I like the whole noir detective vibe that the first chapter has going on, the seedy speak easy run by obvious bad guys that our protagonist should absolutely not be in, the illegal curse seller with an expensive ballet ticket seemingly as part of his pay, and the mysterious femme fatal who sweeps in to save the protagonist and drop a clue as to some bigger mystery her mother was part of. I do find myself concerned with how the thing with the boy from her past, Adrius, is going to go. I mean fake romance almost always leads to real romance in books, but the whole thing with none of the upper class folks having actually been her friends and them only having "victims or sycophants" feels like it's going to go to some not real fun places for the romance going from fake to something more.