Spy negs his way through life while looking for his one night stand partner- a waitress he thinks is a sex worker. She's dealing with plenty of her own shit and he makes her life harder.

Byrne does the "I'm such a dick and a monster but I'll protect you but never love you but I guess I love you and also I'm very tall with a prose animal totem, dangerous vibe, murder background, and remember, I'm so angsty" dudes every time, so you know what you're getting into. Usually the "I'm a dick" part is mitigated at some point. Usually.

I feel like she set that up for Cole, but it didn't land.

Promise of the premise (spy stuff  and mistaken identity) and a murder mystery keep you locked in, so I finished. But man, you really want to like everyone and there are a few narrative choices that make it hard. Side characters are great.

3 POVs (2 MCs and a detective), 3rd person past tense, gritty romance, spicy (including dubious and coerced consent scenarios 😬), 1870s, MCs are in their mid to late 20s, takes place over 3 years.

The romantic pacing is not great. This has a lot of "entitled wealthy conservative seduces poor liberal" energy, and there's a strong ick factor bc of it. Cole would be a lot more likeable if he didn't hardcore hate the poor.

I don't get the romance here. Everyone is doing interesting things, but the non-platonic interactions between the protagonists are hostile or kinda gnarly. One protagonist [plot overview]

coerces the other into sex work- she's a first timer, insults how her face looks while throwing dishes at her after someone says, "yeah, she saved your life," gets her fired, loudly cites Machiavelli and trickle down as a reason to not help brutalized poor women, calls the other protagonist and her staff rats in front of potential donors, tries to physically intimidate her by fake choking her,  takes advantage of her while she's drunk, breaks into her house, rage-bangs her then picks a fight... and then is mad that while waitressing in a brothel, she didn't use her real name.

And that's bad. But all his shit is just how the world works bc "people are animals." (His super favorite motto you'll hear one million times.)

Imogen is pretty likeable, but I do not understand why she has any interest in this dude. When he doesn't spend time hating the poor Cole is also interesting, but man, does he lean into being a self-absorbed entitled shithead.

Then [ending]

after the worlds fastest "shit, you almost died, I've been awful" apology they're getting married and we get the least egregious sex scene in the book. It's an abrupt "The End."

I would have loved to see some more resolution for this one. There's so much extremely challenging stuff going on it feels like there's not any decompression or character aftercare.

The prose, vibe, and Imogen are interesting and pull you in, but there's a throughline of "wait a minute, what?"

Sex Scenes: These weren't for me. Dubcon/Noncon with heavy (undiscussed) male dominance themes in most physically romantic scene. There's an attempt to make it feel animalistic that didn't really hit for me. Just a lot of overpowering someone inexperienced and it feels off-kilter.

Narrator: Derek Perkins' performance kept me pretty locked in. I think I would have DNF'd if it hadn't been as well done as it was.