I appreciate the authors note at the start of this where the author explains that she brought to light very real history that people refuse to acknowledge regarding Manchuria and Unit 731 during WWII. 

I think the bare bones of this story was solid, but I would have liked to see more world building and less romance. I’m not sure we can even call it that because of the obvious power imbalance between the two and Ruying being gaslit by Antony on so many occasions. I do think that Chang wrote that in to prove a point, but it still very much gave me the ick (again, it could very well be intentional). 

This was a tough one to rate because there were some things I liked but the romantic relationship was unnecessary and was hard to look past after a certain point.