This book is a great series conclusion to the York ciphers and riddles series.
See my review of the second book, Super Sequel: Decipher the Mystery. I went back and couldn't find my review of the first book, The Shadow Cipher, the best in the series, so I'm posting that review here, as well. It seems to have fallen through the cracks. I don't believe I published / posted the review anywhere. I'm posting it in my Goodreads under my 2018 reads, not 2021.
Book 1: The Shadow Cipher
Tess and Theo Bierdermann and their friend Jaime Cruz live in apartments in a Morningstarr tower, one of many buildings around New York City that the elusive and mysterious Morningstarrs built before going missing and leaving the Morningstarr Old York Cipher for the city's bravest to solve.
Problem is, no one's solved it in 160 years. No one's even come close, and the last five buildings -- including Tess and Theo and Jaime's apartments -- are decayed and decrepit. They don't work the way they were designed any longer. They're a safety hazard. A new real estate developer, Darnell Slant, wants to tear them all down and rebuild the city in his image, according to his specs. Progress, it's called. Time to forget the past, move forward.
The cipher, if there ever even was one, is unsolvable and therefore not worth saving.
The kids decide to solve the cipher in an effort to save their homes. For Jaime, the tower is his family's livelihood as well. His Mima has been the building super for more than 30 years; she knows all its nooks and crannies, its moods and attitudes. Tear the building down, and they'd have no where to live in a city with no jobs and crushing poverty. The prospect is terrifying. And motivating.
Tess (who suffers from panic attacks and has a genetically engineered service-cat, Nine, to comfort and protect her) and Theo's grandpa Ben accumulated pieces of the cipher, clues to deciphering it. But he never found the answer.
The kids start with the Cipher song, a ditty all the kids know and jump double-dutch to. Nine, the service-puma, picks up a letter that turns out to be from Theresa Morningstarr outside their grandpa's apartment. And it's their first real clue, new and different and one no one else has ever seen.
And it sets them on a path to solving the first part of the cipher...but unbeknownst to them, it is most definitely not the answer they seek.
This is the best read of the three York books, and the ending was so unexpected! I loved it. Enjoy!
Book 3: The Map of Stars
The last book in the series kinda did what I knew it was going to do, wrap up with time-travel, but it's done in such a way you're not really sure everything works out alright until the very, very end....
I'm not spoiling it, I promise! But if you haven't read book 1, I strongly suggest you start at the beginning.
The book starts where the book two left off -- with the photo of the Morningstarrs. Only now you know, for sure, it's Tess and Theo Biedermann. They don't believe it, but there's no other way all of this could have been possible. Some sort of time travel has got to be going on. Jaime Cruz begins to unravel the clues, starting with the Morningstarrs building York more than 160 years ago...
In fact, the current Mayor is buying up the Morningstarr buildings and running on a platform of razing them, tearing them down to their roots and starting over, shiny and brand new, adding new features for the city, and to heck with the old, pain-in-the-keister cipher no one can solve.
Except the Bidermanns are still finding pieces. This time, they're pieces to a physical puzzle -- something they must put together from the pieces of strange and oddly unrelated objects, such as discarded dolls' heads.
The narrative takes a point-of-view and time-shift, so the reader gets a glimpse of what's going on in the Morningstarr's past. And it's not what you expect, not at all. York is not a bright, bustling city. It's falling apart, the Morningstarrs are on the brink of starvation. It's grim, they're on the verge of defeat. It's not Theo and Tess' history.
As a reader, you kinda know where this is going, so I won't spoil it by revealing any more.
Just know, this was a satisfying series conclusion, even if time travel and all its possibilities make my head hurt.
