⭐ 3.75 | ❤️ 2/5

For Chinese drama fans, if you liked Joy of Life, you might enjoy the humor in this. This is a dual timeline love story with historical setting with camp. Romance readers: please note that it has an unconventional HEA.

This is a hard book to rate and review. At its best (3rd quarter), it was a 4.5 for me. At its lowest, it was a 2.5 for me (4th/final quarter). What the book does really well, it does incredibly well: the slow burn between Rujia and Keran, the prose, and the banter. The aspects of the book that I struggled with were very challenging for me, which I’ll go over later in the review.

The writing is controlled and poetic without being overwrought or overreaching. It’s cinematic, incredibly visual, and the mouthwatering mentions of food throughout gave texture to the Chinese setting.

I really enjoyed the romance, and I’d compare the romance between Rujia and Keran to what you might get from a regency romance. The build up is characterized by restraint and tension that neither will name although you can see it clearly unfold through subtle involuntary physical cues (a suppressed smile, color in cheeks), an accumulation of small acts and small physical touches (a thumb on a wrist, the tugging of a sleeve to lead through a crowd, resting chin on a head). Their romance is shown rather than told and has tenderness, specificity, vulnerability, and devotion. The progression felt organic, and they just make sense together. I also enjoyed the dry banter too and felt that the execution of camp landed well. Their romance (as well as the writing) was carrying the story for me.

There were a couple of issues that I struggled with which includes the characterization, which didn’t land the way the romance did. Rujia’s arc does include growth, but it played out more as a declaration of her shifted perspective (via internal monologue, where she explains her arc to the reader with some behavior changes) than something that unfolded gradually.

Junyi was a POV character I didn’t connect with. His personality in one timeline felt defined by his feelings for another character, while he comes across as a completely different person in the other timeline, and to some degree, makes sense but he felt so different that I wouldn’t have even recognized him if not for him sharing the same name, physical resemblance, and introversion as a through line. Additionally, there’s a scene in the present timeline, when he seemed out of character entirely, where he was brutally violent and cruel, which felt like it came out of nowhere with how extreme it was and then never appeared again.

I would have liked to see the secondary characters developed further. Ziyan seems to exist only in relation to Junyi rather than a person in her own right, and I found their romance didn’t feel earned in the way that Rujia and Keran’s did. The other two side characters didn’t feel individuated enough for me to recall who was who (it might have helped if their physical appearances were described).

I was pleasantly surprised by the book exploring privilege and the impact of ones environment on a person’s character and what they can achieve. There is the theme of fate vs free will throughout tying the story together, which is debated thoughtfully by the characters and tested by their actions, but unfortunately the story’s resolution wasn’t as satisfying as I had hoped it would be.

A couple of world building rules didn’t fully hold up for me. For example, the book establishes that 1 celestial day equates 1 mortal year; in other words, 100 celestial years should equate 36,500 mortal years. But the past timeline reads more like a thousand years based on environmental details (in a teahouse-like brothel full of women in colorful gauze robes with ribbons, a courtesan’s silhouette can be seen behind folding screens with a circular hand fan and adorned with hair beads) more reminiscent of the Tang dynasty rather than the Paleolithic era, which pulled me out of the story.

Overall, I did really love the story when the focus was on the romance (3rd quarter), and even in parts that I had issues with (4th quarter), I still enjoyed the beautiful writing. If you enjoy lush prose, an ancient Chinese setting, regency romance style romance, and don’t look too closely at world building logic, you may enjoy this.

Audiobook listeners: This is a solo narration by an Asian American narrator (love the rep!) with distinct voice for each character. It’s a very animated narration style akin to what you might hear in rom coms, which felt a bit different in tone than my read of the ebook. If you prefer a brighter, more animated narration, I would recommend the audiobook. Rujia gave a manic pixie dream girl vibe in the audiobook in act 1 that I didn’t pick up on when reading the ebook, so I think your personal taste will determine whether the audiobook or the print format is more suited to you since I do think each format is strong in their own right (the audiobook is well narrated, and the print format really allows you to enjoy the beautiful prose and also felt tonally different). The voice actor did a good job with the MMC Keran’s voice, where I did find his voice to suit his character well.

CW: Suicide ideation, suicide, torture, graphic violence, child death, unconventional HEA

This review is based on an ARC provided by St. Martin’s Press and ALC provided by Macmillan Audio via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.