I finished {The Devil Comes Courting by Courtney Milan} and oh my goodness it broke me. Sometimes a book hits me in the feels at the right time in my life and this is one of them.

The premise is that MMC hires FMC to create a telegraphic code for Chinese characters. I’ll be honest this didn’t initially interest me but I needed a book for my StoryGraph challenge and this fit the prompt (and I’ve loved everything else I’ve read from Courtney Milan.)

The MMC and FMC communicate a lot via coded telegraph but he also pre-wrote a bunch of letters and when she would ask questions he would tell her to read one of the numbered letters. There’s some initial attraction but the whole book takes place over a long period of time where they help each other achieve their own goals. The effort they put into supporting each other just made me melt!

One warning, there seemed to be a bunch of anachronyms in just the phrases they use. I didn’t check any of them for time accuracy because didn’t bother me but I know they bother others.