by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
First sentence: “First things first: a riddle.”
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Review copy pilfered from the ARC shelves at work.
Content: There are some intense moments, and talk of a small crush. It’s also a bit on the longer side for middle grade books. It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore, but is probably for the older end of the age range.

Lizzie Novis is supposed to get on a boat to America to be with her grandmother because London is evacuating in preparation for Hitler’s invasion. Except she believes her mother is not dead and wants to look for her, so she evades getting on the boat and heads to Bletchely Park (or rather, the address she has for her brother which turns out to be Bletchley Park) to be with her brother Jakob, who has been working at the top-secret code-breaking facility.

Once there, Lizzie has the unwelcome job of trying to convince Jakob of her belief that their mother is still alive, and part of that is finding proof. All the while, Jakob is part of the team that is trying to figure out the codes for the Enigma machine so they can break the coded transmissions they’re getting from Germany. And Hitler’s army is on the march, coming closer to Great Britain. It’s all a lot to handle.

I have been selling this book for months solely on the basis of the authors’ names. Seriously: any book written by Sepetys and Sheinkin HAS to be good, right? And, dear reader, it was. Of course it was. They just have a way of writing historical fiction and history that makes it seem exciting, that brings it to life. And this book – with spitfire Lizzie and anxious, concerned Jakob, plus the rest of the cast of kids and code breakers – did exactly that. It was fun, intense, often funny, and a page-turner. It didn’t exceed my expectations, which were admittedly high, but it did absolutely meet them.

And you can’t ask for more than that.