whimsyful | Entries tagged with romance

Once a Villain, by Vanessa Len

The third and final volume in the YA time travel urban fantasy Monsters trilogy, this definitely cannot be read without the previous two installments.

Continuing right where Never a Hero left off, the book starts off with main antagonist and Joan’s half-sister Eleanor having finally succeeded in creating a world where monsters rule over humans and she reigns over all, and the plot revolves around Joan and the othes desperately trying to find a way to undo this and return to the world they know.

First of all, I have to talk about that resolution to the love triangle—

major ending spoilers

I had suspicions from the structure of the earlier two books (ex. the division of page-time between the two male love interests) that Len might be going for a poly/throuple ending, but I wasn’t sure if she had the guts to go for it in a mainstream YA series. I’m very pleased to report that she did, in fact, have the guts to go for it! Even though generally the soulmate/predestined trope is not a romance trope I’m fond of, and having the predestined couple turn out to be actually be a predestined throuple all along only slightly mitigates my indifference, but otherwise I really liked how this played out. One of my worries was how she was going to flesh out the Nick/Aaron side of the throuple, but I thought Len managed to concisely convey the sense of a deep, intense relationship between the two in an alternate timeline, enough that I could buy the current versions working out—though I could have read an entire book about about gladiator!Nick and Scarlet Pimpernel!Aaron (hopefully the fanfic writers will tackle this).

The worldbuilding continues to be one of the most intriguing parts of this series, and in this installment I really liked the depiction of a dystopian alternate world where humans and part-humans were basically slaves. The time-travel continues to run on vibes and Doctor Who-esque rules, but I didn’t mind since we got some cool action sequences and juicy character interactions (in particular, I loved every instance where a character has to interact with a different timeline’s version of someone they cared about) out of it.

As for weaknesses, I thought Joan was a pretty reactive heroine in this book, and it did sometimes feel like she’s going along with the requirements of the plot instead of having a distinctive personality of her own that actively drives the plot forward. I also found the epilogue/ending to be a bit too unbelievably happy in terms how easily all the conflict between human and monster society were resolved—I would have preferred if it ended more on a hopeful work-in-progress instead. And as with the previous two books, I felt like the prose could have been prettier on a sentence-by-sentence level.

But overall, I quite enjoyed this trilogy, and thought Len explored some pretty cool ideas even if she didn’t 100% stick the landing. I’m definitely looking forward to her future works!

Goodbye, My Princess by Fei Wo Si Cun (trans. Tianshu)

A bit of an odd duck of a book. Translated Chinese webnovels have been steadily growing in popularity in the Anglosphere, but most of these are danmei (M/M). I’ve seen this book marketed as YA het fantasy romance, despite 1) covering some pretty mature topics (liked forced abortion), 2) there being exactly one fantastical element in the setting—a magical amnesia-granting river—and is otherwise full on historical fiction, and 3) having an infamous tragic ending, which would preclude this from being considered a romance by Western genre conventions. What this really is, is a tragic romance, and an excellent example of the genre.

mild spoilers under the cut

The plot: Xiaofeng is a cheerful, naive young princess from the desert kingdom of Xiliang who has been in a loveless arranged marriage with Li Chengyin, the crown prince of the Li empire, for the last three years. It has not been a happy union—Li Chengyin alternately fights with Xiaofeng or ignores her in favor of his preferred noble consort, and Xiaofeng mainly copes with the stifling nature of court life by crossdressing and sneaking out of the palace to roam the city with her faithful maid/bodyguard A’du. Then one day she encounters a stranger who claims to be her lost love from a life Xiaofeng can no longer remember. As Xiaofeng tries to piece together what had happened in the past, she and her husband finally start growing closer, but what she doesn’t realize is how truly brutal the royal court is, and that some memories are better left forgotten.

The entire main story is told entirely from Xiaofeng’s first person narration, which was a very effective and immersive choice. She is a naive, kind-hearted and trusting person stuck with limited language and cultural fluency in a foreign court stuffed to the brim with schemes and intrigues, and everyone knows it. So you only get a glimpse of all the political intrigue as they all fly completely over her head (these schemes only get explained in full in the epilogue/side stories told by the side characters) and have to try to figure out for yourself what’s actually going on. There is also an excellently done character progression as she slowly loses her innocence and happiness and is ground down into despair—her voice starts off rather silly and childish and then grows both more mature and much more sad.

The author Fei Wo Si Cun has a reputation for angsty, obsessive, incredibly asshole male leads who are basically a forest of walking red flags. But it worked very well for me in this story because it becomes very clear after a certain point that the male lead Li Chengyin is also the main villain and primary antagonist of the story. In fact, the book can be seen as a deconstruction of the common “kind-hearted naive princess marries a cold ruthless prince from an enemy kingdom and then they fall in love” trope/storyline. Li Chengyin is incredibly ruthless and cunning because that was the only way to survive the intrigues of the royal court and stay alive as crown prince. Xiaofeng’s warm and open-hearted personality is like catnip to someone with his personality, but being a monster who loves only one person does not make him any less a monster, and so he loves her but he also destroys everything that she loves, and it all ends in tears.

Overall, recommended if you’re in the mood for what’s essentially a perfect tragedy, starring a pair of lovers so doomed even being granted a clean slate and a second chance by Fate is not enough.

A note about the translation: the English translation is by Tianshu, and this is one of the best Chinese-English translations that I’ve read recently. There is no awkward “translationese” or jerky sentences—the prose flows smoothly and is downright lovely in many parts, and overall feels like a labor of love. I also liked the choice to link footnotes to all the bits of classical Chinese poetry that’s quoted in text. The one choice I’m puzzled by is the change in structure; the original novel (or at least the version I found online) had 42 chapters in the main story, plus some bonus chapters that are snippets from the POV of certain side characters (these are technically not necessary to read but highly recommended). The English translation aggregates the text into four very long chapters/parts instead, plus the bonus side stories. I’m not sure why Tianshu decided on this grouping, as this means there is no easy point to take a break in the middle of a very long part compared to the original.

The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (trans. Faelicy & Lily)

My first danmei cnovel, and I had a great time! About Shen Yuan, a young man who hate-read the entirety of a super popular and clichéd cultivation harem webnovel and died while in the middle of raging about how terrible the writing and plot holes are...only to wake up having transmigrated into said webnovel, as the villainous mentor who will face a brutal end by the OP Gary Stu male protagonist. Now he has to somehow get into the guy's good graces to avoid his canon fate and fix the original novel's plot holes...and of course this being danmei he accidentally changes the romance from M/F one-dude-with-a-massive-harem to M/M along the way.

Shen Yuan's running commentary mocking the the cliches of the hackneyed harem cultivation webnovel he's been unwillingly transmigrated into were hilarious, and I also loved every instance where he had to stay in character as this cool and unmoved master while internally swearing and freaking out. He's also a very funny example of an incredibly unreliable narrator.

My only complaints were that 1) I wish the female characters got more to do (not unexpected for a danmei, but it’s still disappointing to have several intriguing and layered male side characters whereas all the side female characters are much more flat in comparison) and 2) that sex scene sure was...something. Still, this was incredibly fun to read, and I'm definitely going to check out MXTX's other works!

Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai

An urban/paranormal adult romantasy that I went into with low expectations but came out very pleasantly surprised. Our heroine is Elle, the overlooked middle child of a powerful Chinese family descended from the god of medicine and working a menial job at a magical temp agency. Only Elle is not her real name, her family thinks she dead, and she’s been living under a false identity after a fight between her two brothers went horribly wrong. But her trying to live an invisible life under the radar is threatened due to her crush on her coworker Luc, a French half-fae and high ranked agent, to whom she keeps on giving stealth upgrades on the charms she makes for his missions. And then things get even more complicated when Luc is assigned to hunt down Elle’s younger brother, who in turn is trying to hunt her down.

details

The worldbuilding was really fascinating in this - it's one of the few recent fantasies I've read that really leans into multicultural magic systems and actually incorporates the differences between Chinese and Western mythology in the plot. Elle uses Chinese calligraphy to paint magical glyphs and qi to heal people; Luc has to follow some of traditional fae rules, and there are sphinxes and gumihos and bits from other mythologies as well.

The romance felt very cozy and surprisingly low-key: both Luc and Elle are fundamentally good people in difficult situations, they are already very attracted to each other at the beginning of the story, and most of their romantic arc is about helping each other grow and heal. It's very much an adult romantasy in that the main character conflicts are dealing with complicated family dynamics and trying to get out of an abusive workplace situation, respectively, so those looking for the usual coming of age or defeat-the-evil-dark-lord plots would be disappointed. I also surprisingly liked the sex scenes, not just because of the prose but because they actually tied into both the character arcs and the magical worldbuilding. Overall, I really enjoyed this debut and am looking forward to Tsai's next book (described as queer Inception meets Indiana Jones with fungi).

Masquerade by O. O. Sangoyomi

A standalone loosely based on the myth of Persephone set in 15th century West Africa following Òdòdó, a beautiful young blacksmith who gets abducted by the warrior king of Yorùbáland to be his new wife. Òdòdó may now be living in luxury and be among the highest echelon of society, but disapproving courtiers, a potential mother-in-law with her own ideas on how to handle an unsuitable new bride, and a widespread blacksmith strike started by Òdòdó’s own furious mother means this won’t be a straightforward fairytale.

details

This was a solid debut that plays around with genre expectations — at several points I thought it would tip into being a romantasy, before subverting those expectations. For example, when a male supporting character is introduced with copious over-the-top references to his beauty and he’s initially antagonistic towards Òdòdó, I was fully expecting him to become an eventual love interest, but the book ended up going somewhere completely different with him.

My main gripe is that it felt too short - ex. Òdòdó gains political acumen and allies at a very accelerated rate, picking them up in what feels like months instead of the years it should have taken. The plot beats and character growth all fell in the correct places for the story it was trying to tell, but this would have been better if it had another 300 or so pages for the pacing to feel natural instead of somewhat rushed.

The Scarlet Throne, by Amy Leow

A Nepal-inspired debut political fantasy about Binsa, a young girl who is a "living goddess" - a vessel chosen in a special ceremony to channel a goddess so she can dispense advice and orders to her worshippers. Only Binsa has no connection with the goddess, has been faking everything with help from the bloodthirsty cat demon she formed a pact with, and is growing increasingly desperate as her time as a living goddess is running out as the priests look for another young girl to replace her.

details

Solid villaness origin story, very interesting setting and worldbuilding, and no romance which was refreshing for a fantasy starring a teenage female protagonist. It was interesting reading this right after Masquerade since both are essentially about a young woman becoming increasingly ruthless in order to acquire or maintain power, but this book being the first in a trilogy rather than a standalone means that Binsa’s character arc has the room to be more complicated rather than a linear progression, and she also has more complex relationships with the supporting characters. My favorite of these were the relationships betwen Binsa and her brother Ykta as they try to balance guilt, obligation and trying to get out of the shadow of their abusive mother, as well as the growing bond between Binsa and Medha, the young girl chosen to take her place as the living goddess.

A few flaws (mainly in pacing), but overall a very promising debut.

And All The Stars by Andrea K. Höst

This was the perfect kind of older YA scifi. It follows Madeleine Cost, an Australian high schooler who decides to skip school for the day to paint her famous cousin for a major prize in portraiture, and accidentally ends up at Ground Zero when a strange alien dust starts spreading and infecting people. Soon she joins a group of fellow teenagers as they all try to figure out what the hell is going on, how they're going to survive, and eventually how to fight back.

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The pacing is also kinda wonky in this one, and some of the action scenes get confusing, but I didn't care because I loved the main character's voice and the bonds she formed with her eventual friends (who are surprisingly diverse for a YA novel self published in 2012!). Also the big twist was *chef’s kiss* - I should have seen it coming given the setup, and I didn’t. Highly recommended for fans of Doctor Who or Naomi Novik's Scholomance series, or if you just want to read an apocalytic scenario that focuses heavily on humans working together and helping each other.

The Enchanted Lies of Céleste Artois, by Ryan Graudin

A historical fantasy set in Belle Epoque Paris following Céleste, a fallen noblewoman, aspiring painter, and current forger and con artist. Céleste and her two fellow “Enchantresses” — crossdressing Honore and street kid Sylvie—have been very successful working as a team running cons on the gullible and greedy of Paris, but the growing pile of money they’ve amassed is cold comfort for Céleste, who is secretly dying of consumption. When Céleste discovers a hidden magical world, at first her only concern is to save her own life, even if it means making a deal with the devil—but she may have unleashed a darkness that can consume not only Paris but the world.

details

This was a very well written book on the whole: beautiful prose, nice worldbuilding, and three very different but all interesting main female characters, but I found the pacing quite slow. It also namedrops basically every famous Belle Epoque-era Paris place/person/thing (The Eiffle Tower! Stohrer bakery! Coco Chanel! Jean Cocteau! The Phantom of the Opera!), which I personally find a bit labored but others might find charming—though I did chuckle when Rasputin and the Romanovs started getting actively involved in the plot.

An odd case in that overall I thought the book was quite good on a craft level—all three main female characters were distinct and well drawn, cool magic system, gorgeous prose, and it actually had something to say about the importance of art in the darkest times—but I was never really emotionally engaged with it, which is why it took me so long to finish. Might just be a case of not being in the right mood.

苍兰诀/Cang Lan Jue (lit. Parting of Orchid and Demon King) is a 36 episode xianxia romance cdrama which aired in 2022. The initial premise (weak but cheerful flower fairy accidentally frees and gets soul-bonded to uber-powerful emotionless demon king so that he shares all her feelings and pain, plus sometimes the two swap bodies when they kiss, and of course they eventually fall in love) didn’t interest me much, but then more and more of my drama mutuals started raving about it. I finally decided to check it out a few months ago, and after a slow start in the first few episodes quickly fell down the rabbit hole and binged it.

As others have noted, this drama feels just like an iddy unrestrained fourteen year old’s fanfic brought to life. Shuiyuntian, the realm of the fairies, has pastel skies with a literal sky whale. The male lead’s second-in-command is a black dragon. The costumes range from gorgeously intricate embroidery to “I’m pretty sure these hairpieces are just dried hot glue”. There are utterly sincere and earnest speeches about The Power of Love. However, the emotional and character arcs are really well done, and elevates the cliché premise.

The main and supporting characters:

Xiao Lanhua—an orchid-turned-fairy who manages the records of mortal’s fates alone in Siming Hall in Shuiyuntian. Nearly powerless due to having her roots accidentally damaged, so one of her main goals at the beginning is curing this so she can pass the immortal examinations to work near her crush Changheng. Having mostly plant spirits and books for company means Xiao Lanhua has a somewhat limited and skewed idea of what normal behaviors and interactions look like at first, so when she accidentally frees a regular low level criminial (or so she thinks) from prison and then he keeps popping up and alternating between threatening to kill her and threatening to kill anyone who hurts her, her immediate conclusion is that he must have fallen in love with her!
Dongfang Qingcang—the demon king of the title. Dresses like Maleficent, is a complete drama queen, and has RBF. Had his emotions magically removed when he was a child and only got them back because of Xiao Lanhua, meaning he starts the show with the EQ of a toddler and has to figure out how feelings and communication works from scratch. Constantly refers to himself in third person with the term “this venerable one” but lets Xiao Lanhua give him a nickname that basically means “big blockhead”, which more or less sums up their relationship.
Changheng—the current God of War of Shuiyuntian, younger brother to the ruler, and second male lead of the “seemingly perfect on the surface, really repressed underneath” variety. Gets some surprisingly good character development once he learns to let loose and live a little.
Danyin—a Shuiyuntian fairy who’s in love with Changheng. Starts off as the typical jealous second female lead who bullies the more downtrodden female lead, but then gets an absolutely wild character arc (in short and in no particular order: becomes begrudging frenemies with Xiao Lanhua, turns in to Changheng, turns into a dude during which time they gets unknowingly hit on by their own sister, dies a few times, finds out a birth secret, and decides gender norms are stupid) and ends up pretty cool!
Jieli—a peddler/merchant/scammer who sells a lot of questionable medicine to Xiao Lanhua, upon which basis Xiao Lanhua insists they’re friends. Will sell you to Satan for one cornchip.
Shangque— Dongfang Qingcang’s second-in-command, and basically a golden retriever in black dragon form.
Chidi Nuzi—the former Shuiyuntian God of War who sacrificed herself in order to seal away 100,000 of Dongfang Qingcang’s soldiers. Deserved better.
Ronghao—Changheng’s best friend, and Chidi Nuzi’s former disciple.
Dongfang Xunfeng—Dongfang Qingcang’s bratty little brother.

What made this work for me where so many stories with similar premises fail is the time and care it spends on developing characters and their relationships to each other. Dongfang Qingcang is an incredibly overpowered character which could easily zap all dramatic tension from the story, but the show makes sure to repeatedly put him in situations where his main strength (being really, really good at killing/burning things) is useless and he instead needs to do things like tend to a really finnicky orchid plant or play matchmaker between the mortal incarnation of his greatest rival and the mortal incarnation of his other enemy/love rival. In addition to keeping things dramatically interesting, this is also very funny to watch! Every time he made the frustrated “why can’t I just burn everything down” face I clapped in glee like a seal. Xiao Lanhua also gets great, gradual character development, going from a naive fairy who only cares about her tiny corner of the world to someone who sees past the prejudices and hatred between the tribes and does her best to try and save everyone.

The other thing this show did well was sell me on the main relationship. All the epic fight-the-world-for-you grand gestures aside, it also consistently takes care to let the two have fun spending time doing more domestic, everyday tasks together. Which seems minor, but it’s amazing how seeing the main couple genuinely enjoy spending time with each other even when there’s no major plot reasons to do so makes me root for them much more, and it’s something a lot of romances forget to do in lieu of focusing solely on the grand gestures instead.

It also avoids one of the more common pitfalls of cold emotionless male lead/warmer female lead romances by being surprisingly balanced in terms of emotional investment on both sides—Xiao Lanhua tries to help Dongfang Qingcang’s emotional hangups once she understands why he couldn’t feel until recently, but due to the plot setup Dongfang Qingcang is actively invested in making Xiao Lanhua not just physically healthy but happy from pretty much the very beginning. One of my favorite parts of the show was watching him essentially try to deduce how feelings work by using Xiao Lanhua’s (and later other people’s) emotions as a barometer. (Xiao Lanhua is homesick? Okay I’ll build an exact replica of her Siming Hall down to the last flower petal for her…Hmm for some reason a sterile replica of her home doesn’t offer her the same comfort as the real thing…I know! I’ll conquer Shuiyuntian and slaughter everyone there so I can give her back the real thing…wait for some reason she doesn’t seem very happy about this plan either…).

Minor grips: I do think the writing gets a little weaker towards the end; the ending was decently solid (especially by cdrama standards), but not as strong as the writing for the rest of the show, with some weird pacing and a few dropped plot threads. There are several scenes with forced/non-consensual kissing, and the CGI is very hit or miss (mostly miss when it comes to the action scenes). But ultimately, this show warmed the cockles of my cynical heart and gave me an emotional high that I haven’t experienced in a long, long time.

Thanks to troisoiseaux and skygiants’s reviews of Christianna Brand’s Gothic mystery Cat and Mouse, there’s been a resurgence of interest in her works. I’ve previously reviewed Green for Danger (considered to be the best of her mystery novels), but I had several of her books unread on my ereader, so I thought it was time to take quick dip into her backlog.

Court of Foxes

I first read this several years ago and marked it down as bonkers even by Brand’s standards, so of course I had to briefly reread it to see if my recollections were correct. In short; they were.

A not too spoilery summary of the plot: young, poor and incredibly beautiful Marigold “Gilda” Brown is running an elaborate con where she’s pretending to be the rich and recently widowed Marchesa Marigelda d’Astonia Subeggio to try and trick a rich nobleman into providing for her and her family. Two men end up falling for her at first sight; the wealthy Earl of Tregaron and his younger brother the Hon. David Llandovery. Gilda also falls in love with David at first sight, but since he’s a penniless second son she agrees to the Earl’s proposal of marriage, and travels with him to his lands in Wales, where danger, revelations and adventure awaits.

This is essentially Brand’s entry into the Historical Romance genre. It’s a pity Mysterious Press’s reprints have relatively simple covers, because this book is begging for one of those painted Old School Romance covers featuring a woman with long flowing hair in the embrace of a dude with a low-cut shirt under some dramatic moonlight. I really can’t call this book good, perse—there’s a lot of hating on the other female characters and the romance is kinda rapey and it subscribes to some really old fashioned gender essentialism—but I did find it incredibly entertaining as well as unusual in how amoral the heroine is. Gilda has little scruples about lying, scheming or killing to get what she wants, and in a typical romance she’d be the villainess and one of the secondary female character she hates would be the heroine.

Christianna Brand was clearly of the belief that just because she wasn’t writing one of her mysteries didn’t mean that she couldn’t stuff several ridiculous twists into this. The best of these (I straight up cackled when it was revealed) happens around a third of the way into the book, the last on the very last page, and pretty much everything in the middle is pure melodrama. There are brigands. There is an attempted jail break. There is a literal baby swap scheme that takes up about two pages of so of discussion because it’s in the middle of some other drama that’s going on. It’s clear from some of the narrative asides that Brand doesn’t take any of this seriously, and it seems like she had a blast writing this.

The Brides of Aberdar

A Gothic ghost story about the Hilbourne family, who have lived at their manor in their seat of Aberdar for hundreds of years. In Elizabethan times handsome Diccon killed himself after being spurned by young Isabella Hilbourne, his sister Lenora cursed the family, and ever since the brides of Aberdar are known for going mad and dying young. Then one day Miss Alys Tetterman comes to Aberdar as governess to identical twins Lyneth and Christine Hilbourne, and soon becomes entangled in the family curse.

For a Gothic written by Brand, I found this surprisingly subdued. It’s still chock full of genre tropes—a desolate manor, beautiful young men prophesizing doom, identical twin shenanigans, possible incest—but what really struck me was the theme of how love can corrupt and destroy, and how horribly selfish the human characters are in a very mundane way. Thwarted romantic love is a catalyst for a great deal of the awfulness that happens in the story, but what I found more striking was the depiction of how parental love (specifically, always favoring one child over the other) can also cause harm.

By the end, I actually found several of the people worse than the ghosts who have killed generations of Hilbournes, because the ghosts are shades who can’t really help it while the people are humans capable of being better but who repeatedly choose to be terrible and hurt others because they cannot stand not getting their own way. Overall, an odd duck of a book with some interesting themes, but given the current climate I’m not sure if now was the best time for me to read it.

Heads You Lose

An unusually gruesome entry in the Golden Age country house murder mystery genre. The plot centers around the guests and visitors at the country home of Pendock, a village squire. When Grace Morland, a somewhat silly local with an unrequited crush on Pendock makes a jealous outburst about how she “wouldn’t be caught dead” wearing a new hat that Bright Young Thing Francesca Hart just received, no one expects to find Grace wearing said hat shortly afterwards—on her decapitated body. Local Inspector Cockrill (Brand really liked giving her Inspectors C names didn’t she?) is called in to investigate, and soon finds himself in a nest of jealousy, tangled feelings and madness that will soon claim another victim.

I didn’t like this one very much. There are some good parts; Brand is really good at atmosphere when she wants to be, and there’s a sequence where one of the characters is terrified of being murdered in her bedroom that is very chilling. Unfortunately, these are overshadowed by the significant portions of the book that have not aged well, to put it kindly. There is casual anti-Semitism towards one of the Jewish main characters running throughout the entire book, as well as quite a lot of classism and offensiveness towards a disabled character and mental illness. Also, the final solution hinges on (rot13 spoilers) gur zheqrere orvat vafnar naq fgenvtug hc sbetrggvat nobhg gur zheqref gurl pbzzvggrq nsgrejneqf gb whfgvsl zvfyrnqvat gur ernqre ol fubjvat riragf sebz gurve crefcrpgvir. It felt like Brand was trying to go for a Roger Ackroyd type of misdirection, but without the cleverness of Christie's solution. Overall, not one of Brand’s better works, and not one I would particularly recommend.

The Crooked Wreath

Another Golden Age country house murder mystery, this time of the “area grandpa who threatens to cut his descendants out of his will shocked when one of them kills him shortly afterwards” mold. I liked this one a lot more than Heads You Lose, despite some surface similarities.

One part I liked is that there’s a bond between the main characters of the March family, shown in scenes like them banding together to try and cover for one of their own despite them believing that he’s a madman and a murderer. So even with all of their fights and arguments and suspicions it still comes across that they care about each other, which in turn made me care more about them and made the reveal of who the culprit was hit harder.

The mystery in this is also really well done. Both murders feature situations similar to the “blank field of snow” setup, where the murderer somehow managed to either avoid leaving behind or cover up their footprints, and the solution to both are fairly clued and quite clever. This book also features the Brand trademark where a flurry of possible solutions are proposed and discussed, and then shot down one by one. It was really fun to read about the characters coming up with theory after theory, some of which I had also thought of and some of which are hilariously wrong. I do feel like how the culprit was finally revealed and dealt with was a bit of a Deus ex Machina, but it’s a pretty minor complaint. Overall, this is probably my favorite Brand mystery alongside Green for Danger.

Someday or One Day is a 13 episode twdrama which first aired in 2019 (the original title is 想見你, or Want to See You). It’s a mash-up of several different genres, mainly time travel/body swap romance but also a poignant study of grief, a coming of age, a mystery and thriller, and does most of it very, very well. I really enjoyed it with a few caveats, and would recommend it to fans of thoughtful time travel romances like Your Name or Queen In-hyun’s Man.

The basic plot is something like this: In 2019, 27 year old Huang Yu Xuan has been emotionally frozen in time since the death of her boyfriend Wang Quan Sheng two years ago. One day she falls asleep listening to an old cassette tape of Wu Bai’s “Last Dance”, and wakes up in 1998 in the body of her doppelganger, a high schooler called Chen Yun Ru. Not only that, but Chen Yun Ru’s schoolmate and crush Li Zi Wei is also a dead ringer for her lost love Wang Quan Sheng. As Yu Xuan continues jumping back and forth between the past and the present, she learns that Chen Yun Ru is doomed to die in 1999, kick-starting a web of tragedy that will destroy several lives unless she can somehow prevent it.

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Dial A For Aunties, by Jesse Q. Sutanto

A hilariously nuts screwball black comedy, kind of like a mix of Arsenic and Old Lace and Crazy Rich Asians. Meddelin Chan has always been exceptionally close to her mother and aunties, to the point where she purposefully picked UCLA as a college to stay near them and now works as a photographer at the family wedding business. So who else would she turn to for help in getting rid of the body of her creepy blind date? Unfortunately the cooler they temporarily stash the body in gets sent to a private island hosting a billionaire’s wedding that’s their latest and biggest job. Now Meddelin has to figure out how to dispose of the corpse, get back together with an old flame, and pull off an enormously successful wedding without getting driven crazy by her overbearing family.

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The Councillor, by E. J. Beaton

An adult fantasy following Lysande Prior, an orphan scholar who is unexpectedly given the task of selecting the next ruler of Elira after the murder of her best friend Queen Sarelin. Her options are one of the four city rulers, but the longer Lysande experiences having real political power for the first time the more reluctant she is to give it up, especially since she suspects one of them of having a hand in Sarelin’s death.

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The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting, by K. J. Charles

A regency M/M romance following the fortune hunting siblings Marianne and Robin Loxleigh, who have ingratiated their way into the ton. Marianne aims to marry a marquis, while Robin sets his sights on Alice, the heiress niece of Sir John Hartlebury. Unfortunately, Hart is immediately suspicious of Robin’s intentions towards his beloved niece, and the simmering attraction between the two men just makes Hart more intent on revealing Robin as a fraud.

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Newcomer, by Keigo Higashino

Keigo Higashino is one of my favorite mystery authors writing today. Not only is he good at constructing intricate puzzle plots in the style of Golden Age or shin honkaku fair play mysteries and can write characters that one can feel for, he’s constantly playing with the forms and conventions of the genre. This one focuses less on the puzzle, and more on the gradual building of a picture surrounding the murder of Mineko Mitsui, a middle aged woman who had recently moved into a new neighborhood.

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I really enjoyed Tasha Suri’s Empire of Sand, part of her Books of Ambha Mughal-inspired fantasy duology, the first novel of which focused on Mehr, the illegitimate half-Amrithi daughter of a governor of the Ambhan empire who is forced into an arranged marriage because of her magical Amrithri blood. I loved it’s slow burn romance, nuanced examination of colonialism, and a focus on the power of small acts of decency and kindness. The standalone sequel Realm of Ash, which takes place over a decade later and follows Mehr’s sister Arwa, maintained everything I liked about the first book and added even more in terms of court intrigue, complicated female relationships, and a larger scope.

Realm of Ash begins with Arwa, who until then had managed to pass as a normal Ambhan noblewoman, joining a hermitage of widows after being the sole survivor of a supernatural attack which killed her husband and his entire garrison. The Ambhan empire has been in a state of decay after the spoilery end of the first book, so when the guilt-ridden Arwa realizes that her Amrithri blood is both why she survived the garrison attack and may hold the key to breaking the curse on the empire, she volunteers her service to the imperial family, and begins working with the illegitimate prince Zahir and getting drawn into the deadly politics of the royal court.

I absolutely loved Arwa, who is trying to figure out who she is after spending all of her life thus far being who others wanted her to be, as well her evolving view of her Amrithri heritage from something she hides and is ashamed of to something she values and helps preserve. Her slow burn romance with Zahir works in great part because of the parallels between them—both of them have had to mold themselves into specific roles in order to survive and be loved (which, as Zahir points out, is often equivalent). I also love examinations of relationships that involve an uneasy balance of genuine love and unequal power, so Princess Jihad and Zahir’s sibling relationship where she does love him and yet still treats him as a tool was great, as was Arwa’s complicated feelings towards her parents.

But my favorite relationships were between the women: Gulshera (an older widow with unexpected skills and loyalties) and Arwa’s complex mentor/mentee relationship where both grow to respect and care for each other despite both knowing Gulshera is ultimately loyal to Princess Jihad, Arwa’s spiky gradual friendship with female guard Eshara, and the group of widows she befriends at a border town are all standouts. There are so many instances of overlooked women ultimately saving the day, and I can’t wait for Tasha Suri’s next book The Jasmine Throne, which is apparently F/F!