Let me preface this with that I am by no means the intended audience for this book. I read this for a book club for writers. I'm not into purely romance novels, let alone gay male-centric ones. I am, however, into mysteries and paranormal stories, but even that struggled to hold my interest throughout reading this.

What did I actually enjoy? The dialogue was great. Very witty and natural. I snickered a bunch thanks to Cicero's one-liners. The premise of the mystery is also interesting. Same with the witch and familiar elements.

Sadly, that was kind of it.

While the premise of the mystery was interesting, it was good, but predictable. As for the paranormal elements, it wasn't nearly as developed in terms of worldbuilding as most paranormal stories I have read. It almost came across like an afterthought during the editing phases, like Hawk decided during the third draft to make it about witches and familiars. Yes, it's a romance story, but there wasn't enough melding amongst the elements, thus making it come across like a poorly made grilled cheese with half of the cheese melted and the rest... well, not.

If this was a stage play, there'd be minimal to no stage design, because that's how the setting came across. For something as iconic as New York City in the late 1800s, you'd think there'd be a little bit more effort to make it feel like New York City with a dash of magic, but nope. I honestly forgot it took place in New York City half of the time.

Speaking of lacking, I was extremely disappointed in the lack of female characters. If the MWP is "swarming" with ladies, then why are two only introduced ever? One of which has less than five lines and the other one barely passes the sexy lamp test. And then there's Leona, who was so much more interesting than all of Cicero's friends and she only shows up twice with speaking lines? Three times if you don't include lines. And the last lady reveal - which I won't go into details, because spoilers - just made me so angry I almost threw my phone across the room. Yes, I get it, this a gay romance book and it should be about the gay romance, but I expect this kind of backhanded, lazy behavior towards female characters in fanfiction instead of an original, published novel. Come on now.

I didn't care for either Cicero or Tom, thus I didn't care about their romance. Cicero came across like a walking gay stereotype while Tom held my interest initially, then gradually became less and less interesting until he pissed me off with some things 2/3 into the book. I did like Cicero a bit more towards the end of the book, but not enough to forget the first impressions he left for the reader.

Even with all that said, it's not a horrible book. The prose wasn't stellar, but it was good enough. The plot was extremely rigid, but it held together enough. The pacing was almost too quick, but the chapters were sectioned off in reasonable bite-sizes. Nothing piqued my interest to read the rest of the series. I'm sure this appeals to some people - I'm just not even remotely close to being that person.