The Rose Code by Kate Quinn
1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla 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 postwar Britain into a fever, the 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. An enigmatic 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…
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Kate Quinn is my favourite historical fiction author and this book is a clear idea as to why. Her writing is brilliant, this plot is brilliant, this whole entire book is brilliant! I’m calling it, this will be the best book I read in 2021, hands down. If you’ve followed this blog at all in the past, you’ll know I’m a sucker for a good historical fiction especially if it’s set during/directly after WWII. I think that love initially started with Kate Quinn’s The Alice Network and I haven’t stopped reading that genre since. Also, one of my favourite movies is The Imitation Game so this book combining that topic of espionage and codebreaking into my love of WWII themed books made it my most anticipated read of the year. I drove 40 minutes just to get my hands on a copy as soon as it came out and it did not disappoint. In fact, it far exceeded every expectation I had. All three characters in this book were so three dimensional and I loved reading about each one. The differing personalities yet the similarity they share for literature was heartwarming. Like most of Quinn’s books, she doesn’t shy away from the terror and the tragedy of war, she makes the lives her characters as realistic to what it might have been at the time as she can and it so clearly shows. When I was done the book I was heartbroken that these women weren’t real. I want to read this book again and again and again.
We open in this story with a mystery. Starting from ‘present day’ (1947 for our characters) with Osla receiving a mysterious cryptogram from an old acquaintance. After setting the scene, we are plunged into the past and live a good majority of the book through the war with these three amazing characters: Mab, Osla, and Beth, with only seldom short interludes into the “present-day” as two of our characters slowly put together the pieces of why someone would be sending them mysterious notes 3 years after their time at Bletchley together. It was magnificent. Unlike some of Quinn’s other stories, we live almost completely in the past with these characters so that time, living through the war, was the true story, with the present-day plot more of an epilogue/mystery driver to the story than anything else. I think because of this, because we got to spend more time getting to know the younger version of these characters, we got to know them so much better and so much deeper than we did with Evelyn or Nina or Graham from Quinn’s other books. (Watch out for rogue cameos of characters from her other books!).
Honestly, the thing I loved most about this book was the stories of the three women. We get to delve so deeply into Osla’s life and her need for a place (or person) to call home, her loneliness, and her drive to become more than what she’s always been perceived to be. And we’re with her as her life irrevocably changes and trust becomes something of the past. We get to follow Mab through her tragic past, watch her fall in love, watch her climb that social ladder like a boss and do whatever she can to pull her family out of the slums, and we’re with her as life slowly falls apart and rebuilds as well (I think Mab was my favourite character of the three). And for Beth, we get to see Beth grow. From a meek little mouse under her mother’s abusive thumb to the genius that cracks German and Russian codes in a shorter time than most of her coworkers. It was beautiful to be able to see that journey and it all felt so realistic, these characters were so relatable.
I also loved that these characters didn’t fall into the cliche of women characters, all three were very different. Osla may have been a debutante but she wanted nothing more than to get her hands dirty and prove herself, yet still be fabulous while doing it. Mab is tough, but she’s still allowed to long for the things a “typical” woman would long for: a husband, children, security without that dampening her badass spirit or making her seem weak. And Beth is an innocent shy girl but she doesn’t fall into the social stigma of what shy girls are like once they’re “realized”. She doesn’t become this confident goddess, she’s still awkward and nervous but she knows that her mind is her weapon and that she can love whoever she wants to love and live her life the way SHE chooses to live it.
The suspense in this was phenomenal. It slowly built without making me too impatient to reach the end but always kept that in the back of my mind “something bad is going to happen” which made it all the harder to put this book down. And the way Quinn tied in actual historical events and people was so seamless. When I first picked it up my first thoughts were “why does it have to be Prince Philip as the love interest?” “I thought Alan Turing did all the legwork on codebreaking?” and “what does the royal wedding have to do with codebreaking and betrayal?” And I was NOT disappointed in the answers to those questions. The last few chapters had me actually pacing while I read it and jumping and cheering as if I were at a sports game. I couldn’t hold in my excitement for this book.
Read it. That’s all I have to say, read it and come to the dark side with me. We have tea and crumpets and many more historical fiction theories to discuss so read it now. If you liked The Imitation Game and/or The Alice Network you will absolutely love this book. I give this book 5 stars but I'd love to give it 5 million stars.