Review Detail

Codebreaker has the makings for an action film adaptation. Mia Hayes has lived in many countries in her life as her professor father and photojournalist mother secure work. Her father has always loved codes and puzzles and has taught Mia all he knows. Each year, for her birthday, he makes an elaborate game that lasts days for her to solve to get to her present. So, it is not odd for her father to give her one, but, strangely, it is three weeks before her birthday. She forgets all about that when strangers come to her house, accusing her father of stealing from the United States, and leading to her mother’s death by the end of the night.
She refuses to take a phone call on her birthday from her traitor father, but she is being monitored, and it sets off a series of events that lead to her father’s death, and her realizing the puzzle box contains all the answers to why her life has been upended. She bumps into a boy named Logan during a protest, and he ends up with her as she races for answers.
Logan’s presence is suspiciously convenient, so I was hesitant to support the budding feelings she has for him. His presence does serve the story well, though, because it gives her someone to bounce ideas off and to explain how she knows things, which helps the reader to follow along. The book has a neat interactive feature where it signals when there are enough clues that you could pause and solve the puzzle yourself, or you can ignore it and find out the answer as Mia solves it. This format is appealing if you like interactive puzzle books. This does have more plot than puzzle, which may or may not appeal if you are in it for the puzzles.
The story is suspenseful and full of action from start to finish. It has intriguing ties to Lincoln’s assassination, and the civil unrest and protests that are integral to the solution feel relevant to today’s political climate. The only thing that wasn’t well developed was the characters themselves. There are some attempts through flashbacks to give Mia and Logan some depth, but it is more about the action than it is about making them fully fleshed, which is why it would work well for a movie adaptation. Overall, it was a quick-paced plot with fun mysteries to solve against a believable backdrop of action.