My Bookish Life

  First of all I'd like to thank Annabe Fielding herself, for contacting me on my booktwt and asking me to read her new book. Thank you so much, it made me incredibly happy to get my first ARC!  And it was a brilliant read!  CAREFUL! If you want  to receive no spoilers for this story, skip to the next quote and read from there!  "Still waters are deep."    The book is set in Edwardian England and starts with a young girl - Agnes Ashford - who's working for Lord and Lady Bryant as archivist. The story is mostly set in Hartfell Hall in Leicestershire and in London. The books beginn with her wandering through the deep tunnels under the castle and looking through old documents and letters to archive them chronologically. We see her uncover the mystery of the death of the second youngest child Gregory. With this she comes closer to Lady Helen Bryant. But things all change for the whole family when Lord Bryant is poisoned.  Agnes soon rises to a secreta...

I brought The Poppy War  by R.F. Kuang last year in autumn. I saw it on Instagram and did some research on it and thought "this sounds interesting, let's order it". Only to read it over the last three weeks and to finish it on Monday. I've one word for it: brilliant! “If there is a divine creator, some ultimate moral authority, then why do bad things happen to good people? And why would this deity create people at all, since people are such imperfect beings?”  The story starts with a young girl, Rin, who's living in the south of Nikan with abusive foster parents. She's a war orphan and supposed to marry an opium dealer. She's out of the way with this and the Fangs - her foster parents, who are also dealers - will have full control over their opium business in their village with this arranged marriage. But Rin has own plans. She manages to convince the Fangs to try taking part in the Keju to study at one of the Academies in the country to get away. Her goal...

  “The stars incline us, they do not bind us.” I finished this book about an hour ago and I'm once more ruined. My feelings are ruined by a book. Probably my fav so far this year.  Definitely 5/5 stars!  But let me tell you how it came to this...  I brought this book last November for myself as a birthday present (yes I do that). It sat in my shelve for ages, never coming around to read it, although I just heard good things and the cover is just stunning, it sat there and waited. Waited for the moment I'd pick it up. The moment was this Tuesday, shortly before my parents arrived for lunch. I didn't really get around to read it that day, only the prologue and it intrigued me. Since I had a massive headache on Wednesday, I didn't even picked it up for two days an the madness started on Friday when I finally picked it up again. And I couldn't put it down! It took me a few chapters to get into Chloe Gong's writing style but I absolutely loved it! She's really go...