy. The reader will be torn between wanting quick resolution to the tension and wanting the book to last longer.
In the end, I am bamboozled as a writer. I can’t figure out how I could ever write anything with another writer. I wondered often if Ruta wrote Lizzie and Steve wrote Jakob, but the plot is so seamless, I think that couldn’t happen. I’ll just leave it as one of the best books I’ve read recently for any age group and the advice that you should not leave this one to the kids if you love an engaging historical fiction mystery.