Published By: Sphere
Pages: 400
Released On: 28/01/2025
As a child, Little Flower is sold to Linjing’s wealthy family to become a muizai. In a fit of childish jealousy over her new handmaiden’s ladylike bound feet and talent for embroidery, Linjing ensures Little Flower can never leave her to ascend in society.
Despite their starkly different places in the Fong household, over the years the two girls must work together to secure both their futures through Linjing’s marriage. As the two grow up, they are by turns bitter rivals and tentative friends.
Until scandal strikes the family, and Linjing and Little Flower’s lives are unexpectedly thrown into chaos. Linjing’s fall from grace could be an opportunity for Little Flower – but will their intertwined fates lead to triumph, or tragedy for them both?
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Sphere for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
Firstly can I have a bit of commotion for the cover. How gorgeous is it?! And I would also like to point out that this is Jane’s debut, and so she’s definitely got my intrigued for her future work.
I haven’t read much Chinese fiction, in fact I think I’ve only read a handful over the years, but what I have found is it tends to be wrapped up in a sense of magic. I can’t quite put my finger on it. But I find fiction from that part of the world (China, Japan, Korea), it’s like a kind of nostalgia for a place and time I don’t know. They seem almost…delicate. In the way a ceramic vase can be beautiful but fragile, that’s how I feel about books from that part of the world. Hopefully that makes sense to you, or you might just think I’ve officially lost the plot – you wouldn’t be the first one to think that.
I do love a historical novel, especially when set in a place I know nothing about, so this had it all going for it.
This book opened me up to a culture I knew little about. For example, I had heard of foot binding, but I never really understood what foot binding means in China, only my uneducated western opinion, and so I love having my eyes opened to important cultural aspects that seem to have passed me by.
It is quite a hard book to read in terms of the content. It’s not full of violence or erotica or anything like that. But there’s certain elements that I found quite distressing to read – which I admit may be due to my lack of cultural understanding.
I admit there were times I considered stopping reading it. Not because it was bad or boring or I wasn’t enjoying it, no. But because it made me really angry, some of these things that they do, treating young girls the way they do (I won’t spoil it by saying how), or “unworthy” mothers. And I think because it’s very real is what angers me. So it wasn’t a book I could read in one sitting. I had to take breaks from it and let it sink in.
It is very character heavy, which I like. There is a plot but this is more the journey of the characters go on and how they work off each other, which I really enjoyed.
There are a few time jumps in the book, which I understand because you want to show these characters at different ages, but some I felt were a little sudden. I’d have liked a more gentle transition through the ages so we can get a really good picture of how they are at each stage, but that’s a small point, and not enough to make the reading of it less enjoyable, just an observation.
I did think it was going to be a Cinderella Story kind of story, which it wasn’t. It went down a route I wasn’t necessarily expecting but it was still an interesting story to read, I couldn’t guess where I thought it was going at any stage.
Overall I think it’s a very promising debut. It’s full of heart, history, passion, and culture, with well written characters and a fascinating journey. It’s very honest and raw and not always in a way that makes for easy reading, but very interesting and enjoyable all the same. This is a very accomplished book that it’s hard to believe it’s Jane’s debut, but I am eager to see how she follows it up.
Books By Your Bedside 