by S.C. Godfrey
coming August 11, 2026
(3 / 5)
I was pretty excited about this book when I read the description, but it didn’t end up appealing to me quite as well as I hoped it would. It took a while for me to warm up to the author’s writing style. It almost felt like it was written for a younger audience despite the older content, but it did improve for me as I went on. There was a lot of action and barely a dull moment, which was something I enjoyed. I liked the aspect of puzzles throughout the story, though it wasn’t really something I was actively solving with the characters since I don’t know much about ciphers, which is what most of them were. Sometimes I felt like the characters solved things unbelievably quickly, but then other times they seemed to miss things that felt very obvious to me. Even one of the reveals toward the end was something I had seen coming since early on. Honestly, I felt like too many things about the story were so unlikely that I started to lose interest at times. The book had a much bigger romance element to it than I was expecting. I read a lot of romance so I didn’t necessarily mind it, but some of the tropes felt a bit out of place. I did like the relationship that developed. I really loved the various settings around Europe, and it was fun to look up actual pictures of some of the statues and locations. CW: There’s quite a bit of violence that happens along the way, so this book won’t be for everyone.
Thank you to Viking Penguin, Pamela Dorman Books, and NetGalley for providing a free review copy of this book! All thoughts and opinions are completely my own.
