I have been interested in Kate Quinn's writing for years now and I have always put at least one of her books on a yearly TBR and just never got around to them. This year, I made it a priority for January and I am freaking OBSESSED. This just solidified my love for WW2 fiction. It also made me more interested in learning about the Enigma machine and this particular bit in the war. I love that this book had a further reading section and some movies to watch and I will be taking full advantage of this list.
We follow three different women Osla, Mab and Beth who work as codebreakers during WW2. We also follow them during Queen Elizabeth's royal wedding. So during the war and post war. Osla and Mab meet on a train heading towards a meeting at Station X. They have no idea what they are walking into.
We learn more about the women throughout both timelines. We learn that they betrayed each other and don't know why. Beth is in an asylum and you are made to believe that she broke her Oath when she joined Bletchly Park. Osla is the girlfriend to a Prince and during the post war chapters she gets dragged through the tabloids and gets harrassed for information on said Prince.
Mab's character is more background and angry in the post war chapters because she wants nothing to do with Osla or Beth, but she is front and center in the war chapters. I really loved Beth and Mab during the war chapters. I was rooting for Beth to finally grow a spine and stand up to her horrible mother and stop being a wallflower. Mab and what she went through is something so tramatizing that when I read it, I cried like a baby because it's the kind of accident that happens more often then people think.
Osla's character just pined after her Prince most of the book and that was about it. She hated being called a silly deb and you can tell she was a social climber. She also survived something traumatic and for most of the book, she was hung up on the person who rescued her for the duration of the war and the three years after. She had no character growth in my opinion but this story would have not been as good without her.
My first 5 star read of the year.
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