I wanted to love this book, but it was all paint by numbers story beats with no soul. Part of the issue is that this book's summary isn’t fully accurate. We never get the "glittering upper society of nineteenth century Buenos Aires, and like the rest of the world, the town is steeped in old world magic that’s been largely left behind or forgotten" that is described. The main character leaves Buenos Aires immediately and begins a very formulaic sequence of events that were very tedious to get through. I started abd stopped this repeatedly for months because I really like the aesthetics and kept seeing very positive reviews for it. But no matter how much I wanted it to be, it just wasn't for me.