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coco19's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Misogyny, Racism, Sexual violence, and Violence
wynnie's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny, Racism, Violence, Antisemitism, Murder, and War
Moderate: Death, Gore, Rape, Sexual assault, Blood, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Terminal illness
saukittome's review
adventurous
inspiring
mysterious
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Misogyny and Murder
Minor: Racism, Rape, Sexual violence, Violence, Blood, and Antisemitism
anxiousnachos's review against another edition
mysterious
tense
4.0
My first Ellie Marney and I have to say, I rather enjoyed this! I thought this was an excellently plotted, very well-paced, SAPPHIC, YA historical thriller about a group of female code-breakers during WW2. It was a lot more gory and bloody than I expected! I love when a book turns out to be a bit darker than anticipated, and this was one of those.
There’s a series of murders at Arlington Hall, and a group of code-breakers decide to investigate the murders themselves as they don’t trust the police who are ignoring evidence and other murders. There’s twists and turns with a main character’s hidden identity, a sapphic romance, and of course, a lot of code-breaking! The code breaking setting is fabulous, I absolutely loved it, my favourite part of this book. It’s also probably one of my favourite settings to read about in war books? It’s just such an interesting piece of war history and you can see the amount of research Marney has put in to write this book. I want to go out and find out so much more about code-breaking now. And the romance is brilliant, Moya is *chefs kiss* I would like her entire wardrobe please.
My one complaint is that it does get quite didactic at times around the issues of racism. I can see Marney was trying to explore the issues of race and segregation that were typical of the time period, and I appreciate the attempts at this, but it got quite didactic at times as it felt like she had to keep reminding the reader that all these things that were happening were bad actually, very much jolting you out of the narrative. It was all very 'in your face 101 racism is bad for white people' style, and just lacked the real depth of research you saw with the code-breaking and other elements of history. (In saying this: it almost feels like this was done intentionally? There were moments it felt like it was going somewhere and then in would pop a "racism is bad, white person shocked it exists!" moment, as if an editor had asked for it to be made more obvious this was in fact bad or something. It was rather odd.)
But overall, I enjoyed this, it was a pacy and twisty and bloody historical YA thriller!
Content warnings: racism, sexism, war, nazism, anti-semitism, death of loved one (friend), rape, murder, blood and gore, non-consensual drug use (drink spiking), gun violence, fire, violence
There’s a series of murders at Arlington Hall, and a group of code-breakers decide to investigate the murders themselves as they don’t trust the police who are ignoring evidence and other murders. There’s twists and turns with a main character’s hidden identity, a sapphic romance, and of course, a lot of code-breaking! The code breaking setting is fabulous, I absolutely loved it, my favourite part of this book. It’s also probably one of my favourite settings to read about in war books? It’s just such an interesting piece of war history and you can see the amount of research Marney has put in to write this book. I want to go out and find out so much more about code-breaking now. And the romance is brilliant, Moya is *chefs kiss* I would like her entire wardrobe please.
My one complaint is that it does get quite didactic at times around the issues of racism. I can see Marney was trying to explore the issues of race and segregation that were typical of the time period, and I appreciate the attempts at this, but it got quite didactic at times as it felt like she had to keep reminding the reader that all these things that were happening were bad actually, very much jolting you out of the narrative. It was all very 'in your face 101 racism is bad for white people' style, and just lacked the real depth of research you saw with the code-breaking and other elements of history. (In saying this: it almost feels like this was done intentionally? There were moments it felt like it was going somewhere and then in would pop a "racism is bad, white person shocked it exists!" moment, as if an editor had asked for it to be made more obvious this was in fact bad or something. It was rather odd.)
But overall, I enjoyed this, it was a pacy and twisty and bloody historical YA thriller!
Content warnings: racism, sexism, war, nazism, anti-semitism, death of loved one (friend), rape, murder, blood and gore, non-consensual drug use (drink spiking), gun violence, fire, violence
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Drug use, Gore, Gun violence, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Violence, Blood, Antisemitism, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and War