#pride-opoly

Decided to join in on the Pride Reading challenge "Decided to join in on the Pride Reading challenge "Prideopoly", created by @BookasaurusBex - I also started early because I was just at a good transition point between books. My first role of the dice was 3 and so I landed on "Translated Work". This seemed like a perfect time to crack open "The Beauty's Blade" by Mei Ren Jian.

I had a great time with this book. Fu Wanging is absolutely bat shit crazy and hell bent on revenge and honestly? GOOD FOR HER. She is unapologetic about getting what she wants and allowing her hands to get bloody as she does so. Her game of gay-chicken with Yu Shengyan, (that she [Wanging] kept losing because she kept catching feels) was both adorable but also the funniest thing to read. What do

This book does a great job of making you work to connect the dots and see where things are going, which always make it so much more interesting in my opinion. Some may struggle with being dumped right into the action but I found it a plus personally, you start out running and just keep going till the end.

Read: May 29th - June 9th, 2026

I always enjoy this mish mash Pride collections - it's just nice to have Pride be celebrated and collected like this. That being said, some stories are written better than others. I also tend to find the old worn out Pride narrative of "finding a place of belonging" being a little weak at this point - but that is probably just because I'm stable in my queer space, so it might be more poignant to those that aren't.

This book was weird but good? Mostly? Sometimes I was genuinely confused if this was satire because it's just so "woke" and chalk full of slang that it felt like it had to have been intentionally satirical rather than honest. Even the dusk-cover blurb sounds satirically over-the-top. That being said, it was a fun ride and I always enjoy a fun little murder-mystery. I genuinely like Kiera and Angel, and I like their weird dynamic (mostly - it's weird at some points ngl).

Read: June 19th - 23rd, 2026