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Review: Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker

Picture of a hardcover copy of Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker sitting on a blue cloth surface with the front cover facing the camera.
I rather like the front cover design for Japanese Gothic, while the cover image is from Adobe Stock & iStock, the art direction which was done by Alexandra Niit is very good.

It was different from the way she’d blushed and felt her heart beat faster around one of the older boys at the samurai academy. Different from when she’d glimpsed on of the more handsome Shimazu sons that her father said she might marry one day, before they’d lost everything. She didn’t want Lee Turner to kiss her, or marry her, or fall in love with her. She wanted him to sit beside her on this porch and watch the stars with her for as long as she was still alive. She wanted to exist beside him, to be real and whole in someone else’s eyes, to bare her soul to someone and have them stay beside her anyway.

page 271, Sen
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Review: The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden

Picture of a hardcover copy of The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden sitting on a blue cloth surface with the front cover facing the camera.
This front cover design for The Unicorn Hunters is very good, I think it captures the vibe reasonably well. Jacket design by Irene Ng and jacket illustration by Serena Malyon.

She’d imagine how it would be, wakeful in bed, and sometimes in quiet moments, walking through Rennes or in long, tedious councils. How warm it was, to be so near someone else, how it burned to touch. His knowing eyes and knowing hands, the calluses of rein and swordhilt. How he’d taken the sacrifice upon himself, a gift she had never wanted because she’d never been able to imagine it.

page 228-229
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Review: Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker

A picture showing my paperback copy of Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker sitting on a blue cloth surface. The front cover is facing the camera.
I could do without the NYT sticker but otherwise I like the front cover design for Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker. Art direction/design by Tara Scarcello.

Cora Zeng does not get angry. Not because Auntie Lois says anger is a sin, or because Delilah could never be bothered with such an emotion, or because Cora is sage enough to understand that it is a pointless, destructive feeling. Cora Zeng does not get angry because anger always melts through her fingers until it’s a pool of anguish under her feet. There is not enough oxygen inside Cora to keep anger burning. No matter how hard she tries, she can only wield her sharpest thoughts against her own flesh. She knows, on some level that most of the problems in her life are her own fault in one way or another. Anger is just one of of those thoughts that can never quite sink its teeth into her–she is not solid enough, and its jaws close around nothing at all.

page 90
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Review: Taipei Story by R.F. Kuang

A picture of a hardcover copy of Taipei Story by R. F. Kuang sitting on a brown wooden table with the front cover facing the camera.
I really love the front cover design for Taipei Story though I’ll say the typeface used is a bit plain. The jacket design is by Ploy Siripant. Jacket and digital edge illustrations by Whooli Chen/Central Illustration Agency.

But their Chinese was no better and no worse than mine. I had also used the Integrated Chinese textbook. I, too, knew Wang Peng. We were on the same itinerary so that we could fill in the same gaping lack, and the only thing that would resolve this was the passage of time—ten weeks in Taipei, immersed in our mother tongue—until we returned with perfect tones spilling out of our mouths, and we were no longer so bad at being Chinese.

page 3
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