Review: The Bletchley Riddle

By Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin

New York: Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2024. Fiction. 392 pages.

It's spring of 1940, Hitler has swept through most of Europe, and people believe England will be next. Half Polish-Jewish, half American Jakob has been recruited from Cambridge to Bletchley Park where they are working on deciphering the enigma machine. Jakob's sister Lizzie, meanwhile, is being forced to move from London to Cleveland to live with her grandmother after her mother disappeared in a 1939 attack in Poland. Lizzie manages to escape the keeper her grandmother sent for her to bring her to America and makes her way to Bletchley, where she's eventually given the task of delivering messages between departments. When secret messages begin appearing with Lizzie's belongings, she must decipher them to find the truth about her mother's past and location, while keeping the secrets away from the MI5 agent that seems a little too interested in her mother's whereabouts.

This novel was cowritten by Ruta Sepetys (who you may know from popular YA historical fiction like I Must Betray You and Between Shades of Grey) and Steve Sheinkin (author of Bomb, Impossible Escape, and other award winning nonfiction for kids and teens.) With a team of authors like that, you would expect it to be great, and this book did not disappoint. Kids who are interested in fast-paced spy stories, or those who love history will definitely want to pick up this book.

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