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2.5 stars rounded down to 2 since we don't have half stars.

So, I don’t entirely hate this. There are parts of it that I thought were pretty fun. The entire Cross family turning into a criminal enterprise was a fun twist.

Still, so much of this book is mediocre. It needed an editor who could better tighten up its various threads—it feels unfocused much of the time. There’s at least one “important” character—a sex worker who of course is so in love with one of the main characters that she fucks him for free; this is something discussed multiple times in the book—who could be completely removed from the story without changing the plot.

My other big gripe is the author’s apparent need to include “period-accurate” bigotry and other things, without them ever being relevant to the plot. By page 6, there was pedophilia apologia that I actually thought might end up being a plot thing used for blackmail, but no—it was just there for “flavor.” Racism, violence and whorephobia against sex workers, a moment of trans/homophobia—really just a grab bag of hideous things get thrown in for what I assume was an attempt at accuracy to the time period, but mostly comes off as the author revealing his personal prejudices and/or what he assumes were the attitudes of the time.

I feel like there’s a decent book here still, all that being said. As a period piece about high-society heists, it mostly succeeds. It’s just all the extra stuff that doesn’t.

listen I'm 12 pages into the book and the author introduced what I'm guessing is a side/throw-away character just to make it clear he ~likes 'em young~ (specifying that he's interested in girls 15 and younger) which is uh,, certainly a choice, and then has the main character sort of brush this off as nothing and kind of roll his eyes when his wife is like "we are NOT hanging out with that dude" and note that he's tried to convince the wife the pedo guy is Actually Fine before???

I'm a sucker for heists and well-researched historical fiction, especially late Victorian era, so I'm letting this slide since it doesn't seem plot relevant or like it's going to come up again, but it's VERY weird to include at all! where was his editor!! I honestly am not sure if it being plot relevant would make it better or worse!