After the unexpected death of her only brother, Nelly Sawyer becomes the premier debutante overnight. But Nelly has aspirations beyond society influence and marriage; for the past year, she has worked undercover as an investigative journalist. Her latest assignment thrusts her into the den of a dangerous vice lord: the so-called Mayor of Maxwell Street. Born in rural Alabama to a murdered biracial couple, Jay Shorey washed up on Chicago’s storied shores and forged his own way to the top of the city’s underworld, running Chicago’s swankiest speakeasy. When Nelly’s and Jay’s paths cross, she recruits him to help expose the Mayor and bring about lasting change in a corrupt city. Trapped between the monolith of Jim Crow, the inflexible world of the Black upper class, and the violence of Prohibition-era Chicago, Jay and Nelly work together to uncover the Mayor while stoking the flames of a love worth fighting for.

Thank you @netgalley for the ARC! This was an enjoyable book that had a little bit of everything—feminism, mystery, characters fighting back against racism and societal norms, 1920s Prohibition speakeasies, daring heroics, and great friendships. I was really interested in figuring out who the infamous Mayor was. However, sometimes the narrative felt a bit jumpy and it felt as thought there were often unexplained gaps in events that took place between chapters. The prologue of the book was very gripping, but then the following chapters took a while to loop in the content from the prologue and I thus became slightly disinterested. I really liked Nelly’s tenacity, and overall the characters were multilayered and well developed. I think I would’ve liked this better if the plot was less jumpy and more succinct. The romance plot line also wasn’t my favorite, Jay just wasn’t a great love interest for Nelly and I found him really shady and difficult to like. The prologue helps establish some of his motivations and intentions, which mitigated his negative character attribute slightly, but overall I just didn’t like him. The Mayor of Maxwell Street is out now!