I’m really grateful for ARC sites, you know? They offer me a wide range of books tailored to my tastes – sometimes the algorithm goes boom, but we’ll talk about that on a different post, yeah? – and they give me the opportunity to unheart little gems here and there.

Plastic bead, plastic bead, shiny but still plastic bead– oh hey, a pearl!

Meet one of the aforementioned pearls, please: Flowers by Night.

(I should have used a flower example and link back to the title. Good pun chance, wasted. Anyway!)

Historical. LGBT. Plot-driven. A sensible cover. I mean *handwave* Lucy May, you had me at hello.

[Keep reading @ Bookshelves & Teacups]


[I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.] ( )

Highly recommended!
This is such a wonderful read, and such a great tale. I fell in love with Tomonosuke and Ichi right away, both so well-rounded, well-written characters, and got invested in their relationship and their fate which doesn’t happen often for me. The secondary protagonists, Okyo and Ri, took a bit longer to warm to, but then I thoroughly enjoyed how well their issues and motivations were also addressed, and how things worked out for them. At times, I wanted to slap Tomonosuke for his condescending or ignorant behaviour towards Ichi, although it was pretty clear he behaved just as you’d expect from a male in his position in his time and culture. In fact, one of my favourite parts of this story is how well the cultural and historcial context was relayed through the narration style, and how easy it was for me to get a feeling of this culture, and to understand foreign-to-me details and concepts through expertly-used context, without the need of spelling things out plainly as you find so often in stories these days. I’ve been mostly ignorant of Japanese culture before, and historic culture in particular, and didn’t expect to find it so easy to get immersed in the story. Another highlight was how the author treated the cultural customs about relationships, (homo)sexuality, and disability. It’s rare to find these subjects treated so well and be clearly well-researched in historical fiction. ( )