It’s time for one of these updates! I’m always so honoured and excited when I can meet authors I love in person and get my books hand signed by them.
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of seeing Chloe Gong on one of her tour stops for her latest book and last of the Secret Shanghai universe, Foul Heart Huntsman.
About Chloe Gong
She is the #1 New York Times bestseller of These Violent Delightsand Our Violent Ends. Her next series, the one this tour was for, was also an immediate NYT bestseller. Let’s also not forget her foray into adult fantasy/sci fi this year with Immortal Longings that also topped those lists. What an accomplishment! And all of this by age 24! I’m super proud of her success, especially continuing to elevate Asian representation in fantasies where it’s been less prevalent before.
Highlights from her talk
The book event was awesome in and of itself. Chloe is such a confident speaker who lovingly exclaims over her writing process, describing when certain surprise events in her books were planned out and how she turned her side character, Rosalind, into someone worthy of the main character mantle in this spin off series. Everything is thought out, though that doesn’t mean the final version we received was necessarily similar to the early drafts. Let’s just say, her debut was originally meant to be one book instead of a duology so the original ending was a lot sadder (thanks Chloe for not doing that).
Fun fact: if there’s a line or moment she really liked that doesn’t end up fitting super well in that scene after revisions, she doesn’t chop it out completely. Oh no, she figures out a way to re-home that line elsewhere. Perhaps that’s why her books are all 500+ pages.
I love how she keeps it real about her experiences as an author versus how she herself fangirls over fellow authors she grew up reading and loving when she meets them in person. Chloe’s a massively talented writer with her choice of prose and well-crafted atmospheric setting that really makes you feel like you’re living the experiences along with the characters. Have I ever felt as much in the 1920s as I did in Shanghai with her Romeo & Juliet retelling? Not at all.
But of course, the best part was the signing after the talk where I got a few books signed. Thank you to my lovely husband for also coming along even though he doesn’t read fiction at all.
What’s to come from Chloe?
While the Secret Shanghai books are done, there is more yet to come from this budding author. We can expect 2 more books after Immortal Longings to round out that Cleopatra retelling trilogy, and there just may be a new book on the horizon in the science fiction realm where she truly delights to dwell in. If you’ve read any of her books, you’ll know no one genre can fully contain the breadth of those stories, but sci-fi elements are definitely present everywhere.
Last thoughts
I will end by saying it was a honour to meet her in person. And I even got a little Mao Mao drawn on my Immortal Longings ARC (if you know, you know – go and read the book).
In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.
From the author of Before the Coffee Gets Cold and Tales from the Cafe comes another story of four new customers, each of whom is hoping to take advantage of Café Funiculi Funicula’s time-travelling offer. Among some familiar faces from Kawaguchi’s previous novels, readers will also be introduced to a daughter, a comedian, a sister, and a lover, each with something they wish they had said differently.
With his signature heartwarming characters and immersive storytelling, Kawaguchi once again invites the reader to ask themselves: what would you change if you could travel back in time?
The third instalment of the Before the Coffee Gets Cold “series.” This one had different vibes in my opinion compared to the previous ones, and isn’t strictly worse than the previous. However, I personally didn’t enjoy them as much as I did the first two, which reflects in the lower rating. Of course I will explain why below!
Before Your Memory Fades is a similar story to the other two books in the series, revolving around stories of those who come in for a chance to talk to someone in the past, even when nothing about the present can change. Why do people make such a journey? Well, the most obvious answer by now is that the present facts may not change, but the mindset of the person going and coming back from the past can ultimately be altered by the journey. I suppose it’s an illustration of how the journey can be just as important as the destination.
The characters were of course, excellently developed and explored, as per usual. This is one of the strongest points of the story, and even when characters aren’t the most relatable, their plight can often be understood, and the emotions are brought out well by the author. The characters were certainly a little bit more specific and less general here in their problems, so I found them slightly harder to relate to. But that being said I still felt the emotions of what these individuals had to deal with, and this is always expressed well.
The overall plot was decent as well, and the way the characters were tied together were organic enough. The main problem that I had with this book was that the focus was a lot less on the actual stories itself and the growth through that journey, but rather overall it felt a lot more like a commentary on the whole coffee process in general, and why one might want to go back into the past. There was still an emotional element, but I felt that a lot of the focus and perspective was shifted onto a more overarching view about what the journey represents, and how people can benefit from it. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I felt that I had a deeper connection to the characters and a more emotional journey when I got to live through the experiences of the individual stories more.
Overall Recommendations
Before Your Memory Fades is another part in the saga of Before the Coffee Gets Cold. We continue to meet more characters who wish to time travel despite not being able to change the facts of the present. A story much more about the whole process of going back and why anyone would do so, it is still a very intriguing story, and the author certainly knows how to tug at your heartstrings. If you have read the first two books in the series, I’d recommend reading this one too. Let me know what you think as well, as a comparison to the first two!
A curmudgeonly professor journeys to a small town in the far north to study faerie folklore and discovers dark fae magic, friendship, and love in the start of a heartwarming and enchanting new fantasy series.
Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world’s first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party–or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, and the Fair Folk.
So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of Emily’s research, and utterly confound and frustrate her.
But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones–the most elusive of all faeries–lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she’ll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all–her own heart.
Overall Recommendation:
With Emily’s unique voice set in a beautifully imaginative historical world where faeries live among us, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries stands itself firmly out among the crowd. Perfect for an autumn or winter read, this book transports you to this alternative history in early 1900s through Emily’s eyes as a researcher of the fae. I loved the extensive world building and Emily’s grumpy character to Wendell’s bubbly nature. The romance was slow burn while the world takes centre stage, but this is everything I could ask for. This is how a cozy historical fantasy should be done!
The hype was real with this book when it first came out, and I’m never too certain if I want to jump on board the hype train while it’s still hot. However, my workplace book club voted to read this so I gladly decided to pick it up now, a little behind most others, and I’m so happy I did.
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries is the perfect blend of coziness for an autumn/winter read, intrigue into the world building full of all sorts of faeries, and slow burn romance that makes me want to giggle like a young schoolgirl swinging her feet happily. To describe everything that I feel for this book is not going to be easy, but I can describe the tropes I found I really enjoyed.
Starting with characterization, our protagonist Emily is a grumpy introvert with perhaps more than a dash of social anxiety and a huge love of rational thinking. Think Kathy Reich’s protagonist Temperance Brennan kind of awkwardness and love for scientific discovery. I rather enjoyed Emily’s character, from start to finish. She grew a lot in her experiences at Ljosland as she hoped to finish her encyclopedia with an entry on the Hidden Ones found in this sub-Arctic country.
To balance her character, her mysterious colleague and sometimes rival, Wendell Bambleby was an enigma from the start. Bubbly personality that could charm pretty much anyone once he got started, he was the complete opposite of Emily in pretty much most ways. While he enjoyed his work on faeries, he was noted to have many students help him with the “hard” work and may have fabricated data for a study or two (whoops). His teamwork with Emily, though, was one of my favourite things. This was the true definition of a grumpy and sunshine couple, and I loved seeing their banter that brought out Emily’s snarkiness and his teasing. For fans of romance, I will say this was a very slow burn romance that barely constituted much in this book, however, I wouldn’t want it to change a thing as it sets the stage for so much more we can expect in the next book.
The mystery surrounding Wendell, as hinted in the synopsis, doesn’t actually come at the end but gradually builds which was a delightful surprise. It’s not that we know everything, but it’s enough to draw us forward for what’s to come. I thought that was beautifully done by Heather, and she may be an author to love based on this alone.
Other tropes I loved that was featured heavily is the concept of found family. Emily never made ties with the villagers in the remote locations she did field work for her research. She did her thing and left, no emotions or strings attached. But in an isolated place like Ljosland, when things go awry (and oh boy, do they have some interesting misadventures), you need someone to count on besides yourself. I really enjoyed seeing these secondary characters blossom a little, and how they brought out Emily’s softer side that wasn’t so rigid in empirical thinking.
The pace and world building were excellently done as well, something I find can be quite hard in books. Written as a detailed journal with dated entries, it never quite felt like the story was too long or the author dumped a load of information about the world for the sake of knowledge alone. References were made, including little intriguing footnotes, that made me want to know more instead of reading paragraphs full of descriptions that made me yawn. I thoroughly enjoyed this method of giving us information while being true to Emily’s experiences and her voice. If you’re a fan of Piranesi, I would think this similar writing style would be of interest to you.
I’ve done all this talking and I haven’t even gotten to the faeries yet. Honestly, even if this wasn’t a faerie book, there are just so many things to love already. But as it is a faerie book, I will mention there is so much creativity and imaginative thought put into this story. From different faerie stories collected Emily has collected in her research travels to the different species and their unique attributes/weaknesses, even the randomest details in Emily’s notes she references could play a larger role in the overall story than we know. The faeries range from scary/violent to little common fae I would love to meet. Heather has put care into describing them and crafting this folklore feel around everything. If I had to absolutely pick my most favourite element of this book, I’d have to go with this.
I could go on and gush more, but I will end off saying this book more than meets the hype. You may not think of yourself as a historical fantasy kind of reader, but you wouldn’t know until you try. There are so many elements here to love. In a similar vein to Rebecca Ross’ A River Enchanted, there’s not only magic in the story, but there is magic in reading the book itself.
Down the Rabbit Hole 