The Language of the Birds by K.A. Merson Is one of those stories that keeps you engaged with the story thanks to the many puzzles that are throughout the story to help find the main character's mother. I enjoyed the way the characters were written and was really surprised by the ending.

It is not clear whether this book is a treatise on code breaking or the story of a young woman somehow involved in rescuing her mother from kidnappers who want to have codes broken. In any event I found myself skipping the decoding explanations until I realized there were just too many. I did not finish and certainly could not give a favorable review.

"The Language of the Birds" stands out as a unique mystery at the intersection of science, mathematics, literature, alchemy, and history. The story centers around a young girl named Arizona, who is possibly on the autism spectrum and undeniably intelligent. The plot unfolds with the death of her father, the abduction of her mother, and evolves into a quest for the alchemical secret of life extension. Arizona must decipher numerous clues to reach the ultimate solution and secure her mother's release. However, true to form, the real mystery only unveils itself in the final pages, providing a satisfying conclusion to an engaging tale. "The Language of Birds" is a compelling read—highly recommended.

The Language of the Birds by K.A. Merson is an engaging read from start to finish with a well developed plot and characters. A recommended read!

Thank you to Random House - Ballantine Books for the e-ARC of The Language of Birds by K.A. Merson. The opinions stated are solely my own.

Genre: General Fiction/Mystery/Thriller
Length: 368 pages
Pub Date: May 13, 2025
My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Synopsis:
Arizona is a 17 year-old neuro-divergent teen who finds herself wrapped up in a historical mystery when her father suddenly dies in a motorcycle accident. Her father left a string of puzzles and ciphers behind for her that a mysterious organization is also yearning to solve, possibly unlocking a life-altering item.

Extremely intelligent, but awkward, Arizona and her faithful pup, Mojo, embark on a journey that has a deadline, as the mysterious organization has kidnapped her mother to speed up her pace. Can she unlock the puzzles and ciphers in time to save her mother and discover just what her father's job truly was? Also, can Arizona learn to trust the right people to help her?

Opinion:
This book definitely gave vibes of the National Treasure or DaVinci Code with its historical connections that are based on real mysteries and famous people. I loved how Arizona was able to work through each puzzle and how they led to different important locations and objects along the way. I also love a great dog sidekick and side characters who turn out to be instrumental in Arizona's journey and life lessons. Great book and I definitely recommend reading the Author's Note about which parts of the book were actually real!

An enthralling read that surpassed my expectations. The story was everything I've sought in this type of book. Highly recommend.

Arizona is a brilliant 17 year old girl who is driving with her mother to scatter her father's ashes in their special place when her Mother goes missing. She has a very close bond with her parents, and especially with her father. They shared a passion for puzzles and ciphers. It was really interesting and fun learning about cryptography.
Apparently her Dad had some deep secrets regarding his cipher solving and Arizona treks across multiple states to get to the bottom of these codes and help her mother.
I really enjoyed this storyline. So unique!!
Thank you Net Galley for the ARC!.

Merson has a really great premise here, reminiscent of puzzlers like "National Treasure." The protagonist is really engaging as a savant, with the corresponding strengths and quirks, which add greatly to the story. The plot has the appropriate twists and turns. There is much to enjoy here. However, for my taste, the book spends too much time in arcana that the reader has no hope of disentangling and became tedious for me.

Arizona is an intelligent, determined character. She is adept and solving clues throughout this book. It gave me DaVinci Code vibes. Very interesting read.

Seventeen year old Arizona on a trip with her Mother after her Dad died to scatter his ashes. Her Mom was kidnapped and she found a note telling her to solve a problem to save Mom. Since Arizona is a Mensa student starts solving the message. While solving the clues for the kidnappers she meets Lilly and now has someone helping her. Lots of figures and number charts involved but become so intrigued had to keep reading about this seventeen year old Arizona who could figure out all the clues. Continued exciting up to the surprise ending!

I had the pleasure of reading an ebook version of K.A. Merson's "The language of Birds" in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to the publisher for the privilege.

I had to sit on it for a bit after I finished it. The main character of the story is Arizona. She and her mother are on the road. Both are grieving due to the loss of Arizona's father in a motorcycle accident. I have to admit that I didn't really like Arizona for much of the book. I think it might be due to my age. Being older, I gravitated more to her mother's character than Arizona. Unfortunately, her mother is not in the book as much as I would have liked because the plot calls for her to be abducted.

The basics of the plot are simple enough. Seventeen year old Arizona shared her recently deceased father's love of solving puzzles and riddles. Unbeknownst to her mother and Arizona, her father had someone who was watching him and thinking that her father could solve some sort of special riddle and with him gone, the next person to solve the riddle is Arizona so they abduct her mother.

The details do push the 'suspension of disbelief' boundaries and the puzzles themselves do get tiresome. Not going to lie, I started to skim them after awhile. I did start enjoying when Arizona started to come out of her bubble and start interacting with others. Lily and Marty were welcome injections into the plot.

Mid-way into the book, it was easy to start seeing where it was going so there isn't really much of a mystery. While I did enjoy it overall and I will say that by the end, I did like Arizona more than I did at the beginning, I do feel like the ending was a bit of a disappointment although I think that may be the p0int of the ending too. Can't say much more because I wouldn't want to spoil anything, but I would understand if there were some mixed reactions. I didn't mind it, but again, I did have to sit on it and mull it over before writing my reactions/review.

K.A. Merson was able to create a unique story that I was hoping for from the description. The plot was everything that I was looking for and enjoyed about this type of book. The characters had that feel that I wanted and was invested in their lives. It had that mystery element that I was looking for and thought the use of a ransom for a secret was a great idea.

The Language of the Birds is a Da Vinci Code-type of young-adult exploit filled with complicated ciphers, codes, puzzles, American history, and conspiracy theories involving Herbert Hoover, the US President who botched the American recovery from the Great Depression. The book involves a seventeen-year-old Arizona, also known as AZ and her dog, Mojo. She has just lost her father in a motorcycle accident and is with her mother revisiting their family’s favorite sights to scatter his ashes, when her mother disappears. When Arizona and Mojo regroup at the family’s Airstream travel trailer, she finds a note stating her mother’s life depends on Arizona solving a cipher. 

Arizona sees patterns and hidden meanings due to her family history (her father was a cartographer by trade and a cryptographer by avocation) and her own brand of neurodivergence. She may be intellectually brilliant, but she is somewhat socially inept. Arizona fears involving the authorities, and attempts to solve the mystery assigned to her; however, once it’s done, the kidnappers present yet another mystery to solve. 

There are lots of literary references to Lewis Carroll, Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and Robert Louis Stevenson as well as archaic texts on alchemy. The puzzles she must solve are encased in writings that in part derive from Alice in Wonderland and other poetry. I found the inclusion of these often-lengthy excerpts  and fragments of people’s journals and Arizona’s own writings to be overdone and thus skimmed a lot of them, especially since they frequently appeared in both Arizona's and the villain's points of view. The novel itself is written primarily in Arizona's point of view with some excursions into that of her mother and the villain. The bad guy and his minions were quite cardboard; a bit more character definition would have been appreciated. I also wondered how a seventeen-year-old paid for a multi-day diving expedition off the California coast as well as her other day-to-day expenses. I did enjoy the accurate and well-researched details on ghost towns and the California flora and fauna. I also liked Arizona's feistiness, the fact that as a result of this adventure she was able to expand her life with new friendships, and the fact that neurodivergent youngsters can see themselves in this book and identify with her character as well as non-neurodivergent young folks can get a glimpse into the lives of the "weird" kids they so often bully and make fun of.

The incredible effort put into the puzzles, the ciphers. the landmarks and the hunt is felt on every page. I would not be able to solve most of the puzzles, nor link up the historical significance. And yet I was swept up in the treasure hunt and was excited by each new riddle that Arizona was decoding. The geographical and historical links made this feel all too real, right down to the landmarks at Hoover Dam. I also got swept up in the need to know geometry, astronomy, geography, history, and literature to decode the messages. This is book that was exciting on so many levels. You have the treasure hunt, with the clues and the travel and the secrecy. It is a murder mystery because you know that Arizona is looking to solve the cause of her father's death. And you have the race against time as Arizona plays the games necessary to save her mother from her kidnappers. I also very much enjoyed seeing the diagrams, images, depicted ciphers and such as it gave me the feeling of taking part in the decoding (although, honestly, it mostly went over my head). The only inconsistency was Arizona, a loner, trusting strangers - I felt that was unlikely considering her background and what was going in in her life. But if was integral to the story, so I forgive it. Amazing adventure, and the twist at the end stopped me up short - I love it when a story can do that!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the opportunity to read this arc in exchange for an honest review.

@netgalley
@randomhouse

Available: May 13, 2025

Arizona, her mom, and her dog Mojo go on vacation. Her mother goes missing. She becomes worried when she finds their camper ransacked and an ominous note on the counter. Where is her mom? Was she kidnapped?

Wow. I’m sitting here truly in awe of what I just read. I loved this book so much. I really hope to see more books written soon by K.A. Merson. What a captivating story this was and his storytelling will stay with you. Arizona and Mojo are of course my favorites! A must add to your tbr!!!

#read #reading #readmorebooks #booklover #bookstagram #books #netgalley #randomhouse #bookworm #booklover #bookaddict #booklove #fivestarbooks #tbr

Thank you NetGalley and Randomhouse for the eARC. My review reflects my own opinions.

Arizona is 17 and neurodivergent, and has recently lost her father. When she and her mother go to scatter his ashes in a place he loved, her mother is kidnapped. She returns to their camper, unsure what to do - until she finds an ominous note on the counter with a puzzle she must solve to rescue her mother. What follows is an elaborate trip across the southwestern United States as Arizona solves puzzles and uncovers clues that lead only to more puzzles. Along the way, she encounters people, and she must overcome her deep distrust of others to determine who is friend and who is foe.

KA Merson’s The Language of the Birds is interesting, and the puzzles that Arizona solves and the journey she must make are exciting. The ciphers and puzzles are certainly challenging for someone who doesn’t know much about cryptography but the explanations are more or less easy enough to follow, even if I could never replicate them. What didn’t quite make sense was Arizona’s comfort wandering all around the southwest on her own (with her dog). She makes decisions with the confidence of someone who is a grown adult, not a 17yo kid. The people she encounters are more or less trustworthy even when they behave bizarrely (like the 20something girl who tracks her across state lines to some remote campsite on a whim). The overarching conspiracy behind the puzzles is also a bit unbelievable, but the clues are kind of fun, especially because most of them are from real publicly available material.

3.5/5 *

Thank you to Penguin Random House and Netgalley for an advanced readers copy of K,A. Merson's wonderful book The Language of the Birds. What a fantastic novel. Do you like ciphers? or puzzles? Or historical mysteries? Then pick up this book. I could barely put it down. And feel like I need to read it a second time, to make more sense of the truly enjoyable use of ciphers to solve coded messages. In the publisher's description of the book, "A brilliant, eccentric teenager must solve a series of puzzles left behind by her dead father in this debut that features codes, riddles, and a plot that ingeniously mixes fact and fiction." This is just a tease. The story's protagonist Arizona, a seventeen year old girl who is brilliant. She has a remarkable memory and skillset solving codes and riddles. She and her mom are living in an airstream rv in the desert in the southwest, a mere two months after her father died tragically in an accident. When her mom is taken hostage by an unknown group, it falls to Arizona to solve a series of riddles and ciphers to find a way to save her mother. There is much more. All I will say here, is the book is compelling and draws you in.

When I first started the book, I wasn't sure if this was a YA title or a coming of age book. It might be a little bit of the latter, as Arizona learns that is is sometimes necessary to rely on others, when her natural inclination is to go solo on everything. But in the end, the book is truly book for anyone interested in solving complex puzzles.

The Language of the Birds by K.A. Merson is a celebration for those that love puzzles, cryptography, and being a bit different than the world around them. While difficult at time to follow and a bit repetitive due to the nature of mulling over the same clues (It would have been excellent to have illustrations or examples of the puzzle cracking through the story), I think most will enjoy the narrative of excitement, found family, loss and recovery, and history wrapped throughout this novel. While it would be a bit easy to compare it to National Treasure, there are similarities that will appeal to some readers. For those that love puzzles or just feel like they don't quite fit, I think this will be an excellent read!

A sharp, high IQ, introvert on the spectrum, and with her levels of anxiety, a clever seventeen-year-old just lost her father (a great cartographer) in an "accident," and her mother is kidnapped. It's up to her to decipher all the codes so she can save her mom. Arizona accepts the quest ( to different locations to perform different clue-finding action activities, such as diving) on this time-sensitive and high-stakes thrilling adventure for fans of treasure hunting, action and thrilling movies, and books. I relate to many aspects of this character, such as her misophonia and her lack of social skills, but she is fearless, and she lets some people in who prove to be a great help. Her dog Mojo is a loyal and fun companion. He doesn't like word puzzles, but he keeps her company. There are lots of amazing references to classic books (lots of Lewis Carroll's poems to decipher, ancient mythology, math, alchemy, geometry, and astronomy) and some references to pop culture, too. We get great detail into her process of deciphering the codes, not just mention that hours later, she did it (extensive nerdy details into it, we get access to the source material). Fun complex codes. Awesome to discover what the title means. 

This character is a great homage to the thought that we should read everything and learn as much as possible. 

My favorite sentence ( I read an arc, so I won't quote directly, but it's something like this in my own words. Anger isn't healthy to keep for a long time or any time at all.)

Thank you netgalley for the arc.

This is a fascinating book! It’s centered on cyphers and alchemy, so there is a lot of technical information that honestly was over my head. It didn’t detract from the book though. It was very interesting. Following the clues that Arizona unearths was a lot of fun. The book takes a lot of twists and turns. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced free copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. I received a copy from the publisher through NetGalley.