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A review by rachelselene
The Jade Temptress by Jeannie Lin
3.0
”you sit in gardens and dream of forests.”
i have mixed feelings about this one. i jumped right into it after finishing the first book in the series, the lotus palace, which was so rich and evocative that i couldn’t wait for more. jeannie is, as always, an excellent writer with a gift for imagery and sensory descriptions — the writing in this installment is stellar. i liked mingyu, clever and determined and fierce beneath the delicate flower facade, but i never really warmed to kaifeng, even after all the pains jeannie takes to remind us about the softness hidden beneath his lack of eloquence. moreover — the strength of the lotus palace was that it struck a nice balance between substance and romance, but the jade temptress is angst first and mystery second. there’s a whole lot of waffling around while nothing happens except mingfeng pining for one another (i just coined that ship name), and some threads felt unresolved to me at the end.
i actually loved catching up with yue-ying and bai huang — i don’t know if i realized how much fun they were until they were no longer my main characters.
i have mixed feelings about this one. i jumped right into it after finishing the first book in the series, the lotus palace, which was so rich and evocative that i couldn’t wait for more. jeannie is, as always, an excellent writer with a gift for imagery and sensory descriptions — the writing in this installment is stellar. i liked mingyu, clever and determined and fierce beneath the delicate flower facade, but i never really warmed to kaifeng, even after all the pains jeannie takes to remind us about the softness hidden beneath his lack of eloquence. moreover — the strength of the lotus palace was that it struck a nice balance between substance and romance, but the jade temptress is angst first and mystery second. there’s a whole lot of waffling around while nothing happens except mingfeng pining for one another (i just coined that ship name), and some threads felt unresolved to me at the end.
i actually loved catching up with yue-ying and bai huang — i don’t know if i realized how much fun they were until they were no longer my main characters.