This was definitely better paced than the first book in the series and I liked it a lot more. It really gets right into the action without a lot of catching up which I liked - though it did make me wonder if this needed to be two books? Like I said the first one could absolutely have been cut down a bit and this one literally starts maybe a couple of weeks/months after the events of the first one. It could have been a “part two” in one big book. But whatever

I still liked Charlie. She’s a great character, sassy, smart and confident but with a shitload of baggage. Red was also amazing, easily my favorite part. I wish we had gotten more from his POV. In general I wish we’d gotten more of these two actually working together. They have a rocky relationship in the beginning and have to learn to trust all over again and that part was done really really well. You really get them falling in love all over again. But then you only get them really working together in the final bit before they get separated again and then it’s more both of them doing their own thing. The plot was pretty good as well, though it was a little coincidental who the bad guy ended up being. And then he was dispatched and it was all over so quickly that it felt like an afterthought. Charlie was also investigating in this book more than conning which was sad - she did a little here and there but idk in the last book at least it felt like everything she was doing was an offensive more somehow. In this one it was almost all defensive, like she kept playing catch up. Still good! But not as satisfying as in the last book.

Finally I really didn’t like Posey. In the first book as well though she didn’t really do much there. She just acted like a moody teenager even though she’s like 23, I kept having to remind myself. She made such stupid decisions the whole way through and then when Charlie finally told her off - we never really got a payout from that. She doesn’t apologize or reflect or anything, they just go back to how it was before. Idk felt kinda unsatisfying.

This has sounded kind of negative but really I did like this book lol! There’s just a bunch of small stuff that kept it from being really great.

This book started off really slow. Not only does the main plot take a good while to get going but then it’s also interspersed with flashbacks, which make it seem even longer. Basically I felt like I had to push through a good third of this book at least until I became hooked.

But I will say, when it picked up it got really good. I liked Charlie, she’s cool and I liked that we got to go along with her cons. It was always really smart, how she did her charlatan thing. She doesn’t have any of the cool powers like some around her but she uses her brain really well.

The power system is basically shadow magic. There is…an attempt at explaining it..like classifying what the shadow magic can do but honestly… it’s kind of just whatever, pretty soft magic system tbh. Which is fine, especially since that’s rarely how anyone actually gets shit done. It can help but really it’s about plotting and deceiving.

So yeah, if you have the time and patience to push through the slow bit at the beginning I think it is worth it. I will probably continue this series, even just because I want an actual happy end for Charlie - and this was not it 😤