Full review at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books 
 This review could easily end up being 6500 words long. I don't think it will, but holy smokes is there SO MUCH TO SAY. 
 First, yes, you should absolutely read this book immediately, if you haven't already. There is so much happening in the conflict within each of the protagonists, between the protagonists, and around them and their allies and enemies, I can't possibly discuss all of it, but please know: if you are a reader (and why else would you be here, right?) this book is a marvelous, intelligent, respectful, breathtaking treat for your brain. 
 There's a lot to examine in terms of cover and subterfuge, and so much subtlety in how characters can or cannot add and remove disguises. Elle is assigned a role and treatment she can't escape because of the color of her skin. And she adds on to the other position she's chosen, an active, dangerous one which uses that same prejudice to hide in plain sight. The Confederates around her talk openly in front of her because she's a slave, so they don't see her as a person (if they see her at all). Plus, because part of her character disguise is that she's mute, they assume she's stupid, or deaf, or both. 
 I was left wanting a little more, and am fully aware I'm being greedy. In the beginning, I struggled to catch up to the attraction Elle and Malcolm were demonstrating toward one another. At times they acted on that attraction and temptation with more alacrity than I thought they might have done. It was almost like they were ahead of me in my understanding of their relationship at the early parts, but once they began to rely on each other romantically and professionally, I was caught wanting them to find more time alone together, and worrying for them when they did. And at the end of the book, I wanted still more, more of them together, more of them talking, more of how they were learning to live together and work together. 
 As with all of Cole's writing, the prose is so lyrical: it is elegant, spare and deadly in accuracy, whether describing violence and poverty of ethics, or the decision of whether to trust a perennially drunken grocer. It's also very clever, such as when Malcolm muses that he needs to focus on "pulling the wool over Susie's eyes when she expected him to pull it down her thighs." The end of the book includes a very large hint of what might come next, and I'm entirely here for book two in however long this series will be. 
 Sometimes, very rarely, I find myself thinking while I read with my heart racing, hoping my phone doesn't run out of battery, "I didn't know romance could do this." 
 This is one of those books. 
 - SB Sarah