The Bletchley Women
The Bletchley Women
By: Patricia Adrian
“The times are changing and we don’t know where it will toss us. All that we know is that it’s time to take matters in our own manicured hands and handle them.”
If you’ve read The Rose Code, you are familiar with the history of Bletchley Park— the famous mansion outpost outside of London involved with decrypting code and cracking Enigma.
Patricia Adrian has written her own historical fiction novel set during this time. Whereas The Rose Code focuses more on sticking to the historical figures and events with its own mysterious spin of espionage, The Bletchley Women is more drama than mystery. And a couple of the women are characterized similarly to each other.
The story surrounds a group of women: Rose, Evie, Elinor, Lucy, and Esther. They form a sisterhood of women working in a man’s world when all the men are off to war. They’re pushing back on society’s expectations and standards for women during that time.
Our two main protagonists are Evie and Rose and the story rotates between each of their POVs.
Evie, sassy, bold, and entitled is from a wealthy family but at odds with her controlling father who is blackmailing her to keep her from her low-class lover. Her brother is also MIA and not speaking to her because of a dark family misunderstanding and if she has to work her way to get some answers and find her brother, she will!
“I’m rich, spoiled, and educated. Why would I want to throw away all of this? For love, I think. I’d throw away all of this for love.”
Rose, quiet, obedient, and people-pleasing is from a farming family, betrothed to a man training and fighting as a pilot. Rose wants to do something with purpose to help her fiance and the boys in the air, but her mother will do anything to keep her on the homefront where she can better ‘protect’ her future marriage and life as a housewife.
“I wasn’t expected to have an opinion about what was best to do with my own life.”
They find each other at Bletchley Park and the sisterhood helps each other navigate the pressures of family, war, sexism, the fact that they have to keep their work a secret from even their closest friends and family, and of course, the very punchable Henry Thornton.
Comparing this novel to The Rose Code, I would have to say that I liked The Rose Code better. I liked the adherence to historical events and people more engaging and the handling of describing the decoding process better (I think maybe they were doing different kinds of decryption), and of course the mystery entangled with it all.
Since this book was more about the drama at a specific time in history rather than the history itself, I would have liked to see some more character depth and development from some of the other women, but I suppose that would have lengthened the book quite a bit.
But regardless, if you like the setting of WWII and top secret work, I think this book is still worth reading! The author did a good job of portraying how the women were torn between duty and purpose, themselves and their families.
And I would definitely check out my review for The Rose Code HERE to see some YouTube videos I found of how decrypting worked at Bletchley Park.
The Sisterhood found purpose at Bletchley Park, but at what cost…
“I hope they see the piles of papers, our exhausted faces, how we all are a giant pulsing heart, beating for Britain, for each other, for our families, for everything we’ve ever cherished and loved.
[Sidenote: I feel like the cover should have included their colored stockings…]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
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