2.5 stars

Thank you to Netgalley for an arc of this book.

I was very excited about this premise, a badass protagonist, underground railroad but make it magical, murder mystery. However, the plot fell flat for me. The first half of the book was at such a slow pace, it took me months to get 60% done. Although I loved Hetty and Benjy, the speed of the plot made it hard to feel fully connected to them. The book finally got interesting around the 75% mark, but then even the grand reveals did not feel that grand. When the mystery is solved and the villian revealed, I want there to be a sense of putting the pieces together myself and thinking, "how didn't I see this?!", instead the main characters had the villian explaining everything they had done and why, without any solving on Hetty an Benjy's part. I rounded down to a 2 star merely because of how long it took me to get through the book, but if I had read it in one go, maybe it would have been more of a 3 star.