THE ENIGMA CHALLENGE

A puzzle-hungry academic and an ass-kicking cryptologist vie for $12 million—and each other’s hearts.

Zoe Wilder is excited to present a paper at her first academic conference in Madrid, and almost as happy to break up with her professor boyfriend once they arrive in Spain. She’s also come secretly hoping to join the Enigma Challenge, a legendary puzzle contest that attracts some of the best minds in the world—though it’s supposedly run by a shady tech corporation, and most of the people chasing down the clues seem to be thugs and criminals. When a Reddit thread leads Zoe to the first puzzle, an easy solve (for her), she kick-starts a series of events that will take her—and a handsome, mysterious stranger named Dane Seaver—all over Europe to solve the five ciphers. The puzzles themselves take up little space in the book other than as plot devices, so readers hoping to challenge themselves might be disappointed. Instead, the novel follows the fairly conventional structure of an action romance: meet cute; flee for your life; stay ahead of the people chasing you; double cross (or is it?); denouement. The characters, too, tend to follow type: the villains are super villainous, the best friends are loyal, Zoe is smart and spunky, and Dane is a six-pack of abs with a vulnerable heart. Zoe and Dane accomplish a fair amount of travel around Europe in a short amount of time, helped by the fact that he is a millionaire several times over, and fight not only the other puzzlers but also their growing attraction to one another. There are some pretty heavy action scenes, and some pretty heavy love scenes, and all of it culminates in a cliffhanger that suggests our puzzle-kicking lovebirds are just getting started.

This is what you’d get if a Dan Brown novel was rewritten by Emily Henry.