pickIt‘s been a couple of hours since I finished it and I am now able to string together a coherent sentence about this book (because MY GOD WHAT AN ENDING). That sentence is: Hafsah Faizal has done it again! I loved this book just as much as her previous (something I thought near-impossible) and the way every strand of the story wove together was masterful. Loved the characters, the world and the story and can‘t wait for the next in this series!
5⭐️
There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn‘t.
[…] and no one ever says goodbye unless they want to see you again.
Love is not a tragedy or a failure, but a gift.
You remember your first love because they show you, prove to you, that you can live and be loved, that nothing in this world is deserved except for love, that love is both how you become a person, and why.
“You pick your endings, and your beginnings. You get to pick the frame, you know? Maybe you don‘t choose what‘s in the picture, but you decide on the frame”
“The problem with happy endings,” I said, “is that they‘re either not really happy, or not really endings, you know?”
Like, the world is billions of years old, and life is a product of nucleotide mutation and everything. But the world is also the stories we tell about it.
You‘re both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. You‘re the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You‘re the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody‘s something, but you are also your you.
Tonight, under the sky, she asked me, “Why do all the ones about me have quotes from The Tempest? Is it because we are shipwrecked?”
Yes. Yes, it is because we are shipwrecked.
Our hearts were broken in the same places. That‘s something like love, but maybe not quite the thing itself.
But she doesn‘t remind me of the past, for some reason. She feels present tense.
“I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am. Descartes wanted to know if you could really know that anything was real, but he believed his ability to doubt reality proved that, while it might not be real, he was. You are as real as anyone, and your doubts make you more real, not less.”
It‘s a weird phrase in English, in love, like it‘s a sea you drown in or a town you live in. You don‘t get to be in anything else—in friendship or in anger or in hope. All you can be is in love.
No one ever says goodbye unless they want to see you again.
“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over the other” — William James
I don‘t know what superpower William James enjoyed, but I can no more choose my thoughts than choose my name.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
For some reason, I wanted to tell him the truth. “Whether it hurts is kind of irrelevant.”
“That‘s a pretty good life motto,” he said.
pickJohn Green has done it again! Loved this and absolutely could not put it down, it‘s actually a crime I didn‘t read this earlier. Loved the characters and the narrative tone of voice. We clearly see how mental illness strains the relationships between the main character and her loved ones. At the same time John Green does a wonderful job of showing that it is possible to have happy and fulfilling relationships with it.
4⭐️
pickKatherine Rundell has been one of my favourite authors for SO LONG and I hadn‘t read one of her books in a while so I thought “maybe I‘ve outgrown her”. NOPE. Still love it. Lover her writing style and the way her characters truly seem alive. It took me a while to get through due to outside circumstances but each time I picked it up again it was so easy to get into it again and I‘m overall so glad that I stuck with it!
4⭐️
pickThis isn‘t usually the type of genre I go for when reading but I‘ve been in a bad reading slump and decided to give this one a go. And I loved every second of it. It was perfect for what it needed to be and I think I read it at the perfect time. The characters were funny and lovable and though there‘s some moments of miscommunication, it made sense in the story and didn‘t bother me like it sometimes does. I really liked the writing style too!
4⭐️
You were right, Sadie Wen. I am completely, helplessly obsessed with you.
Love,
Julius
All of which is to say I really hope this finds you.
And I hope you find me too.
Sadie
I want you to hold me like a grudge, keep me like a promise, haunt me like a ghost.
“Do you always pay such close attention to everything people say?” he demands between short, uneven breaths.
“No. Only what you say.”
“You‘ll always be my first choice, Julius Gong.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You made it clear—so terribly clear—how much you hate me. That I‘m the last person in the world you would ever consider. But I kept looking for signs that would suggest otherwise. I kept wondering if it was still possible. Because I‘m willing to lose everything,” he says, his eyes blacker than the surrounding darkness, than the sky outside, “so long as I don‘t lose you.”
We move like two planets in orbit; both on the same trajectory, but never touching.
“Why do you always single me out?”
“Because,” he says quietly, a curious expression on his face. I‘ve never seen him so serious. So sincere. “You‘re the only person worth paying attention to.”
“Your entire existence is basically a run-on sentence.”
“Hurt my feelings?” he says it like a joke. “You have far too high an opinion of yourself, Sadie. You aren‘t capable of hurting me. On the contrary…don‘t you remember what you wrote?”
[…]
“From what I recall you wrote two whole paragraphs protesting the colour of my eyes. […] You then write three hundred words ranting about my hands.”
“I‘ll have you know,” Julius begins, low and furious, “that I was not named after a Roman dictator.”
I‘m so disoriented, so shaken still, that I can only say: “You weren‘t?”
“Absolutely not.”
“What…were you named after, then?”
“A printing company.”
“It is so difficult, to be alive. It is so difficult, and it is so beautiful.”
Christopher turned; and the iron spike in his heart unfurled, and became a victory flag.
Together, longing to turn back, knowing they must go forward, they stepped inside.
It meant this feeling. It meant burning to keep watch, for that which needed to be watched. It meant burning to keep it safe. It meant a ferocious and careful love.
There was a look in Irian‘s face of recognition: the joy of one at sea, who looks up and sees land ahead. It was the face of somebody who has suddenly felt, for the first time, the precise shape and weight of their own swiftly beating heart.
“You should have more respect for fear. It‘s the engine in all your human history, fear. Fear, married to greed, married to power.”
“This is the thing my blood keens for — to protect something worth protecting.”
“How much of us is what we know and what we‘ve seen?”
Christopher waited. When Irian said no more, he said: “Well?”
“There‘s no answer, only the question.”
“Do not wait for people to be faultless before you allow yourself to adore them. Adore them anyway.”
“Stop expecting life to get easier. It never does; that is not where its goodness lies.”
“I have a headache the size of a western island. But I will not have it said that I don‘t feed my illegal stowaways.”
