It took me a little while to become fully immersed in the story, and there's a lot going on with a lot of characters but, by the end, I had a good handle on who everyone was and how they were related to each other. But, wow, there's a lot going on.

I think I would have given this a 5 star rating except the motivation and plan of the Bad Guy seemed a bit of a stretch to me. I'm not giving anything away but when the reveal happened, I was left scratching my head wondering, "What? Really?"

With that said, I came to love Hetty and Benjy and their friends. I definitely want to continue with their adventures so I hope the next in the series is coming out sometime soonish.

We're discussing The Conductors on the next Cocktail Hour (10/1/22) so you can check that out if you want a much more in-depth review from all three of us.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ebook ARC. Of course I waited so long to read it, I was able to borrow the audiobook from Hoopla and my local library. January Lavoy is great as the narrator, by the way. I bounced back and forth between the audio and ebook as I had time for eyeball reading.