This is a unique spin on historical fiction! The main character is transgender which I’d never come across before in this type of novel and it was a very unique way of telling a story. The entire novel felt different and more dangerous as the world certainly was back then - for transgender people it must have been unimaginable!

There is a fair bit of sexual intrigue and misogynistic detail in the book which I didn’t always like - a bit too much of anything gets a bit repetitive - but on the whole, it was a unique story to tell.

Leo’s transgender identity makes for an intriguing novel. I don’t begin to understand the hopes, fears of someone like this and in the 1880s, this raises the tension and awkwardness in society. I got to like him and as a character, he’s someone I would definitely like to know more about.

With all this, there’s very much a good plot and great character development and the novel carries itself along with ease.

Really really interesting premise, but I'm not sure that it delivered everything that I needed for it to be brilliant, unfortunately it fell a little flat for me, which is a shame because it could have been fantastic.

As a trans guy: YIKES!

'The truth is like clay: you mould it to what you want, and then it hardens.’

Set in London during the 1880s, this novel is a blend of historical and crime fiction with an intriguing protagonist. Leo Stanhope works as an assistant to a London coroner. Leo is a frequent visitor to a brothel on Half Moon Street and has fallen in love with Maria Milanes who works there. Maria seems to reciprocate his feelings, and Leo would like to take their relationship further. But Leo has a secret. He was born Charlotte Pritchard. Believing himself male, and unable to live as a female, he fled his home when aged 15. Leo has two siblings, and while he has had limited contact with his sister Jane, she is not happy to see him. Maria and Jane are two of the very few people who know Leo’s secret.

Leo’s precarious world is turned upside down the day Maria’s body is delivered to the coroner’s office. Leo is devastated and is determined to find out how (and why) Maria died. Leo’s investigations take him into dangerous territory: he finds that he did not know Maria as well as he thought he did. Can Leo find out what happened to Maria while keeping his own secrets?
This novel takes the reader into a shadowy depraved world of human trafficking. There’s a link between Maria’s death and an earlier death, originally thought to be an accidental drowning. Leo is in danger at every step, both of exposure as being transgender as well as of physical harm. Especially after he is arrested as a suspect in Maria’s murder.

Some readers may find the abuse and brutality depicted overwhelming. While I didn’t enjoy it, it served to underline the very real risks Leo was taking. I found this novel very difficult to put down once I started reading it. I wanted to know whether Leo would succeed, and I wanted to know who killed Maria and why.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

I loved the book, it was interesting to me as a cisgender woman to go inside the head of the transgender man Leo, you could feel his despair and disgust for his body, he did everything in his power to make his outward appearance like he felt on the inside, of course in his time there was no medical way to help him. Leo is sympathetic, but luckily not a saint. It isn’t clear to me if Maria really loved him, but I think that was the author’s intention. Maria didn’t have an easy life and she did what she felt was best to improve her situation.