The Berlin Letters is told from several points of view, immersing the reader in the Cold War era. In 1989, Luisa Voekler is an undercover CIA code breaker who investigates old codes from WWII. The story hinges on a mystery she discovers in letters left behind by her father, whom she has believed was dead. 

As Luisa discovers the letters are in fact written in code, we also hear from the perspective of her father and his awful experiences trying to be safe and pursue justice in a divided Berlin. As Luisa Voekler works through the mystery, the story builds to the defining event of the wall coming down. 

Ultimately, this bored the heck out of me. Luisa was annoying. The only chapters I enjoyed were her father's and by the last quarter, we weren't reading from him anymore. The mystery is as obvious as possible from the get go, and honestly from the synopsis. I had to force myself through the last two hours of this audiobook because despite good narration, the writing was predictable, cheesy, and read like a cliché movie. I hoped for a historical fiction novel that would bring a different and interesting perspective, and this wasn't it. Even the author's note about her research landed as unimpressive and uninspired.