As soon as I saw the title, I knew this was going to be an excellent book if it had anything to do with Ada Lovelace, and I was correct! The book follows an orphan named Lainey who receives the chance to escape from her cruel orphanage through a scholarship to the all girls school Lovelace Academy, invited by the headmistress, Ada Lovelace’s daughter. After her friend finds an envelope with information about a secret society dedicated to helping women of mathematics and science, in order to prove herself, Along the way her world becomes bigger than she could imagine from working with Mileva Edison and meeting a boy named Gen, who’s full of both tricks and kindness.
There are a lot of things I liked about this book!!!
I was really excited to see Mileva Einstein as a character. She was a very fascinating person who is overshadowed by her more famous husband in history.
I liked how one of the prominent side characters (Sabrina) is dyslexic, because while I don’t have it myself, I believe that showing that kind of thing in books that take place in all time periods is really important. Sabrina in general is such a fun and bouncy character, and I wish she had gotten more page time.
The writing is fantastic, the orphanage scenes made my heart ache, I felt Lainey’s panic, her grief she she felt those emotions. Also, it’s mentioned how even after she was safe at the school instead of at the orphanage, she didn’t just magically feel safe, and that felt realistic.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing | Aladdin and NetGalley for giving me an advance reader’s copy to review!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for proving me with this advanced copy of the book. The title and description attracted me to this book. Who wouldn’t like a mystery that promoted girls in math and science? Apparently me. While it sounded good, the actual story was very dry and slow paced. I felt like I was reading a text book. The vital thing Lainey did to help a woman in science was watching her child and the woman scientist ended up getting no credit for her work. Not a great message for girls and not a book they would want to read.

Orphaned Lainey is rescued from a terrible situation by a scholarship to a progressive girls' school in early 20th-century London. Faced with class prejudice and bullies, she sets off to prove herself by becoming an assistant to Mileva Einstein.
The premise of this book has a lot of promise and the messages of persistence and lifelong learning are powerful. That said, for me, there was a mismatch between the story's content and the voice of its writing. The authors use a 2025 tone, diction, and vocabulary despite the early 20th-century setting. I can understand this choice to increase accessibility for middle-grade readers. However, the science discussions between Albert and Mileva Einstein are fairly sophisticated. That seemed at odds with the simplified language.
The pacing of the book was also uneven. Each setting (the orphanage, the school, and the Einsteins' home in Switzerland) had its cast of characters - but it was hard as a reader to be invested in any of them because each world came and went so quickly.
Overall, I wonder if in trying to make this book more accessible to more readers, it may have lost its audience of historical fiction fans and science lovers. It may be a good supplement to historical fiction selections (and certainly highlights the importance of women scientists who have been unseen throughout history), but I wouldn't consider it an essential purchase for smaller libraries or more limited budgets.

This book was so much fun! Lainey and Lovelace Academy were thrilling to read about, and I loved following Lainey on her adventure. There were twists and turns and mystery and a good bit of adventure and fun.

This is such a cute little journey that I would have loved to read as a teen. All of the characters, Lainey especially, were likable and relatable. I appreciated the small quotes, things that made me actually sit back and reflect on them and I appreciated the push for society to accept women into science in the 1900s. It got a little wild around the middle, if I'm being honest, my immersion was broken just a bit because it felt like too many things were happening at once but I did truly enjoy every moment of this book. Highly recommend for young girls who are interested in math and science!

This is an engaging adventure story with an interesting premise. It is different than I expected (it doesn’t take place only at the academy, and it’s not a mystery like Enola Holmes) but I enjoyed it. It is well-paced well-written.

I believe it’s appropriate for readers 8-13ish: generally very easy to understand but with some good vocabulary words to learn. The story has some cliches, but that can be fine for children’s books, as kids may find them relatable (e.g., dealing with a bully). In some ways, the book is fantastical; in others, sadly realistic in dealing with class inequality and gender inequality. Morality is a bit gray in the book as well, with children having to make some difficult moral choices. There is lots of good food for thought and discussion here.

I enjoyed this book and can see myself reading a series about this secret society with my daughter when she’s a little older.

Thank you to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, and Aladdin for the free eARC! I post this review with my honest opinions. This review will be posted on Goodreads no more than one month prior to the book’s publication, and will be posted to Amazon and Instagram within one week of the book’s publication.

Lainey Philipps is an orphan who is unexpectedly accepted into the Lovelace Academy, a girls school with a focus on academic classes run by the daughter of Ada Lovelace. Following a conflict with a simply unbearable school bully, Lainey ends up traveling from London to Bern, Switzerland in hopes of helping Mileva Einstein, wife of Albert Einstein, make her mark in history on a special mission for the school's elite secret society.