The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

A strange and interesting book. I read a few reviews before reading this and inadvertently learned some major plot points, so I'm going to be generous with spoiler tags, but not spoil anything too major.

But I think most of the people who see my reviews are interested in reading queer romance, and this book does have an m/m romance and some other romantic plot elements, including m/f. There's more going on in the book, but in the end, it did feel primarily like a romance novel to me.

I can imagine a lot of different opinions on Grace. I really hated her. I have heard people say that readers are much more forgiving of male characters than of female characters, so that was on my mind. But honestly, I saw her as a sociopath. I don't know if readers are supposed to sympathize with her, but I didn't. It's established early on that she has a major "I'm not like other girls" chip on her shoulder, which I thought was annoying, but not enough to make me hate her. But over the course of the novel, she had no real empathy for anyone. For a mild example, here are her thoughts about her love interest, Matsumoto:Yuki had scowled at first, but he was talking now, and Matsumoto showed no sign of stopping him. He was enjoying having tamed somebody. She is a cold manipulator and she sees everyone around her as being the same.The novel moves along at a good pace and her chapters didn't drag. I was rolling my eyes at her a lot, though. I think she's the villain of the story, the kind of villain who believes she's doing the right thing for everyone, when really she's only serving herself.

I loved all the other characters, though. The writing style is lyrical, which I don't much enjoy, but the author's word choices were often unusual in an interesting way. I found the ending satisfying as a romance reader, and the author wrapped up the other plot threads well enough, too. I see this is book one of a series; although I can't imagine where it will go, I'm interested to find out.