The Rose Code by Kate Quinn was simply incredible. The story opens in 1947 days before Princess Elizabeth is set to marry Prince Phillip, Osla Kendall is the former girlfriend of Phillip who now works as a columnist for Tatler. As she is preparing herself for attending the wedding she receives an unusual letter written in a cipher from a former friend, Beth. Decoding the message she finds herself unprepared for the contents and immediately phones Mab, a former friend of hers, to see if she received a similar letter. While they try to decide what to do about the contents of the letter since it reveals a claim that there was a traitor working amongst them at Bletchley Park, the story goes back to 1940 when Osla and Mab were first recruited to work at BP. They were provided a billet at the Finch Household where they soon befriended the unusual but rather brilliant Beth Finch Noticing her skill at crosswords and with patterns they arrange for her to have an interview at Bletchley where she is quickly hired for the rather demanding codebreaking unit under Dilly Knox. As the war progresses they each work on finding their unique niche in their work.
I picked up this book because it was about Bletchley Park and I must admit that I have a slight fascination with the place due in part to my long-time fascination with cryptography in general. That being said, because of that fascination I could almost immediately tell that this was incredibly well researched and most of the details included about BP and the types of work being done there were actually pretty accurate. Even down to the specific names and biographies of the different supervisors so I was definitely impressed by that. They even got the details about the different types of ciphers being decoded correct. I always appreciate when an author bothers to do the type of research necessary to correctly portray something like this. The story itself was great and had multiple layers that included the search for evidence of their being a traitor in the park but also a young woman gaining her independence from an overbearing family, recognizing one’s abilities and gaining faith in them, as well as the intricate workings of friendships between women. It also had to deal with all of the issues surrounding where they worked and how that affected all of the other themes. The story didn’t feel that complex and was a pretty easy read considering everything but looking at it after finishing it was remarkably complex. On top of that it also had some incredible characters and they felt as real as the actual historical people lingering in the background of the story. I was definitely impressed by this book and had a great time reading it. It is getting 4.5 out of 5 stars from me.
This is a great piece of historical fiction that will appeal the most to readers who tend to enjoy that genre or to readers who just like reading about WWII. As a warning, considering the time frame being portrayed it does include graphic descriptions of the blitz and some of the bombings as well as references to adult content some of which is mildly violent. I would caution younger readers to be careful when looking at this one and that it should probably only be read by older teens, at best. I would still consider it to be well worth reading though and hope you will consider trying it. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments if you already have.