I have to imagine that writers like hearing, "I finish this book in two days and stayed up all night because I couldn't put it down," not, "It took me an unconscionable amount of time to read this because I kept setting it down" - but I kept setting this down because it was so hecking good, because it broke my heart over and over and I had to breathe and sit with the story and have a good cry before coming back.

BONES OF JADE, FLESH LIKE ICE is set in a mythic Taiwan. It's about sisters sold to different husbands in service of their parents' greed, and selling your heart for what you want rather than what you love; the ways that the exercise of power becomes our armor, but the armor fuels our self-immolation. It's about magic and small moments and the simple acts that blossom into much-needed grace, or metastasize into massacre. It's about what we do in the dark, and what the dark does to us, and how we learn to walk away or walk on.

I cried over and over reading this. There is kindness, but this is not a kind book. There is cruelty, but this is not a cruel book. This is a book that breaks your heart while reminding you that when your heart breaks, it's because you *have* a heart; that it's being returned to you, with everything you learned and everything you earned.

This is the best book I have read this year. I'm going to cry some more; but I remember now that I can walk away... and walk on.