In New York City, 1897, life has never been more thrilling—or dangerous
Finley Jayne and her “straynge band of mysfits” have journeyed from London to America to rescue their friend Jasper from the clutches of a devious criminal demanding a trade—the dangerous device Jasper stole from him…for the life of the girl Jasper loves. One false move from Jasper, and the strange clockwork collar around Mei’s neck tightens and tightens.
From the rough streets of lower Manhattan to elegant Fifth Avenue, the motley crew of teens follows Jasper’s elusive trail. And they’re about to discover how far they’ll go for friendship.
More than ever, Finley must rely on powerful English duke Griffin King to balance her dark magic with her good side. Yet Griffin is at war with himself over his secret attraction to Finley…and will risk his life and reputation to save her. Now, to help those she’s come to care for so deeply, Finley must infiltrate the criminal gang. Only problem is, she might like the dark side a little too much….
A decent book, there was a lot of character development and we learned more about Jasper.
Near the end I was actually expecting Mei to be on the good side, just because Kady made it look so obvious that she was evil, and I thought it might have made some kind of twist, but she did end up being evil which was just sadly so predictable. I did not, however, expect her death, that really surprised me, especially because it was inadvertently at the hands of Griffin.
The black spirit is kind of obvious, I’m hypothesizing that it’s either The Machinist or the villain in The Strange Case of Finley Jayne, both would work out. Speaking of The Strange Case of Finley Jayne I was happy to read the brief mentions about it in this book, Finley mentions Phoebe and her time spent with her.
However, I wish there would have been more of a pop-in by Jack Dandy, instead of just a bouquet of flowers that not even Finley thought were impressive. I’m still rooting for him to win over Finley’s heart.
I liked that Nikola Tesla became a secondary character in this book, even though I didn’t like how much of an insane weirdo Cross made him out to be. A pass should have been made at least to pigeons because Tesla really loved pigeons, but instead there was just a bunch of talk of his inventions being used for war.
Overall I rate the book a 3/5 really not that great, it was really boring in the beginning, and the middle, and a bit at the end. But I think that’s just Cross’s style of writing. I’ll be looking out for the third one, but I hope it’s more interesting than this one.
Out of Boredom 