A bit slow, & a bit predictable, BUT Mazzola does wonders capturing the sights & smells of 18th century Paris. ( )

A grim historical mystery about automatons, murder and anatomy.
A bit slow sometimes, but I did not want to stop reading ( )

Gothic executed to perfection!
Madeleine infiltrates the clockmaker’s household as a maid to inform the police of the strange happenings taking place there.
The clockmaker builds the strangest and eerily accurate machines, and with young children disappearing in the streets of Paris, the authorities fear it must be him doing experiments to build his machines to perfection.
With the conspiracy reaching all the way to Versailles and the King himself, the ending has a twist you will not see coming.
Quite enjoyed it. ( )

After the death of their father, Madeleine and her two sisters are forced to work in the brothel run by her mother. The youngest daughter dies in childbirth and Madeleine is scarred by a client, fearful of being cast out Madeleine is forced to become a mouche, a police spy. Sent to work in the household of Doctor Reinhart, an anatomist and clockmaker, Madeleine becomes friendly with his daughter. However as children are going missing in Paris, the Doctor's clockwork models become more and more lifelike - is there a link?
Mazzola is developing into a really compelling writer of historical fiction. The three books have all had very different settings but are linked by a supernatural underpinning. Here the setting is 18th Century Paris where a weak Louis XV is obsessed with science and is ruled by his advisors. The sense of time and place is really strong and the story is not really one about the supernatural but more akin to the ideas of Mary Shelley. ( )

Overall, this was a fascinating read - 18th century Paris historical fiction that doesn't shy away from the cruel realities of the time: the squalor and the destitution, even the creepy secrets and fecal smells behind the palaces and the nobles. Even though I'm French, I learnt a few facts from this book, like an old-fashioned word in French and that there used to be something called the Samaritaine before La Samaritaine shop was created!
Let's talk about the three points of view - Madeleine, the astute prostitute / maid / spy, Véronique, the ingenious bourgeois teenager, Jeanne, Madame de Pompadour aka Louis XV's mistress. Although I wasn't fully convinced at the very beginning, I was soon won over by the different voices as they represented 3 parallel viewpoints from different perspectives on society, and in general I like the variety of characters. The common theme of women, poor people and non-white characters being trapped in the web of unfair people in an unfair world was well-crafted.
In this world, beauty seems a mask, a glamour, the machines created by Reinhart and his daughter a fascinating example of the liminality between the beautiful and the ugly, but also the living and the dead, another main theme. As someone who used to work in robotics, I liked to read about the machines as well as the characters discussing ethical points and science.
(Also, reading about clockwork machines and Madame de Pompadour woke up my Whovian radar, The Girl in the Fireplace, anyone?)
What I liked less: I wanted to feel more connection with the characters, I felt that all of them could have been explored more, especially Joseph. I felt that Madeleine was incredibly brave, yet the scenes where she tries to spy and then report back were unsatisfying as they felt underwhelming and repetitive, for the first half of the book or so. Yet, the author portrayed Madeleine's shift from powerlessness to being an agent of her own life quite well, I just wished it would have been done earlier in the book.
I was sad that it seemed OK that so many animals were being killed for the sake of the anatomical or automation experiments, I know this was the status quo then, and still now, and seemed historically accurate, but I wish this has been explored more ethically, even though there were moments when Madeleine and Joseph were also uncomfortable with this.
I guessed a few plot twists but it didn't prevent me from appreciating the story and the atmosphere.
I really like this book, I'd rate it between 3.5 and 4 but it's closer to 4 :)

I want to thank Anna Mazzola and Orion publishing group for giving me an ARC version of the book in exchange for an honest review through NetGalley :) ( )