Representations: https://trello.com/c/eYaBkQAv

Punchy, funny at the right times, incredibly heartfelt - but I would be very curious to see how well kids understand the mathematics.

I absolutely love Bletchley Park, I love ciphers and cryptography and the entire enigma project is so fascinating to me. So this book is very much something I knew I'd enjoy - as long as it took care with the historical source material, and it really did! I did very much read Alan Turing as if he was Benedict Cumberbatch though, side effect of watching the imitation game too much lmao. This though explored a side to the park I actually had not much idea about before now, the children - and the local inn with a family?? Reading the historical note was fascinating, I figured that that kinda inn probably wouldn't have been allowed, and kids certainly not, but thinking about it more it does make sense. Everyone wanted to help the war effort, and they needed all the help they could get.

The story about dealing with grief (though probably not in the best of ways), mathematics/ciphers and spies was really well done. I loved all the characters, they were all super charming honestly. The way the riddles were done was very simple, but I understand keeping it that way for kids. However, while major theme of the book is grief, I don't think it'd be a good idea to give this to a kid who is trying to navigate grief themselves. While it's ok to hope a loved one might still be alive - especially if there's no concrete proof - the extent of Lizze's kinda borderline obsession over uncovering the mystery is not healthy at all. And it's shown as a good thing for Lizzie to do in the book.

The ensemble of characters was a right mix however! So many strong-willed kids and very interesting figures sprinkled in. The inclusion of known figures didn't even really feel that out of place. Would loved to have heard more about 1 character towards the end, and maybe a bit more about some of the other famous figures than just Turing as he had the biggest spotlight out of them.