Reviewed by Vicki
TITLE: Cinder and the Smoke
AUTHOR: Geonn Cannon
PUBLISHER: Supposed Crimes LLC
LENGTH: 201 pages
BLURB:
In nineteenth century New York, safes aren’t living up to their name. A thief so wily, so impossible to capture the the police call her “the Smoke” has been targeting the wealthy. In reality the Smoke is a woman named Kezia Cyr, a woman born in prison, stolen from her mother, and raised by runaways and pickpockets. When her emotions causes a job to blow up in her face, Kezia’s adoptive family scatters and she is left to avenge those she’s lost.
The Smoke may finally meet her match in Pinkerton Agent Shelby Button who earned the moniker “Cinder” for running into a burning building to capture a criminal. Button finds Kezia’s trail and refuses to let her prey go without a fight.
With a decade-old murder to avenge, Kezia will stop at nothing to correct her past mistakes, and Agent Button is willing to trek across the country to bring the phantom Smoke to justice once and for all.
REVIEW:
What an interesting story! The blurb is a bit misleading though…. I was expecting this book to be about a relationship between Kezia and Shelby, but it really isn’t. It’s about Kezia’s criminal activities, her life, and her relationship with Viv, a woman she hires, then has a relationship with. Which was fine, but not what I was expecting.
Kezia Cyr was born in a jail, kidnapped at a young age by a woman who was her teacher, runs away from the woman, and gets mixed up with Bashir, a criminal who runs a gang of boys. With this group, Kezia finds a family, explores her sexuality, and becomes a safe cracking, cross dressing thief. She discovers she prefers to have sex with women, but men are ok as well. She participates in a theft, has a bit of a relationship with the daughter of the man they rob, which eventually leads to the ending of the group. All of the boys head to Boston to start a new life, except Kezia, who remains in New York with the goal of avenging their fallen leader. This takes a very long time, and involves her finding Vivian, a female fighter, who she takes on as an employee, friend, and eventually lover. The two spend some time in New York, then head west to Seattle.
Shelby comes in to the story in New York, as a Pinkerton agent following the criminal known as The Smoke, who we know is Kezia in her masculine form. Shelby interacts with Kezia in New York, then ends up following her to Seattle. Kezia and Shelby are true enemies, on opposite sides of the law. I’ll stop there with the plot details….
So this is really not a romance, and doesn’t have a happy ending. There is some sex, between Kezia and male and female partners, it’s slightly descriptive but not overly so. Just enough to be interesting, but the story is not all about sex. It’s about Kezia, her crimes, her revenge, her life, and her relationship with Viv. I enjoyed the story, it was unique and interesting, and very well written. I got a good understanding of the life Kezia led, and the world she lived in. This is the only book I have read from this author, and it was very well done. I do prefer a bit more romance in my stories, but it was still an enjoyable story.
If you like lesbian fiction, with a strong female lead character, give this one a try.
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