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Opium & Absinthe
Mar. 5th, 2025 08:47 pmI have to admit, when I picked this up in a charity shop last summer, I thought the title, the cover, the production values and the blurb on the back were all terrible! But it was only 10p, so I thought, why not give it a try.
It's taken me several months to get around to trying Opium & Absinth by Lydia Kang - and it turned out to be really good!
It tells the story of Tillie, whose sister is murdered in New York in 1899, apparently by a vampire...
But it's actually about women's rights, addiction, manipulation, twisted love, newspaper journalism, classism, workers' rights, child labour, turn-of-the-century medicine, education, marriage conventions, hereditary wealth, family honour, society's strictures on grief and emotional honesty, familial obligation, generational shame, museums, and the effect of sensational literature on the attitudes of the masses.
So, yeah...
It's also exciting, well written, and immersive, with layered, flawed, interesting characters, lots of subversion of expectations, several unexpected twists, and a very sweet romance.
Lots of fun and very interesting.
It's taken me several months to get around to trying Opium & Absinth by Lydia Kang - and it turned out to be really good!
It tells the story of Tillie, whose sister is murdered in New York in 1899, apparently by a vampire...
But it's actually about women's rights, addiction, manipulation, twisted love, newspaper journalism, classism, workers' rights, child labour, turn-of-the-century medicine, education, marriage conventions, hereditary wealth, family honour, society's strictures on grief and emotional honesty, familial obligation, generational shame, museums, and the effect of sensational literature on the attitudes of the masses.
So, yeah...
It's also exciting, well written, and immersive, with layered, flawed, interesting characters, lots of subversion of expectations, several unexpected twists, and a very sweet romance.
Lots of fun and very interesting.
