Daughter of Calamity

I just finished Daughter of Calamity by Rosalie M Lin - paperback arc and audiobook and here are my thoughts!

Jingwen works in an upscale club in Shanghai while running money for her grandmother to a gang that runs the city.

Things start to get even more dangerous when some of the Cabaret dancers come under attack from unknown assailants who cut pieces off their faces off. When the pieces of those faces start appearing on wealthy women, jingwen comes to understand that luxury comes at a price that someone else is paying.

Narrator was great. I really felt drawn into the story in a real and tangible way.

I thought the plot was really clever. a young woman works in a club, her own grandmother does dirty dealings with dangerous gangs. She knows a lot but for some reason she comes across a little vapid. Then she comes back online and seems like she wants to know what's going on and then oops! Something bad happens and it's business as usual? There didn't seem like any consistency to her character. Whether that was deliberate or not I don't know but it was hard to connect to a woman who seem so on it one minute and then ditzy the next.

I really enjoyed the storyline though. I needed to know what the heck was going on. The story weaving was exceptional and the ending was pretty great. I also felt that things started and ended quickly, too quickly like the one sword fight. It almost felt like they were filling in words until they could go back to describing things in detail again.

More action would have been amazing and letting some of the interesting scenes play out more would have really rounded this book out. I still really enjoyed the book but it really could have been the best book of the year with some changes.

4 stars

Thank you @stmartinspress and @netgalley for my gifted arcs

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