tl;dr
Reluctant partners pulling a heist while backstabbing each other make for some high drama stakes. Big cliffhanger promises more to come.

Thoughts
A quick peek at my recent reading shows I've been in the mood for adversarial relationships lately. Rivals? Absolutely! Enemies? Let's go! Thankfully, this book serves up a heaping helping of conflict in the leads Zaria and Kane, so it hit my mood perfectly. You've probably heard this setup before: Boy is a criminal who needs specialized skills to steal something important. Girl is a specialist down on luck and in need of money. They'd be a perfect match if they didn't hate each other so much. But in a town as rough as this, who can afford to love? Certainly not these two! And this is where the story takes a turn from the expected. While there are definitely hints of slow burn romance, don't expect this to be about them falling in love. Rather, it's a story about two desperate people trying to extract as much use as they can out of the other while the clock ticks down. It's messy, and ugly, and very human. Our leads aren't necessarily likable, but you can't help but want to see what happens next. (Also, two extremely likable supporting cast members really help keep the leads from getting too frustrating.)

This books is ostensibly historical fiction, based on The Crystal Palace, but with alchemy in the forefront (and the author's own admission), historical accuracy is minimal at best. I would recommend approaching it as the fantasy that it is. Also, this books ends on a cliffhanger, and dang if it didn't make everything leading up to it feel even more satisfying. I look forward to the next installment.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown Books for Young Readers for the advance copy. All thoughts in this review are my own!