This book is many things; beautiful in parts, crude in others - it examines humanity at it's lowest as people judged and shamed others, and also humanity at peace in love and feeling accepted by friends, families and strangers and allowed to be who they are.

Set in the early 1800s, our morally grey, unreliable narrator is John Church, a sort of Reverend for a church that doesn't believe in sin or casting judgement, only love and acceptance which is a lovely thing really but the more we get to know about John, the more the reader wonders what kind of man he truly is as he omits truth, and warps things to make them go his own way - not to mention his obsessive need for love but also to control and keep the love of those who try to be close to him in a way that eventually drives everyone else away from him.

One of the things I like about Neil Blackmore's writing is the campiness and the highlighting of queer characters throughout history and how gay, non-binary and trans people have existed in society for a long, long time. I loved the scenes of debauchery and joy at the molly house, and how the girls (aka the Queens) were free to be who they were and love each other, and the marriages of love that took place.

I can't speak for the representation in this book, that of the trans community but also of the Black community we see in the book. We learn a little bit of the experiences of what it must have been like to be Black during this time, when the abolition of slavery was still a very recent thing but that didn't mean the Black community were treated with the respect they deserved. Through Ned, we see what his life was like as a 'thing' or a 'product' before he escaped an unhappy home, and how he struggles to hold down a job as people didn't need a reason to fire a Black person back then. I appreciated all of this in the book, but I can't say if this representation was good or not - I hope it was.

It felt rather poignant and timely to read this book and learn once again about the historical treatment of people in the queer community - how it was almost better to be proclaimed a rapist or a murderer than a sodomiser. The fear people felt in case they were found out but how this fear didn't stop people from being who they were or feeling how they felt. In today's world, transphobia and homophobia seem to be on the rise again and it's sad to see it's history repeating itself but again, all of this hatred isn't going to drown out the love people feel and share for each other.

Neil Blackmore is really good at writing slightly shady characters. Unlike his previous book's anti-hero Mr Lavelle, I didn't find John Church quite as repugnant or disagreeable but because it was obvious in the narration that he wasn't the completely good person he pretended to be, it was hard to like him - and I'm not sure I liked to hate him either. It was a strange one.