JAL drops some quotes that just stop you and this book has several. I have to share a few before I review:
“The night sky without stars,” he said finally. As though he’d long been working out a conundrum in his head, and this was his best theory. “I beg your pardon?” “Your face without freckles,” he explained. Her breath snagged.

“If a tiger chased you up to the edge of a gorge that was about, oh, fifteen feet wide, wider than you’ve ever jumped before, Mr. Marchand, and your choices were either giving up and being eaten by a tiger or attempting to leap to the other side, what would you do?” “I would seize his whiskers and give them a tug. I hear they don’t like that.” She fixed him with a quelling glare. “Leap,” he admitted tersely. “Always leap.”

“I’m not fearless, Miss Woodville. I just grew up in the St. Giles rookery. I was orphaned at the age of six. I never knew my father. And I think the shortest answer is that when fear—and it comes in a wide variety of forms, like fear of hunger, fear of death—is all you know from the beginning, you don’t call it fear, you just call it life. And you learn how to live within it the same way a fish born in the ocean learns to swim. On some days, it even feels as though you’ve mastered it. Invariably something happens to humble the devil out of you and prove you wrong. And from that you learn a new set of lessons. It’s a series of adaptations, day after day after day. That, and being willing to do almost anything to survive.”

Gabriel is the reason for my emotional roller-coaster. He comes in as someone who seems to have no interest in being understood and the book is essentially the long, careful process of Ginny becoming the exception to that. His backstory, the loss he carries, the childhood he describes so plainly around 50%, it adds up to someone you understand completely by the end and care about more than you expected to going in. Ginny holds her own burden next to him too. The eldest daughter running on empty. They make sense together.
JAL is the master at character and emotional depth without the need of too much plot and this book is no exception. Second half loses a smidge momentum in places and that’s my only real complaint. Still 4.5 rounding up to 5.

I also need more Dot. I always need more Dot. I hope her novella is in the works!

Thank you to Avon & Harper Voyager and NetGalley for the ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.