This might be the biggest discrepancy yet between the book and its cover. It’s not about abs! Cecilia Grant has done it again and written a book about brains. Specifically, how one brain meets another brain, and how that connection can be just as profound as bodies or hearts. This got me, I admit it, the part where Lydia, untoward card sharp, has stacked a deck of cards for Will:
By the time he set down the king of spades he was sitting up straight, his whole face alight with such a look as Paris of Troy must have worn when those three goddesses showed up to demand he judge one of them most beautiful.
No man had ever looked at her that way. No man would likely ever do so again. But he made her insides feel like clockwork for a moment, ingenious subtle clockwork instead of fallible flesh, and it occurred to her she might stay in that moment forever, given the choice. She might bask wordless in such a transformative gaze for as many moments as remained to her life.
No. Not transformative. This was who she was, quick and gleaming and intricate. She’d known that already. Now someone else knew.
I briefly thought I might like this even more than A Lady Awakened, and while that didn’t happen (I re-read A Lady Awakened), I liked it a whole lot. More, please.