Hello!

Today is my stop on the Escapists Tours book tour for Hands Like Secrets by Mariah Norris. This book has some incredible representation and the worldbuilding, especially the magic system is fascinating, and in this post I have an extract to whet your appetite as well as a chance to win a copy for yourself. Please do also check out the other blogs participating in the tour.

Book Summary:

Saeli has always been different: she is autistic, in a world that doesn’t have a word for people like her.

She attends the exclusive institute of Aschamon, learning to harness her inner qi and preparing to join the battle between her people and their enemies, the Crimson Cowls. But despite her years of work, her teachers still refuse to elevate her to Silver Mantle status and dedicate her to their god’s service.

When notorious Crimson Cowl Rafel Kailar breaks into her school, it is either cruel irony…or fate…that Saeli is there to confront him.

But Rafel is nothing like the Cowls she’s been taught to hate. He draws her in with his charm and reveals his ultimate ambition: to overthrow the gods of Verre and end a hundred years of war. And he needs Saeli’s help.

As she is pulled deeper into Rafel’s schemes, Saeli fears she’ll be forced to choose whose side she’s truly on: her people, who have never understood her…or Rafel, who’d gladly turn her world upside-down to kill the gods.

Hands Like Secrets is the first installment of The Seven Strands, a new adult epic fantasy series that follows a young autistic woman who joins an assassin on a hunt across worlds for a god-killing immortal. Along the way, she’ll have to come to terms with love, loss, betrayal, and the shifting nature of good and evil itself.