
FloralSoup started reading...
13h

In My Dreams I Hold a Knife
Ashley Winstead
Six friends. One college reunion. One unsolved murder. A college reunion turns dark and deadly in this chilling and propulsive suspense novel about six friends, one unsolved murder, and the dark secrets they’ve been hiding from each other—and themselves—for a decade. Ten years after graduation, Jessica Miller has planned her triumphant return to southern, elite Duquette University, down to the envious whispers that are sure to follow in her wake. Everyone is going to see the girl she wants them to see—confident, beautiful, indifferent—not the girl she was when she left campus, back when Heather’s murder fractured everything, including the tight bond linking the six friends she’d been closest to since freshman year. Ten years ago, everything fell apart, including the dreams she worked for her whole life—and her relationship with the one person she wasn’t supposed to love. But not everyone is ready to move on. Not everyone left Duquette ten years ago, and not everyone can let Heather’s murder go unsolved. Someone is determined to trap the real killer, to make the guilty pay. When the six friends are reunited, they will be forced to confront what happened that night—and the years’ worth of secrets each of them would do anything to keep hidden. Told in racing dual timelines, with a dark campus setting and a darker look at friendship, love, obsession, and ambition, In My Dreams I Hold A Knife is an addictive, propulsive read you won’t be able to put down.

FloralSoup started reading...
19h

Practical Magic
Alice Hoffman
The Owens sisters confront the challenges of life and love in this bewitching novel from New York Times bestselling author Alice Hoffman. For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have endured that fate as well: as children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats. But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape. One will do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they share will bring them back—almost as if by magic...

FloralSoup finished a book
1d

Someone We Know
Shari Lapena
Maybe you don't know your neighbors as well as you thought you did . . . "This is a very difficult letter to write. I hope you will not hate us too much. . . My son broke into your home recently while you were out." In a quiet, leafy suburb in upstate New York, a teenager has been sneaking into houses--and into the owners' computers as well--learning their secrets, and maybe sharing some of them, too. Who is he, and what might he have uncovered? After two anonymous letters are received, whispers start to circulate, and suspicion mounts. And when a woman down the street is found murdered, the tension reaches the breaking point. Who killed her? Who knows more than they're telling? And how far will all these very nice people go to protect their own secrets? In this neighborhood, it's not just the husbands and wives who play games. Here, everyone in the family has something to hide . . . You never really know what people are capable of.

FloralSoup started reading...
2d

Someone We Know
Shari Lapena
Maybe you don't know your neighbors as well as you thought you did . . . "This is a very difficult letter to write. I hope you will not hate us too much. . . My son broke into your home recently while you were out." In a quiet, leafy suburb in upstate New York, a teenager has been sneaking into houses--and into the owners' computers as well--learning their secrets, and maybe sharing some of them, too. Who is he, and what might he have uncovered? After two anonymous letters are received, whispers start to circulate, and suspicion mounts. And when a woman down the street is found murdered, the tension reaches the breaking point. Who killed her? Who knows more than they're telling? And how far will all these very nice people go to protect their own secrets? In this neighborhood, it's not just the husbands and wives who play games. Here, everyone in the family has something to hide . . . You never really know what people are capable of.

FloralSoup finished a book
3d

The Apothecary Diaries (Light Novel): Volume 5
Natsu Hyuuga
The political situation at court has changed: the birth of Gyokuyou’s son has seen her elevated to the status of Empress, and meanwhile Jinshi is no longer able to continue his pretense at the rear palace. Although all seems peaceful after the destruction of the Shi clan, threats continue to loom—not least a potential plague of insects—and Maomao, as ever, somehow finds herself caught up in them. When Jinshi orders an expedition to Gyokuyou’s homeland, Maomao heads west. But is there something lurking in the shadows of the glittering city? And will Maomao be able to discover what it is before it’s too late?

FloralSoup started reading...
4d

The Apothecary Diaries (Light Novel): Volume 5
Natsu Hyuuga
The political situation at court has changed: the birth of Gyokuyou’s son has seen her elevated to the status of Empress, and meanwhile Jinshi is no longer able to continue his pretense at the rear palace. Although all seems peaceful after the destruction of the Shi clan, threats continue to loom—not least a potential plague of insects—and Maomao, as ever, somehow finds herself caught up in them. When Jinshi orders an expedition to Gyokuyou’s homeland, Maomao heads west. But is there something lurking in the shadows of the glittering city? And will Maomao be able to discover what it is before it’s too late?

FloralSoup TBR'd a book
1w

The Employees
Olga Ravn
The near-distant future. Millions of kilometres from Earth. The crew of the Six-Thousand Ship consists of those who were born, and those who were made. Those who will die, and those who will not. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew is perplexed to find itself becoming deeply attached to them, and human and humanoid employees alike start aching for the same things: warmth and intimacy. Loved ones who have passed. Shopping and child-rearing. Our shared, far-away Earth, which now only persists in memory. Gradually, the crew members come to see their work in a new light, and each employee is compelled to ask themselves whether they can carry on as before and what it means to be truly living. Structured as a series of witness statements compiled by a workplace commission, Ravn's crackling prose is as chilling as it is moving, as exhilarating as it is foreboding. Wracked by all kinds of longing, The Employees probes into what it means to be human, emotionally and ontologically, while simultaneously delivering an overdue critique of a life governed by work and the logic of productivity.

FloralSoup TBR'd a book
1w

In My Dreams I Hold a Knife
Ashley Winstead
Six friends. One college reunion. One unsolved murder. A college reunion turns dark and deadly in this chilling and propulsive suspense novel about six friends, one unsolved murder, and the dark secrets they’ve been hiding from each other—and themselves—for a decade. Ten years after graduation, Jessica Miller has planned her triumphant return to southern, elite Duquette University, down to the envious whispers that are sure to follow in her wake. Everyone is going to see the girl she wants them to see—confident, beautiful, indifferent—not the girl she was when she left campus, back when Heather’s murder fractured everything, including the tight bond linking the six friends she’d been closest to since freshman year. Ten years ago, everything fell apart, including the dreams she worked for her whole life—and her relationship with the one person she wasn’t supposed to love. But not everyone is ready to move on. Not everyone left Duquette ten years ago, and not everyone can let Heather’s murder go unsolved. Someone is determined to trap the real killer, to make the guilty pay. When the six friends are reunited, they will be forced to confront what happened that night—and the years’ worth of secrets each of them would do anything to keep hidden. Told in racing dual timelines, with a dark campus setting and a darker look at friendship, love, obsession, and ambition, In My Dreams I Hold A Knife is an addictive, propulsive read you won’t be able to put down.

FloralSoup started reading...
1w

Bat Eater
Kylie Lee Baker
Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner, washing away the remains of brutal murders and suicides in Chinatown. The bloody messes don't bother her, not when she's already witnessed the most horrific thing possible: her sister being pushed in front of a train. Before fleeing the scene, the murderer whispered two words: bat eater. Months pass, the killer is never caught, and Cora can barely keep herself together. She pushes away all feelings, disregards the bite marks that appear on her coffee table, and won't take her aunt's advice to prepare for the Hungry Ghost Festival, when the gates of hell open. Cora tries to ignore the rising dread in her stomach, even when she and her weird co-workers begin finding bat carcasses at their crime scene clean-ups. But Cora can't ignore the fact that all their recent clean-ups have been the bodies of East Asian women. Soon Cora will learn: you can't just ignore hungry ghosts.

FloralSoup finished a book
1w

The Apothecary Diaries (Light Novel): Volume 11
Natsu Hyuuga
I-sei Province is still reeling in the aftermath of the insect plague. Jinshi resolves to do everything in his power to help the people of this land—but how far does his power really go in the western capital? And will he regret his efforts when all the credit seems to go to Gyoku-ou? The local lord seems to have an agenda of his own, but Jinshi still doesn’t know what it might be. Meanwhile Maomao must deal with problems of her own, from finding relief for a sick child to unraveling the mystery around the freak strategist’s favorite Shogi opponent. Somehow, each answer only seems to lead her to a bigger question...

FloralSoup finished a book
1w

The Apothecary Diaries (Light Novel): Volume 10
Natsu Hyuuga
Maomao finds herself once more in the western capital. She tries to focus on her work—which isn’t made any easier when she’s paired with not just the quack doctor but the smart-mouthed young physician Tianyu. Meanwhile, Jinshi might be the Imperial younger brother, but the western capital has its own hierarchies, both obvious and hidden. He and the other visitors from the court will have to navigate these halls of power even more carefully than usual, lest they run afoul of enemies they don’t even know they have. Over it all looms the threat of the insect plague, which seems insurmountable—until one man claims to know how to counter the menace. His method is intimately connected to secrets buried deep in the region’s past.

FloralSoup is interested in reading...
1w

Hell to Pay
Kylie Lee Baker
The riveting, darkly humorous, and deeply strange story of three roommates whose everyday struggle to survive in New York is complicated by the intestine-eating demon who haunts their apartment. Leni was kidnapped and almost sacrificed to the devil as a child, but now she’s perfectly fine. Aside from the fact that she has four reflections in the mirror…and one of them wants her to poison people. Emerson was a leading heart surgeon until The Incident that left his patient dead. Now he’s too sick to work, keeps finding severed fingers in his water bottles, and is followed around by a faceless Girl Scout with a creaky red wagon. Jasper is a line cook with a criminal record, just trying to keep his chosen family together. Sure, he sees a man in the shadows who likes the taste of blood, but he’s very good at ignoring that. He would do anything for Leni and Emerson. Anything. They’re fine. They’re normal. They’re roommates making it work in New York City. That is, until a demon leaves his sigil on their wall. Now, they have seven days to bring Sychar a sacrifice, or he’ll tear off their skin. Who knew demon-slaying wasn’t a valid excuse to miss work? Why are murder supplies so expensive? Just how is a low-income household supposed to afford a human sacrifice? As their personal ghosts grow louder and Sychar’s deadline draws nearer, Leni, Emerson, and Jasper discover just how far they’ll go to protect each other.

FloralSoup is interested in reading...
1w

Bat Eater
Kylie Lee Baker
Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner, washing away the remains of brutal murders and suicides in Chinatown. The bloody messes don't bother her, not when she's already witnessed the most horrific thing possible: her sister being pushed in front of a train. Before fleeing the scene, the murderer whispered two words: bat eater. Months pass, the killer is never caught, and Cora can barely keep herself together. She pushes away all feelings, disregards the bite marks that appear on her coffee table, and won't take her aunt's advice to prepare for the Hungry Ghost Festival, when the gates of hell open. Cora tries to ignore the rising dread in her stomach, even when she and her weird co-workers begin finding bat carcasses at their crime scene clean-ups. But Cora can't ignore the fact that all their recent clean-ups have been the bodies of East Asian women. Soon Cora will learn: you can't just ignore hungry ghosts.