She’s a fiery Black woman from New Orleans, part of a colorful family of thieves, forgers, and tricksters. Raven Moreau and Braxton Steele could not be more different. In post–Civil War Charleston, an accomplished swindler and a law-abiding tailor pose as a married couple to recover a stolen document. While Hazelwood is clearly a talented writer who’s tapped into readers’ desire to find powerful, proudly nerdy women in science getting happy-ever-afters, she’s missed the opportunity to try new character types that don’t feel like The Love Hypothesis (2021) with slightly different packaging. The quiet, pining hero in a lab setting isn’t new territory for Hazelwood, and readers may wonder if she pushes it in a new direction here. While the epistolary elements of the book, including tweets and direct messages, are novel, it often feels unnecessary. Since the accounts are both rooted in science and academia, Bee and Levi unknowingly frequent the same internet circles and have even developed an online friendship without knowing each other’s identity. Adding an additional layer to Bee and Levi’s rivalry is the fact that they run two very popular anonymous social media accounts. But when little things start to go wrong for Bee and her team, she begins to wonder if her co-lead isn’t above sabotage. Their work on BLINK is an improvement though, as Levi doesn’t immediately bail on the project. Her excitement is short-lived when she discovers she’ll be co-leading the project with engineer Levi Ward, her grad school nemesis, whose cold, cutting behavior and outspoken inability to work with her on an assignment have stuck with her.
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