#Velvet Was the Night

[theinquisitxor]

March 2023 Reading Wrap-Up

Hard to believe that we are already going into April, but I read 7 books in March + 1 dnf. It was a really good reading month in general, and I found some new favorites this month.

1.A Day Of Fallen Night (Roots of Chaos #0) by Samatha Shannon. 5/5 stars. Absolutely stellar and my favorite book so far this year. I thought this was better than Priory and this is one of the few books where I don't think I have any complaints. Adult High Fantasy

2.The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty 4/5 stars. This was a very entertaining story about lady pirate coming out of retirement for one last job, set in the middle east during the middle ages. Very fast paced, plot and action driven story. Excited to see where this new series goes. Adult Historical Fantasy

3.The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokski 1/5 stars-DNF. I could not stand this book, and stopped only after about 25%. Sadly, I don't think Chokski is an author for me. There were a lot of things I didn't like- the writing style, the characters, the instalove. I was very disappointed in this. Adult Fantasy

(the same cover artist did the covers for both A Day of Fallen Night and Amina al-Sirafi!)

4.The River of Silver : Tales from the Daevabad Trilogy by SA Chakrabory 4/5 stars. I really enjoyed reading this collection of short stories from one of my favorite series. This included stories from before, during, and after the main events of the series. This gave a good wrap-up and bonus content to this series. Adult High Fantasy

5.Velvet Was The Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia 3/5 stars. This was an enjoyable historical noir from one of my new favorite authors. I didn't enjoy this book as much as Garcia's others, but it was quite different. Historical Noir.

6.Persepolis Rising (The Expanse #7) by James SA Corey 4/5 stars. I'm hoping to finally finish this series this year, and I enjoyed this entry quite a bit. It is very action and plot driven, but I really like the new plot and new villain this book introduced. It should be a good end to the series. Science-Fiction

7.Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen. A must read for ace folks and those interested. Really well done and informative. Nonfiction

8. Legendborn by Tracy Deonn 4.5/5 stars. Wow wow wow I really like this. I was hooked, and could not put this down. It was very action and plot forward, but didn't feel over the top. This was also unique and original, even though it has familiar ya tropes. A new favorite and I hope to read book 2 soon. YA Fantasy.

That is:

5 Fantasy, 1 Historical Fiction, 1 Nonfiction .

April TBR:

The Evening and The Morning by Ken Follett

How High We Go In the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

A Lady for A Duke by Alexis Hall

A Marvelous Light by Freya Marske

How to Live like a Monk: Medieval Wisdom for Modern Life by Danielle Cybulskie

[leer-reading-lire]

JOMP Book Photo Challenge || June || 30 || Read in June

[lascapigliata]

VELVET WAS THE NIGHT WAS SO GOOD. i wrote a post about this last night and decided to wait until i had a night’s distance to make sure i felt the same way and i do

the way she writes the two main characters circling each other was so good - while never even having them meet! and not in a “then he saw her across a crowded room” cheesy way, like it’s so grounded so we as the audience experience this tension while the characters feel a minor echo of the same and that in itself makes this delicious frustration

i admire a ton that she can slip between genres so smoothly. she can really do fantasy in gods of jade and shadow and then noir here and both feel so rooted in their genre well.

she does have a distance in her writing that prevents me from feeling quite the same level of empathy or immersion as i want but at the same time i think that’s a personal preference i have rather than a real flaw in her writing; my critiques were really minor nitpicks

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️, loved it, highly recommend for ppl who like thrillers/tension, noirs with modern prose style, and don’t mind really unlikeable pov characters

[nocturnal-milk-dud]

THIS BOOK IS MAKING ME INSANE

These two characters haven't even officially met but it feels like they've been having a conversation THROUGH me??? The entire time??? And now they're having a conversation through songs they're choosing on a jukebox?! And DON'T even get me STARTED on the songs they're choosing. AND THE BOOK IS SO CLOSE TO BEING OVER IF THEY NEVER ACTUALLY TALK TO EACH OTHER I WILL LOSE MY GODDAMN MIND

[deadiez]

every book I read in january 2023. they’re ranked from best to worst:)

[dwellordream]

the interior illustration for Velvet Was The Night is so fun

[kuramirocket]

"I can't stop thinking about things, ever. Sometimes I look at a word in a dictionary and I wonder, how did that word come to have this meaning? How did hot mean hot or cold mean cold, and why some words sound the same but mean different things. Then I also think about how things might be and how they aren't."

- Maite

From Velvet was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

[tomewardbound]

"He wanted to tell her he'd seen her in a book about fairy tales once, when he was a kid, and he believed you could grow a beanstalk that might reach the heavens."

— Silvia Moreno-Garcia, "Velvet Was the Night"

[light-macadamia]

velvet was the night | books’22

star rating: ★ ★ ★ .5 

genre: crime | historical | mystery

synopsis:

1970s, Mexico City. Maite is a secretary who lives for one thing: the latest issue of Secret Romance. While student protests and political unrest consume the city, Maite escapes into stories of passion and danger. When her neighbor disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman—and journeying deeper into Leonora’s secret life of student radicals and dissidents

It caught me by surprise, but this one might (emphasis on might) be my second favourite in Silvia Moreno Garcia’s bibliography, with Mexican Gothic still being a crown winner by a mile. Whether that speaks to me being too keen on noir, or wanting to muse on the nature of unlikeable characters, remains to be seen.

Mousy female characters, the unseen secretaries, the shy unwed women, are an archetype made with intentional element of endearment. Their innocence and simplicity is sweet, their small and sheltered life sets up genuine confoundedness for any upcoming bump that goes in the story. Arguably a cheap gateway into readers’ hearts! But modern literature has been more bold in making it a field of experimentation. Because Maite’s mousiness is not endearing, when she is a kleptomanic rat; her shyness hides sexual starvation, and her interest towards others is pulled by the strings of her empty wallet. I have seen many reviews that spoke of how little they could root for her, and I was not rooting for Maite, either.

Maite is the heroine least interested in the story happening around her, and only starts paying attention once it becomes apparent that it might be a crumb of excitement in an otherwise dull meal of her life.

She gets a lot more than she bargained for, a lot more than just payback for cat food, but here is what I am getting at. When it comes to unlikeable characters, it is often not their personal faults that kill the beat. It is the insistence on their inherent goodness regardless of these faults, or insistence on their plain relatability. This is where Monique from The Seven Husband’s was made, for me personally, helplessly distant, and Finlay of Finlay Donovan is Killing It, practically indigestible.There was no such insistence on Moreno-Garcia’s part. It was easy to take a backseat and just accept that Maite is going to float through the story in her own bubble full of cheesy tropes from a paperback romance, while the world around was otherwise occupied - spinning on the axis of oppression and violence. The political instability, young people trampled underfoot, — protestors, moles, or infiltrators — was the content of Elvis’s life; the shadow that gave the defining shape to Maite’s ignorance.

Which fits in so well with what the story is about: lives in the time of government hostility. Those who can choose their ignorance, those who choose otherwise, and those who do not have the option to choose. Silvia Moreno-Garcia speaks to me as a writer, because she takes the reader to a different place in a different time, and shows the things that are familiar anyway. There's some personal relevance to the reader who is a resident of an oppressive state, perhaps that is the place I am speaking out of, and the story’s conclusion was not all too surprising. Velvet was the Night does not aim high in that regard, but there is enough historical genuineness and personability to keep you through the mystery, which remains a given when it comes to this author’s works for me. From a technical point of view, there are certain threads that remain dungling in the end, and there were a couple of word choices that struck me as too sentimental for grittiness typical of noir, especially in Elvis’s parts. But overall, it was an entertaining read, which leaves me about three books to go before I complete Moreno-Garcia’s novel set — maybe some sort of tier ranking is in order.  

[mangotortoise]

God books like Unbury Carol, Velvet was the Night, and An Unkindness of Ghosts make me wish I could draw because bro there is no need for me to write fic of works that good, but the works are giving me such vivid imagery I'm incoherent shelfhegzvleg

[protagonist-art]

ooga

[ihaveaboner]

[leer-reading-lire]

JOMP Book Photo Challenge || June || 24 || Outdoors

Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

[cuppajj]

i have a song stuck in my head

[nocturnal-milk-dud]

I can't stop thinking about the reveal of El Gazpacho's fate. It was done so well. So much is going on that's occupying Elvis's mind, that's occupying our minds as readers, we've all completely forgotten Justo was looking for that info. So all of us are blindsided by the words "your friend's dead," and it hits so much harder.

[shisasan]

Ph. Iana Tokarchuk