The Neurospicy Bean

  This was a perfectly entertaining, pleasant romance, but it didn’t land for me quite the way the author’s other books have. Eddie in particular I really struggled to wrap my head around as a character – why he behaved the way he did and so on. I also really wish that the rest of the baseball team had played a bigger role – I always talk about how one of the highlights of a really well done romance is the relationships the characters have with people outside the primary romantic interest. That was a little bit lacking here, I think because so much of the focus ended up on Mark’s journey. That said, it’s still a well-written book that was emotionally engaging. In particular there was a scene towards the end about queerness and acceptance and society that really broke my heart. Absolutely worth picking up.

 

  There are quite a few reviews saying that this book didn’t meet their expectations in terms of action, which is a real bummer because this is by far one of the best pieces of historical fiction focusing on Chinese women that I’ve read. It’s true that if you’re looking for Treasure Island, Pirates of the Caribbean-esque action, in the vein of The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, you’ll be a bit taken aback by this book. I was definitely expecting something in that vein going in, and it is the genre I typically prefer. It probably should be marketed less as a pirate book and more as historical literary fiction about womanhood and female friendship…that happens to be about history’s most successful pirate. But once you get past all that, this is still a really, really good book. If you remember (or want to look up) my review of the extremely popular Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, there were a lot of elements of that book that didn’t do Chinese women justice, and I would consider this boo...

  You know, there were so many compelling, intriguing characters floating around in this book. Our protagonist Luisa was not one of them. She was simply the most generic straight white female protagonist imaginable; there was nothing about her that was memorable beyond the fact that she threw up a lot when she was stressed. Supposedly, she got top marks in her espionage program, but there was nothing she did in the entire book that demonstrated that aptitude to me.  Again, there were so many potentially compelling stories hinted at throughout the whole book. The one with the most potential was the group of musicians who eventually helped sneak Luisa into East Berlin. I desperately wanted them to show up more, to get a glimpse into their lives, to understand their feelings. But they were a tiny part of the book. It was just so disappointing. Also, there was surprisingly little action. Luisa just kind of passively bobs along from place to place; whenever anything worked out for...

  There was so much hype around this book and it just…did not meet my expectations at all. I don’t have a ton to say specifically, but there were a couple reasons it annoyed me. First, there really wasn’t anything to make it unique. It felt as formulaic as a queer period romance can get – two upper-class white leads fall in love, they scheme to find a way to be together, they have sex, they break up at the end of the second act, they get back together. Whatever. There was just nothing to make it unique, nothing that gave it any grab or grit. The second issue is that Beth and Gwen were completely indistinguishable from one another. Aside from which parent they spent time with, there was really nothing about them that made it possible to keep track of who was narrating at a given point. Pro tip: if you can’t write distinctive characters, don’t have multiple POVs. They’re like the characters in a love triangle where the only difference is that one has brown hair (gasp). On another not...

  I’m not generally a big literary fiction person, but wow this book was gorgeous and heartbreaking and fascinating. It takes a bit of time for things to really get established, but once they do the multiple overlapping stories are beautiful and compelling. It’s the kind of book I’d actually want to examine for symbolism, because there’s just so much. I imagine to someone more familiar with Taiwanese culture there’s even more to analyze. I should say that it’s definitely pretty dark at times, discussing rape, abuse, and violence in a very candid manner. It’s quite intense, especially in its depictions of various kinds of violence and cruelty. These scenes are important and they’re never gratuitous, but worth keeping in mind that nothing in this book is romanticized or sugarcoated. The only things I struggled with were keeping track of everything and the ending. I know there’s a reason for all the sisters’ names starting with the same letter (explained in the translator’s note for t...

  Y’all I am absolutely obsessed with this series, and this book wraps everything up perfectly (although please?? More in this world?? Because there are hints that there’s more to come???). We get lovely flashes from Robin and Edwin and Violet and Maud, including a really heartwrenching sublot with Robin and Edwin. It also benefits hugely from Jack and Alan having been introduced in the last book and having an established relationship to build on. We get thrown straight into a house full of all these delightful characters (there’s a great line from Jack’s POV describing the dynamic between Edwin and Violet as two cats with terrible personalities who have been adopted by two people determined for them to coexist and like if that doesn’t sum up this whole series I don’t know what does. Just a bunch of golden retrievers adopting grumpy cats. Anyway), and then get to watch them trying to solve a mystery when all they want to do is make out with their respective partners. So yeah, the c...

  Big time second book vibes here – this book is working really hard to do the heavy lifting of the trilogy’s plot and world-building. It takes place a year after the first book, with a bit of a surprising twist: Robin’s sister, Maud, is on an ocean liner accompanying an elderly woman who knows where part of the Last Contract is. Except the elderly woman immediately dies, leaving Maud to try to solve the murder and avoid becoming the next target. Luckily, she has Robin’s records of his visions to help her, which lead her to Lord Hawthorne and, somewhat accidentally, the beautiful but guarded heiress Violet. Mayhem ensues, with quite a lot of action crammed into one book.  It was really good, don’t get me wrong – I cannot express how much I adored Maud and Hawthorne’s sibling-ish relationship, and the whole thing was delightfully chaotic. But because it was so plot-heavy, it felt a bit like the relationship got sidelined. I mean, we don’t find out what Violet’s backstory is unt...

  OH MY GOD THIS WAS SO AMAZING. This book (and series) is absolutely my new obsession. The perfect blend of intriguing plot, creative world-building, sweet romance, and incredible character development. I could not stop thinking about it for weeks. The way tiny details in seemingly unrelated scenes build up to create an intricately woven plot is just so incredible. I adored Edwin and Robin, but all the side characters were really excellent as well. In fact, the scene that made me laugh out loud was actually one centering Adelaide and Kitty, Robin and Edwin’s coworkers. Honestly I could keep talking about all the things I love, and I have zero complaints, but really everyone should just go read it immediately because it has absolutely everything. My one note of caution is that there is a LOT of quite explicit sex and a lot of the crucial character moments happen during those scenes, so if that’s something that makes you uncomfortable you might not love it the way I do.

  Oh my God this book had no business being this heartbreaking. This poor kid just keeps trying so hard to make things better and help people, and every single time he just gets absolutely screwed over by everyone around him. Honestly it got frustrating after a while, especially because the plot did begin to feel a bit unnecessarily convoluted, but as far as the actual emotional core of the story goes, I thought it was quite good.  From a more world-building/history perspective, it was much weaker. A lot of the dialogue read like modern dialogue with generically old-fashioned words sprinkled in, and it was really jarring in places. Similarly, there were elements that didn’t seem like they’d been fully researched. Now, I’m willing to forgive some of this in a cutesy historical romance, but this book wanted to be doing more than that, and I think it could have been better researched. That being said, like I mentioned above, the emotional core of this story was devastating and sw...

  Alright so this review is going to be in two different sections because there are a couple of different things that need to be addressed. First I’m going to discuss my thoughts on the book itself, what I liked, and what I didn’t. Then I want to discuss the author, as well as share some thoughts my girlfriend shared about her. It’s important to emphasize that these are not disparate things, and as you read through this review it will become clear that they’re closely connected. It’s just easier for me to organize my thoughts when it’s divided up this way.  So first, the book itself is about the titular Lady Tan Yunxian and based loosely on the real historical figure. It follows her throughout her entire life, from childhood to old age, with the bulk of the book focusing on her time as a wife in the compound home of a wealthy family. Now, I always hated being told to “write about the seed, not the watermelon” in school, but in this case, I think someone needed to tell that to...