It began with a mask and a warning: Never trust a man who chooses to wear one.

Sharp-tongued and scandal-prone, Lilly Miller has no interest in being the obedient daughter Victorian society demands. While her sister embraces a proper marriage and her mother arranges yet another suitable match, Lilly plots her escape from a world of suffocating expectations.

When a charming street performer offers her his mask, Lilly sees more than mere disguise—she sees freedom. Behind painted features and borrowed identity, she can become anyone, do anything, and suffer no reprimand.

But in London's shadowy underground world of pansies and outcasts, nothing is as it appears. The mask that promises liberation–and the man behind it–may cause love to be the one cage she can never escape. 

As the line between performance and reality blurs, she must decide: Who is she really trying to fool?

Set against the backdrop of a rigid Victorian society and the secrets of an underground world, Snakes and Ladders is a witty, sharp, and deeply rebellious tale of identity, desire, and defiance that breaks love outside the gender binary.