Set in 1931, during the height of the Japanese Imperial invasion and a civil war between the Communist and Nationalist parties, assassin Rosalind Lang is tasked with a new mission to investigate a series of murders in Shanghai. To avoid suspicion, she is asked to pose as the wife of another Nationalist spy and former playboy, Orion Hong, and infiltrate a Japanese company to identify the culprit. With everything on the line, Rosalind must find a way to protect her secrets and demonstrate her loyalty to the Nationalists while finding a way to work with her new partner with an infuriatingly cavalier demeanor.

FORTUNE is the first in a duology that follows the events after Gong’s previous series, THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS. It can be read as a stand-alone series, which I did, but I think reading DELIGHTS might give more context to Rosalind’s background. Regardless, Gong’s fast-paced writing made it easy for me to get into the plot without prior knowledge about the characters.

Even though FORTUNE is labeled as a YA novel, the historical aspect is so intriguing I finished this book in two days! There is also so much tension, not just between Rosalind and Orion, but guessing whose loyalties lie with which faction. There are double agents, triple agents, and secrets within secrets. Gong did such a terrific job with the multiple plot twists that most of my hypotheses turned out to be wrong