This book said it was like The Da Vinci Code, but it pretty much takes place entirely at Princeton University. It lacks the fast-paced action that makes Dan Brown's work so engaging, instead opting for more cerebral reflections on the human condition, family... They don't really work, I'm sorry to say. Fun read but I was expecting more.

Attempts to crack the code of an ancient book spans generations and families reminiscent of the Da Vinci Code. The reader's voice was a bit juvenile which distracted from the intensity of the action.

Mildly entertaining, pretentious twaddle. Not half as clever as it thinks it is.

My feeling throughout the first 3/4 of the book was that I had read this before. Indeed, I think I had started the book at an earlier date, but hadn't finished, and I hadn't thought I had gotten very far in to the novel, but the further I read, I was slightly irritated that it still continued to feel familiar.

There weren't really any surprises in the novel, and it will make a decent film.

I was a bit annoyed by the setting. Although I got the sense that the authors were trying to make Princeton sound inclusive (or at least not exclusive), the explaining of all the traditions and characters only served to increase the sense of elitism at Ivies.

The novel also revels a bit in the college world - senior year, full of traditions, friends... almost as if there's better than college, and it's the best time of one's life. I suppose this isn't surprising considering that the authors were recent graduates, but they still could have had more perspective.

Academia isn't nearly as exciting as they paint it. And, for a better research-revelation-scholarly-historical novel, I'd recommend Kostova's The Historian.

I didn't really enjoy this book

3.5

The ending was weak, but I enjoyed the journey up to that point.

A pretty decent novel about uncovering a code in a five-hundred year old novel. Except that the codes used would easily fall to modern code-breaking techniques without the need to solve the puzzles.