The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross

Finley Jayne has a darker half that protects her and frightens her. As time goes on it is becoming more and more difficult for her to control and making it harder for her to keep a job. One night she is forced to run from her employers home and is hit by Griffin King a Duke who sees her as one of his own; people with abilities. He takes her in and soon learns that Finley has an interesting and unexpected connection to him. Finley joins Griff, and his friends Emily, Sam and Jasper on the hunt for The Machinist, a criminal who is managing to make machines turn against people.

I absolutely adored this book for so many reasons. Being the book geek that I am, I always love it when a book finds a way to connect with other books so I was completely amused and intrigued by the connections drawn to Jekyll and Hyde and Journey to the Center of the Earth.

I loved how the two parts of Finley become integrated over the course of the book. I liked watching her become stronger and more finely tied together. However I still loved her split parts as well, particulalry how part of her was attracted to Griff and the other part was attracted to Jack Dandy. (It's the first love triangle in a long time that has annoyed me beyond belief.) I also found Jack Dandy extremely interesting. He was a criminal beyond a doubt but he was an interesting mix of commoner and smart business man. I definitely think he is someone who makes it a point to allow others to underestimate him and I really hope that he is involved in the next book even though they will be leaving England for it. I also enjoyed watching Sam come to terms with himself and the changes that Emily made to save his life. I am hoping that in the next book he will continue to grow and become a little bit smarter. While I don't expect his temper to entirely disappear, I am hoping that he continues to think about things more. My biggest complaint about the book was the lack of information on Jasper so I am very excited to see that the next book in the series is going to focus on him and that was all resolved.

I also really liked how The Machinist tied into Griff's groups' past and I was very intrigued by how he was able to get the robots to work. While for the most part the story was anything but predictable there was one point regarding what the Machinist was planning where I found myself getting frustrated. Someone as smart as Emily is supposed to be should have figured out what was going on a few pages earlier. I did find it a little bit irritating that she had to wait for Griffin to come to the lab and figure out what was going on. I wanted her, Finley and Sam to be a little bit more independent sometimes; but I'm hoping over the course of the series the characters will continue to grow and learn to stand on their own.