Rai Reads

Current read… along with...probably five others. 😂📚
📖: Tsubaki Stationery Store by Ito Ogawa, Cat Anderson (Translator)

Life Update:

I’ve been watching a lot of anime and reading and re-reading some manga lately, so I’ve been a little slower with books these days.

Last month I only managed to finish 7 books, and I’ve fallen behind on my reviews too. Work has felt like an endless battlefield recently, so it’s definitely been taking a toll on me.

I’m hoping to get back into my usual reading rhythm soon, but for now, expect sporadic posts while I try to survive real life. 😂

Currently Watching:

• Love Unseen Beneath The Clear Night Sky
• The Duke's Son Claims He Won't Love Me Yet Showers Me With Adoration
• The Ogre's Bride
• Lord of Mysteries

Recently Finished:
• In The Clear Moonlit Dusk (i recommend)

In honor of Keigo Higashino, our book club is picking one of his books for our August BOTM. You can join us if you're in Fable.

https://fable.co/club/the-asian-lit-collective-with-raireads-851542753717

When the post office called to say I had a package waiting, I had no idea this was inside. 🤭✨

The Legacy Series from Aurora Crate Book Box is even more stunning in person. These editions are absolutely breathtaking. From the gorgeous covers to every thoughtful little detail, they’re everything I hoped they’d be.

My shelves may be crying for help, but my collector heart couldn’t be happier. 😂

💭Which special edition has completely stolen your heart?
📚 Do you display your prettiest books or keep them safely tucked away?

𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰: The Sun and the Starmaker by Rachel Griffin

❄️ I was not prepared for how emotional this book would be. I picked it up expecting a whimsical fantasy, but I ended up crying far more than I expected.

The story is set in Reverie, a village hidden beyond the sun’s reach. To keep the village alive, the Starmaker must draw the sun’s light each day. It’s a role chosen by the Sun itself, granting a longer life but never true immortality. Eventually, every Starmaker must pass their magic on to someone new.

Aurora is chosen as the next Starmaker and begins training under the current one, who is cold, distant, and frustratingly difficult to get close to. Naturally… I loved him. 🤣 I am weak for broody, emotionally unavailable MMCs, and he completely won me over. Watching him slowly open up to Aurora was one of my favorite parts of the book. (When he finally revealed his name? I was bawling😭)

The world itself felt magical. The prologue, which tells the story of the Sun falling in love with a mortal from a village it could never reach, I was hooked! I loved the snowy setting, the whimsical atmosphere, the snow angel (my favorite!), the singing lamp, and all the little details that made Reverie feel so enchanting.

Aurora did frustrate me a few times, but it never took away from how much I loved the story. As she begins to understand what becoming the next Starmaker truly means, the romance becomes all the more heartbreaking. Knowing that one person’s beginning means another’s end gave every tender moment so much emotional weight.

This story completely shattered my heart then slowly put it back together again. If you’re looking for a cozy fantasy that quietly turns into an emotional love story with beautiful world-building and starcrossed lovers, I can’t recommend this enough.

It broke my heart to learn of the passing of one of the greatest mystery writers of our time. 😢💔 Over the course of his remarkable career, Keigo Higashino wrote 106 novels and received some of Japan's highest literary honors including the Edogawa Rampo Prize, the Naoki Prize, and the Eiji Yoshikawa Literary Prize.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you probably know that Keigo Higashino has always been one of my favorite authors. His books shaped my love for Japanese crime fiction, and every time I picked up one of his novels, I knew I was in the hands of a master storyteller.

I was so excited that we were finally getting more of his works translated into English this year, and I had been hoping there would be many more to come. He wrote over a hundred books, yet only a fraction have reached non-Japanese readers. Knowing there will never be another new Keigo Higashino novel is such a heartbreaking thought. 💔

Rest in peace, Keigo Higashino. Your stories will continue to live on through the readers whose lives you’ve touched. 🖤

"I hate your taste in books"
said no one ever🤭

Probably late to this trend, but I wanted to share a few books that completely won my heart.

If we have the same favorites… I already trust your recommendations. 🤭

• The Wolf and the Crown of Blood
• The Everlasting
• Weavingshaw
• Gild (The Plated Prisoner)
• The Jasad Heir (The Scorched Throne)
• Babel
• Crown Me Yours/Dead (Heartstring duet)
• Fourth Wing (The Empyrean)
• House of Bane and Blood (Vows of Vengeance)
• Anathema (The Eating Woods)
• Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop
• Moshi Moshi
• The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy (Dearly Beloathed)
• House of the Beast
• The Ever King (The Ever Seas)
• The Travelling Cat Chronicles
• Belladonna
• The Poisoner
• The Devotion of Suspect X

📚https://www.instagram.com/raikeehime

𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰:Because I Killed Him by Edith Birde

This book completely surprised me. Imagine a dystopian world with a touch of The Great Gatsby, glamorous parties, extravagant estates, and the wealthy elite hiding ugly truths beneath all the luxury. I was hooked.

The citizens in this world are genetically engineered and divided by the color of their blood. The lower citizens—Orange, Green, Purple, each possess distinct traits, while the Blues sit at the very top of society. They’re almost godlike in power and untouchable.

This society also runs on a social credit system. Every mistake or act of disobedience lowers your score, and once it drops too far, the consequences become terrifying. Some are imprisoned, while others are executed during the brutal Bloody Sunday. Living under that constant surveillance made the world feel incredibly oppressive, and I loved how immersive it was.

Our FMC, Loredana, is a Green trying to survive at Grandmaster, an elite university where the Blues hold all the power. Desperate to protect herself, she joins the entourage of Edmund, one of the most powerful Blues. What begins as a relationship of necessity slowly grows into something much more complicated.

The beginning took me a little while to settle into. The story starts slowly, and Edmund didn’t immediately stand out to me. But somewhere around the halfway mark… I was completely hooked. The politics, the class divide, the constant danger kept me on edge the entire time. It somehow feels both slow and incredibly stressful at the same time, and I couldn’t put it down.

I’m also a sucker for beautiful writing, and this book delivered. There were so many lines I wanted to highlight. The build up of Edmund and Loredana’s emotional connection was so beautifully written. The yearning, the stolen moments, the forbidden nature of their relationship… Chef's kiss!

Their story feels like it’s only just beginning despite how thick this book is, and I need book two immediately. I have a feeling it’s only going to get even more stressful from here and honestly, I can’t wait.

(I thought this was a standalone but it's not 😩)

𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰: She Walks at Night by Seishi Yokomizo, Jesse Kirkwood (Translator)

If you’re an Agatha Christie fan, I think you’ll have a great time with this one. You’ll probably spot a few clues along the way and develop your own theories, but don’t expect the mystery to be easy to crack.

The story begins with a detective novelist who finds himself drawn into the secrets of an aristocratic family plagued by a supposed hereditary curse. Between a mysterious woman, a hunchbacked artist, buried family secrets, forbidden desires, and a series of gruesome beheadings, the story quickly becomes a tangled web where everyone seems to be hiding something.

I loved how eerie and atmospheric this book felt. The family dynamics were messy, the motives were complicated, and every new revelation made me question who I could trust. Since the story takes place before modern forensic science, the investigation relies entirely on observation, deduction, and human psychology, which made the mystery even more satisfying.

I did manage to guess a few things correctly, but this was far from an easy mystery. Every time I thought I had everything figured out, another twist would send me back to square one. Even when Kindaichi doesn’t appear until later in the story, the mystery is compelling enough to keep you hooked from beginning to end.

Overall, I had a great time with this book!

Thank you always Pushkin Press US for this gifted copy🫶

꧁──────✿༻༺✿──────꧂

🗝️
asian reads l murder mystery | japanese literature | translated books | book recommendation | book reviews | japanese classics | translated japanese books

📖Featured Books:

• The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino
• The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami
• Moshi Moshi by Banana Yoshimoto
• Welcome to the Hyunamdong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum
• The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa
• Kokoro by Natsume Soseki
• Before the Coffee Gets Cold series by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
• Almond by Won-Pyung Sohn

I’m so behind on my reviews. Work has been incredibly busy this month, so my reading has slowed down too. I also feel like I’m in a bit of a content slump (if that’s even a thing), so I’m making good use of all the random travel photos sitting in my camera roll.

Anyway, I hope life has been treating you kindly. And if it hasn’t, I hope you’re hanging in there. One day at a time. 🍀