Mar 6

Mar 6 The Rose Code

Best Audiobooks, Audiobooks, 2021 Best, Fiction, Five Star Books, Historical Fiction

Score: 5/5 Bookmarks

Thank you to Harper Audio for gifting me a review copy of The Rose Code by Kate Quinn. This is my first Kate Quinn book but I’ll absolutely be reading more of her work after enjoying this one so much.

I’ve been obsessed with codes for as long as I can remember, and I spent many an hour after school devising my own codes or writing letters to my friends in lemon juice or hieroglyphs for them to de-cypher. We even installed a little mailbox on the fence between our house and the neighbors so the girls next door and I could pass notes back and forth each day. Of course, the codes the characters in this book were trying to crack at Bletchley Park were quite literally the difference between life and death, versus me complaining about my annoying little sister.

Not only is this book a glimpse into the past and the fascinating code-breaking work that was being done in the UK during WWII but it’s also an intimate story of three very different women, who you get to know in such detail that you’ll be thinking of them long after you’ve finished this book.

Osla is beautiful, rich, and has Prince Philip of Greece courting her, but is determined to prove her worth. Mab is from the east-end and pulling herself up by her bootstraps. Beth is the shy, quiet daughter of their landlady who they are determined to bring out of her shell, and who ends up becoming one of Bletchley’s few female cryptanalysts.

All three are so different, but together they have the ability to solve more puzzles than they realize, and they’re going to have to rely on each other whether they like it or not.

The audiobook is performed by Saskia Maarleveld who brings the story to life beautifully. You might recognize her voice from The Alice Network, Secrets We Kept, Serpent and Dove, Other People’s Houses, The Golden Hour, and so many other amazing works. The audio comes in at 15 hours and 39 minutes, but once you get going I guarantee you won’t want to stop and it will fly by before you know it. Grab a copy of the audiobook via the button below, or get a physical copy here.

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Synopsis:

The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Huntress and The Alice Network returns with another heart-stopping World War II story of three female code-breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over.

1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to the mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes.

Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything—beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses—but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets.

Imperious self-made Mab, a product of east-end London poverty, works the legendary codebreaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband.

Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts.

But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart. 1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter—the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum.

A mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together. But each petal they remove from the rose code brings danger—and their true enemy—closer...