Friday 56 and Book Beginnings: The Heartless City by Andrea Berthot

This is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice

These are the rules:

1. Grab a book, any book.

2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader.

3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you.

4. Post it.

5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda's most recent Friday 56 post.

Please join us over at RoseCityReader every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

Synopsis:

     Henry Jekyll was a brilliant doctor, a passionate idealist who aimed to free mankind of selfishness and vice. He’s also the man who carelessly created a race of monsters.

     Once shared secretly among the good doctor's inner circle, the Hyde drug was smuggled into mass-production - but in pill form, it corrupted its users at the genetic level, leaving them liable to transform without warning. A quarter of the population are now clandestine killers – ticking bombs that could detonate at any given moment.

     It's 1903, and London has been quarantined for thirteen years.

     Son of the city's most prominent physician and cure-seeker, seventeen-year-old Elliot Morrissey has had his own devastating brush with science, downing a potion meant to remove his human weaknesses and strengthen him against the Hydes - and finding instead he's become an empath, leveled by the emotions of a dying city.

     He finds an unlikely ally in Iris Faye, a waitress at one of the city's rowdier music halls, whose emotions nearly blind him; her fearlessness is a beacon in a city rife with terror. Iris, however, is more than what she seems, and reveals a mission to bring down the establishment that has crippled the people of London.

     Together, they aim to discover who's really pulling the strings in Jekyll's wake, and why citizens are waking up in the street infected, with no memory of ever having taken the Hyde drug...

     Heart-eating monsters, it turns out, are not the greatest evil they must face.

Book Beginning:

     Virginia shivered but didn't dare reach up to gather her damp, wool cloak around her throat. She didn't dare breathe, though she doubted the sound would be heard over the heavy rain pelting the canvas above her, or the churning waters of the wide mighty Thames.

Thoughts:

     The synopsis was what really drew me to the story. But this opening really paints a picture that quickly captured my interest in the story.

56% on Tablet:
     Elliot tightened his grip on the bottle and lowered it to his lap, closing his eyes as the alcohol seared his throat and swarmed his stomach. "It's just... too much," he murmured in replay. "Too much feeling."
     Iris studied his face then scooted a little closer. "What if you shared it with me?"
     "Shared it with you? You mean share what.... everyone is feeling?"
     "It might lessen the impact for you, make it easier to bear."
     "I don't even know if I can."