I enjoyed this! I was not expecting a lot of it! It’s very surprising that it came out last year bc I’m just trawling my library audiobook collection :3 I think it successfully told a beautiful and broad-ranging story about love, romantic, familial, complicated. The audiobook is also good, with two readers tackling chapters from different perspectives.

I probably will look out for more by this author - it didn’t blow me away and fill me with awe, but it was definitely more engaging and I think more skilful than most light historical fiction/light fantasy I read.

Alright, spoilers ahead.

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I think the parts in the seraglio sometimes dragged on a bit. Also, it’s been two months & I am not equipped to do this atm, but there is probably much to say about race in this book, especially in relation to it as historical fiction drawing from historical tropes. I didn’t think of it while reading somehow but of course the European held in the seraglio, and the ending in a marriage (or three couples), and probably other things I’m not noticing, are totally in dialogue with period literature & drama (alas I don’t read enough to tell what or when, only to recognise these elements!). It didn’t make that literariness an inescapable part of the story, though (except for a self-indulgent but I think successful quote near the end), which, even though I do like that now and then, I appreciated. The whole thing had an interesting approach to slightly fantastical historical fiction that I’ll probably think more about. And to romance!