Love In The Numbers

I am a big fan of anything about the world wars and that era. So when I had the chance to read and review Roseanna M. White’s new book The Number of Love, I was thrilled!

This book is set three years into the Great War and centers around England’s greatest asset against the war, their intelligence network, which includes field agents risking their lives to gather information, and codebreakers working to crack every German telegram.

This is where we meet Margot De Wilde, a codebreaker who spends her days deciphering intercepted messages and loves it. 

Margot De Wilde finds challenge and reward in her work as a cryptolist supporting the Great War. She excels at solving puzzles and cracking codes. A sudden and unexplained loss and for the first time numbers aren't enough, and I loved how her faith is what brought here through this loss & challenge. 

Meeting Drake Elton causes her to experience feelings she's never felt before because she has never liked a boy & experienced how that feels. 

We meet the hero in this book, Drake Elton, after he is wounded in the field very early in the book. Drake is quickly captivated by the mysterious Margot. He’s smitten quickly by the too-intelligent Margot, but he doesn’t know who she is. He has to work a bit to get to know her name and who she is because they get interrupted during their first meeting. He was instantly connected to her because of her intelligence and deep down he knows she is smarter than he is.

I really enjoyed getting to know Margot in the second book of the Shadows Over England Series (A Song Unheard) where she breaks some needed code and you get a first glimpse at her brilliance.  So I was really excited to read her story.

While I really enjoyed this book & especially the setting for the story, I personally did not connect with Margot and Drake’s loves story as much as I have with so many other of Ms. Whites characters because they were apart for most of the story. For me, I struggled a little that they could fall in love when they had not spent that much time together. While I understood why this was necessary, it made it hard to connect with them as a couple and because of this, the ending felt a little rushed.

Ms. White’s books are always well written, however for me, it did take until halfway through the book to fully get hooked into the story.  But, I really enjoyed getting a glimpse into what being a codebreaker was like during the war, but also how it was being a woman doing this important work during a time when this was mostly a male dominated field.

I absolutely loved how the cover makes sense the more you read the book.  If you love danger and intrigue, then you are going to love this latest book by Ms. White and make sure you take the time to look at the details in the cover, it makes reading it, so much more fun.

~~The Number of Love was provided to me by author herself and Bethany House in return for my honest opinion. I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher and the author. I was not required to write a positive review. All viewpoints expressed are mine alone. ~~