It seems like a perfect meet cute: wide-eyed debutante Eve Ojukwu, fresh from the hinterlands of Kepler, bumps into wealthy bachelor Esteban Mendez-Yuki of megacorp MYCorps on a half-gravity dancefloor on the ritzy satellite of New Monte. Except this is all part of a carefully orchestrated con game, hatched by Ruthi Johnson—our innocent Eve—in revenge for Mendez-Yuki’s jilting of her sister Jules, now expecting Esteban’s child back on Kepler. Lady Eve’s Last Con is a simple plan: get the rich boy to fall for her, sign the engagement contract, and then cash the check when Mendez-Yuki quietly settles to avoid a scandal. Since Ruthi has spent almost her whole life grifting and conning on luxe-liners and satellites, scraping for simoleons to support herself and Jules and staying simpatico with the real criminal gangs roaming the trade routes, this should be an easy job. A plan that will set them up to see Jules' kid born and maybe visit the family back planet side.
But of course there’s a hitch, and it’s Sol Mendez-Yuki—Esteban’s step sister and the real brain behind the MYCorps success. She’s immediately suspicious of newcomer Eve, but her interest also has a more personal edge to it. And as much as Ruthi is focused on taking down Esteban, she’s getting distracted too. When it becomes clear that a gang from Ruthi’s past has gotten their claws into Sol, Ruthi finds herself in an impossible position: come clean and tell the sister of her mark who she really is, so she can protect Sol or stay silent and let Sol dig her own grave. After a few instances that see Ruthi and Sol thrown together—literally in the case of one gravity field failure—it starts to look like the New Monte job really will be her last con. But might that mean she’ll never leave New Monte alive?
Rebecca Fraimow’s debut is a fun heist novel with the requisite dash of romance set in a nicely imagined world. She creates an imaginative world in which Eve and her fellow elites play, as well as the underpinnings where Ruthi and the poor toil to make places like New Monte possible. Sol and Ruthi feel fully fleshed out, although some of the lesser characters could use depth. Fraimow keeps the action moving, and the comic interplay between Ruthi and some of the socialites of New Monte is well done. Fraimow hints at a sequel, so perhaps some of the characters introduced here will get fuller portraits in future installments. Readers of Becky Chambers and Cat Rambo may want to take a look, and fans of Sapphic romances in imaginative settings would find much to enjoy.