The Duke Steals Hearts & Other Body Parts
Elias Cold
A trans teen who steals and ransoms body parts with magic investigates a string of missing girls—falling in love with one of them from afar. Wielding a magic that allows him to pop off limbs, con artist Phyllis steals body parts and his partner Lucent ransoms them. Everyone who knows about Phyllis’s magic is afraid of him—except for Lucent. But his partner’s love comes with one condition: Phyllis must keep stealing. But when a mark can’t afford ransom for his missing nose, Phyllis loses his resolve. The man claims his sister, Adeline, was taken, and without her money he can’t pay until she’s found. Intrigued, Phyllis investigates Adeline’s disappearance, but she is not the only missing girl in their seedy city. To gain answers from the nobility, Phyllis masquerades as a duke—Lord Phillip of Rabbiton—and begins to fall in love with both stories of Adeline and the man he’s becoming to try and find her. Soon, he’s not sure he ever wants to return to Lucent and their life of crime together. When he finally finds Adeline with another missing girl, it turns out they’re not dead—but undead. To win Adeline’s heart and break from his toxic past, Phillip will have to scheme to keep his title and master his evolving magic.
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0~~Thank you to NetGalley and Page Street Publishing for the ARC!~~
This was good, but I was left with wanting more, ya know?
First thing I'll say is that I liked Phillip and the (literal and metaphorical) transformation he undergoes throughout the novel. The persona of the duke being the Trojan horse to self-acceptance and love was probably the most interesting aspect of the story. The exploration of toxic love and its complex effects was the nice cherry on top, too.
The other characters were fine, I guess. The POV shifts from Phillip's first person to a variety of third persons throughout the story, and it had different affects on me depending on the character. Lucent's POV was the most intriguing to follow; his thoughts allow some insight to how toxic people think. Wycliff, the aforementioned mark, felt the least necessary, as it felt like it was repeating much of the themes and messages of Phillip's storyline. Adeline only had a couple set in her POV, but it felt underdeveloped compared to the others. The rest of the side characters, other than Madame Beatrice, didn't really resonate with me enough to properly remember them.
The worldbuilding could have been cooked far longer. The story takes place in a fictional country akin to Victorian England, but there wasn't much given to fully separate the two in my mind. There's a caste system/royalty claims, but what are the politics? The country's relation to others and its own people? I had lots of questions that about the world that the story just wasn't all that interested in answering. I also wish we got more in-depth about the magic, maybe see a wider variety of people other than Phillip and Lucent.
All in all, this has its merits as a book about a trans main character, but the other elements could have been given the same amount of care/depth.
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