I received this ARC book from NetGalley.com and as
always wanted to share my thoughts. For
me this book wasn’t as good as some of the others I’ve read.
This
book to me is essentially a mystery/thriller.
Centered around an old book that has puzzled everyone who has tried to
decode it’s pages in the past 400 years.
Then it comes into the hands of The Hoff, a professor who everyone
thinks is crazy. For research assistants
he has Nora a high school student who is from the wrong side of the tracks only
at the high end prep school on scholarship, Chris, Nora’s best friend, and Max,
Chris’s dorm mate and Nora’s boyfriend.
They
all know Latin, which is a very important matter throughout the book. The Hoff sets them out to try and translate
the book, letting the boys work with the book and Nora to work on a batch of
letters he has from Elizabeth Weston. At
first this feels like a meaningless task given to her because she is a girl
when her translation skills are better than the others but soon she becomes
entranced by the letters. Elizabeth as
it turns out holds the key. Upon making
the first real breakthrough in over 400 years everyone is excited.
That’s
when things go bad. People die, people
are accused, blood is everywhere as Nora, her friend Adriane (also Chris’s
girlfriend), and Eli (someone they know nothing about), team up with Max and race
around Prague trying to follow the 400 year old clues that would allow them to
find the parts needed for a mystical device that so many have died for hoping
it would set them free.
That
is a very general description. I gave
this book 3 stars on good reads. I did
enjoy the suspense and plot for the most part but at points the book seemed to
drag making my eyes heavy. Spread out
through the book there are vivid descriptions of Prague and history lessons
about the city and everything which to me felt like a brochure for travel. Also there is lots of translation, something
said/written in other languages and then sometimes translated. Sometimes not, because it’s not meant to be
understood at that point. I get the idea
but if the author goes through the trouble of putting it there for me in a
different language I feel like I should be able to read it (hence pulling up
Google which wasn’t as helpful as I would have hoped).
Also
the characters although intriguing and some parts I adored, like the
relationship Nora has with Elizabeth and her letters, how Adriane is so limber
she just breaks out into a yoga pose or stretch at any moment. But sometimes I felt as I was reading that I
lost the character. Again the story was
pretty good it just wasn’t for me it seems.
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