The enjoyable sequel to Butterfly Swords. I will say this follows a very different format to the first in the Tang Dynasty series by Jeannie Lin, so if you didn't really vibe with Butterfly Swords (I myself learned I don't like road trip romances through that book) you should try this to really check if Jeannie Lin's writing works for you. 

This is the story of the precious consort of the former emperor, Ling Suyin who made a brief appearance in Butterfly Swords and Li Tao the villain of that same book. You do not have to read Butterfly Swords first. All the context for the characters and the over-arching political situation is provided in the text without ever feeling info dumpy. Truly masterful writing there.

A good portion of the novel is spent in Li Tao's isolated manor with his loyal staff so there are some Beauty and the Beast vibes for those of us into that sort of thing. 

Jeannie Lin left me wondering how in the hickety-heck we were supposed to come out of this with an HEA up to the last 10 pages or so of the book. I will warn that there is an

attempted sexual assault and an unexpected pregnancy

for anyone like me who probably needs that CW, but this is a historical romance so we should all be at least a little wary of those popping up. 

This was a very enjoyable read but loses a star and a quarter because I'm honestly not obsessed. I enjoyed the experience, I devoured whole chunks at a time, but I was able to put it down and waste time with other things between chapters. I annotated my copy very little and unless the third book is so amazing it changes the whole series, I can't imagine re-reading it. 

Maybe it's just because I read two Jeannie Lin concubine/soldier romances back to back, but I found this to be VERY long and with only minimal amounts of payoff in the third act considering how long it took to get us there. I did love Shuyin's character arc though and I'm determined to read at least as much of Jeannie Lin's work in 2023 as I did of Sarah MacLean's last year.