The girl with no past, and no future, may be the only one who can save their lives. Nisha was abandoned at the gates of the City of a Thousand Dolls when she was just a little girl. Now sixteen, she lives on the grounds of the isolated estate, where orphan girls apprentice as musicians, healers, courtesans, and, if the rumors are true, assassins. She makes her way as Matron's errand girl, her closest companions the mysterious cats that trail her shadow. Only when she begins a forbidden flirtation with the city's handsome young courier does she let herself imagine a life outside the walls. Until one by one, girls around her start to die. Before she becomes the next victim, Nisha decides to uncover the secrets that surround the girls' deaths. But by getting involved, Nisha jeopardizes not only her own future in the City of a Thousand Dolls-but also her life.
This story drew me into the characters pretty quickly. But then I had a hard time really diving into the story - in part because of how busy my life was when I tried to read it and also, I think, in part because the story unfolds kind of slowly. While there's things happening and questions being asked by the characters and as much as [a:Miriam Forster|5054179|Miriam Forster|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1333061992p2/5054179.jpg] puts a time limit on it to create tension... it didn't feel like there was a driving force to the plot to keep me engaged. Which, I mean more as an observation than a criticism because it's still a good book and because my books certainly don't have driving plots. But as I type this I realize that the reason the plot felt kind of languid is because it's a murder mystery but the heroine spend the first half of the book convinced it's not actually a murder. So, she doesn't really care. So, I didn't really care.
But again, that's all more observation than criticism. I liked that since it is a murder mystery, she got to it quickly. I liked that there are a lot of other unknowns in the story, even if I knew the answer to those within the first few chapters (or as soon as they were introduced). The revealing of the "bad guy" was (almost) a surprise, except about 15 pages before the reveal I thought, "What if it's [redacted]? haha." Just like that time I was talking to my sister when we were in the first half of [b:Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows|136251|Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7)|J.K. Rowling|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1370023538s/136251.jpg|2963218] and I said, "What if Harry is a horcrux!? haha." So, yeah, you know how that turned out. But the last act of the book was big and exciting and fast paced and really good.
The good thing is that I was really drawn into the characters immediately, which I think was even more important than being drawn into the plot - even more important because of the languid plot. Nisha is such a sort of timid character for most of the book that I kept imagining her as being 12 years old instead of 16. Yet, I still liked her and I loved her friendship with the cats. The cats were actually really great characters.
The world building is also really solid and intriguing enough that I wanted more of it. I liked that this is a self-contained book but I also am glad it's part of a series because I'd like to read more in this world and see what other adventures Nisha and Jerritt get into.
