CODEBREAKER, by Jay Martel, Wednesday Books, July 22, 2025, Hardcover, $24, Paperback, $13 (young adult)
A brilliant teenager races across D.C. to decode clues that may save the country from tragedy in Codebreaker, by Jay Martel.
Mia Hayes has peaceful plans for the summer―find a part-time job at a coffee shop and work on her college applications. Those plans are shattered one night when government agents arrive unannounced at her home seeking something they believe her father has taken. When the dust settles, her mother is dead and her father is gone, a fugitive on the run.
Three weeks later, and still reeling from her father’s betrayal, Mia spends her seventeenth birthday at a protest in the heart of D.C., where she meets Logan, a rebellious and charming hacker. Just as she’s enjoying her first happy moment since the night her world exploded, a voicemail from her father arrives to upend everything she believed about her family, her past, and what really happened that night three weeks ago. Even more, the voicemail hides another encoded message inside which, once Mia solves it, sets her and Logan off on a mission from her sleepy suburb straight into the heart of the federal government.
With the same agents now hot on their trail, Mia and Logan must navigate their way through American history’s most iconic sites and uncover its most well-hidden secrets to reveal the truth about her family and stop a deadly attack. —Synopsis provided by Wednesday Books
Codebreaker is an interactive thriller that has a National Treasure feel to it.
At the center of the story is Mia, a smart young woman whose been breaking codes her father sets for her since she was a child. She’s driven by a need to make sense of her father’s deception. She’s smart and strong and exactly the character you’d want at the center of an action-packed mystery.
One of the selling points of Codebreaker is its interactive nature. If you want, you can read the book straight through and enjoy it for what it is. If you want to go a bit deeper, author Jay Martel has provided all the clues for you to solve the puzzles as you read. There’s a marker that lets you know you’ve got all the information you need and to solve the clues before reading on. This helps readers become more invested, but the book is exciting with or without this element.
Codebreaker plays out almost cinematically, taking readers through American history while solving clues using ciphers from around the world. There’s action and romance balanced with quieter moments, making Codebreaker an exciting ride from beginning to end. I look forward to reading more from Martel (which is actually the husband and wife writing team Andy Bennett and Katy Helbacka) and hope there are more books in this world are in the works.
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