Kuansiew (Author of Take a Deep Breath for Me)

Kuansiew rated a book it was amazing I Miss You by Kuansiew (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I want to be upfront about something absurd: I am the author, the illustrator, and now the reviewer of this book. There is no version of this where I am neutral. I am aware that a five-star review from the person who wrote it is not exactly reliable ...more
Jul 09, 2026 07:18PM · like · see review
Kuansiew rated a book liked it The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Jun 06, 2026 04:09AM · like · see review
Kuansiew started reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Jun 05, 2026 02:13AM · like
Kuansiew rated a book it was amazing Spare Parts: The Story of Medicine Through the History of Transplant Surgery by Paul Craddock (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I used to be the person who left the room when graphic content came up in conversation. Medical procedures, anatomical detail, anything involving the interior workings of the human body... not for me, thank you, I'll be in the corridor. Then I edited ...more
May 12, 2026 09:05PM · like · see review
Kuansiew rated a book it was amazing Spies and Lies: How China's Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World by Alex Joske	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I picked this up because I write books and occasionally need to be reminded that the world is considerably more complicated than my current chapter. This book delivered on that front with alarming efficiency. This book is written with the precision of ...more
May 12, 2026 08:54PM · like · see review
Kuansiew wants to read Good Vibes, Good Life: How Self-Love Is the Key to Unlocking Your Greatness by Vex King (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
May 11, 2026 08:04AM · like

Kuansiew rated a book it was amazing

I Miss You
by Kuansiew (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

I want to be upfront about something absurd: I am the author, the illustrator, and now the reviewer of this book. There is no version of this where I am neutral. I am aware that a five-star review from the person who wrote it is not exactly reliable I want to be upfront about something absurd: I am the author, the illustrator, and now the reviewer of this book. There is no version of this where I am neutral. I am aware that a five-star review from the person who wrote it is not exactly reliable data. Rate it however you like when you get there. I just wanted to say what it was, honestly, while I still remember writing it.

I Miss You is 128 short pieces about grief, longing, and the slow business of coming back to yourself afterwards. I didn't write it as one story. I wrote it as a collection, because that's what missing someone actually feels like—not a single arc, but hundreds of small moments that don't add up to a resolution, they just add up.

Not all of it is mine. Some of these griefs belong to people I know. Some belong to strangers whose words found their way to me over the years. I gathered them because I think loss gets lonelier when you believe you're the only one carrying a particular shape of it. You're not. Someone else has typed the same message and deleted it. Someone else has kept a chipped mug for no reason they can explain to anyone.

I illustrated all the illustrations myself, and that was deliberate. I don't draw people well—I've never pretended otherwise—so instead I drew what was left behind. Grief is mostly what remains, not who left. The illustrations follow that logic.

If I'm being properly honest rather than just performing honesty for the review, I'll say this: some vignettes are heavier than others, and I know which ones. A few were written fast and stayed exactly as they came. A few I rewrote for months. I won't tell you which is which—that's the reader's job to feel out, not mine to flag.

I didn't write this from a wound that's still open. I wrote it from the other side of one, looking back with enough distance to be precise about it instead of just raw. If you're in the middle of missing someone right now, I hope some part of this feels like company. If you're further along, I hope it feels like recognition.

Five stars, with the obvious caveat attached. ...more

Kuansiew rated a book liked it

The Let Them Theory
by Mel Robbins

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

I read this because the internet told me to. The internet was not wrong, exactly. It was just not talking to me specifically.

Let Them arrived in my life at a point where I had already spent several years practicing the very thing Robbins spends an en I read this because the internet told me to. The internet was not wrong, exactly. It was just not talking to me specifically.

Let Them arrived in my life at a point where I had already spent several years practicing the very thing Robbins spends an entire book teaching. 13 hospital stays will do that to you.

What those 13 hospital stays clarified, with considerably more patience than I deserved, is the very argument Robbins makes in this book: that the only person worth changing is yourself. Not the people around you. Not the outcomes that refuse to cooperate. Just your own response to all of it. I stopped trying to fix people. I started working on how I react when life ignores my preferences and proceeds anyway, which it does, reliably and without apology. Robbins calls this Let Them. I call it survival. We arrive at the same place by different routes.

So I came to this book already converted, which is perhaps the least useful position from which to evaluate it.

And yet.

I kept thinking, throughout every chapter, about the people around me who genuinely need this. People I love who are quietly torturing themselves with the need to control outcomes that were never theirs to control and who have, in the process of that exhausting and ultimately futile effort, found their way to a very dark place. For them, Robbins’ framework is not obvious at all. For them, it might be exactly the book that changes something.

The Let Them theory itself is sound. Simple, practical, and delivered with the kind of warm directness that Robbins does well. If you have not already arrived at this philosophy through lived experience—and most people, mercifully, have not spent thirteen hospital stays being forced to arrive at it—this book will feel revelatory. It should. The idea that you cannot control what other people do, only what you do next, is one of those truths that sounds obvious until you realise how rarely anyone actually lives it. Life is too short to spend it being miserable about things that were never going to go your way regardless. Robbins understands this. She just needed 300 pages to say it.

My three stars are not a criticism of the book. They are an honest reflection of the fact that I was the wrong reader for it at this particular moment in my life. The right readers—and there are many of them—will find this book arrives at exactly the right time and says exactly the right thing.

I have already recommended it to several people who needed it far more than I did. They have not thanked me yet. I am practicing letting that go. ...more

Kuansiew started reading

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
by Yuval Noah Harari

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Kuansiew rated a book it was amazing

Spare Parts: The Story of Medicine Through the History of Transplant Surgery
by Paul Craddock (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

I used to be the person who left the room when graphic content came up in conversation. Medical procedures, anatomical detail, anything involving the interior workings of the human body... not for me, thank you, I'll be in the corridor.

Then I edited I used to be the person who left the room when graphic content came up in conversation. Medical procedures, anatomical detail, anything involving the interior workings of the human body... not for me, thank you, I'll be in the corridor.

Then I edited a piece of work for a doctor. And something shifted.

I cannot fully explain what happened in the hours I spent working through that manuscript, but by the end of it, I had developed what can only be described as an inconvenient fascination with the human body; its mechanics, its resilience, its spectacular capacity to fail and be rebuilt. I emerged from that editing job a changed person. A person who voluntarily sought out a book about transplate surgery. On purpose. For enjoyment.

Spart Parts is the book I found. And it is extraordinary.

This is a book about transplantation—its history, its ethics, its philosophy, and its deeply human complexity—with a tenderness that you wouldn't necessarily expect from a surgeon and a rigour that you absolutely would. This is not a book about procedures. It is a book about what it means to carry someone else's organ inside you, to owe your continued existence to a stranger's death, to belong to a body that is simultaneously entirely yours and not entirely yours.

The history alone is worth the read, the early attempts at transplantation, the failures, the breakthroughs, and the ethical debates that continue today. But it is the human stories threaded through the science that make this book genuinely unforgettable. Medicine is never only medicine. It is also always about identity, mortality, and what we owe each other.

I came for the anatomy. I stayed for everything else. I finished it with a renewed appreciation for the human body, mine included, battered and frequently bewildering as it has been, and an immediate desire to recommend it to everyone I know who has ever spent time in a hospital, wondering what the doctors were actually doing.

Which, in my case, is quite a lot of wondering.

Read this if you are a medical professional, a patient, a philosopher, or someone who edited one document for a doctor and accidentally became fascinated by the human body. The corridor, it turns out, is a terrible place to spend your life. ...more

Kuansiew rated a book it was amazing

Spies and Lies: How China's Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World
by Alex Joske

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

I picked this up because I write books and occasionally need to be reminded that the world is considerably more complicated than my current chapter. This book delivered on that front with alarming efficiency.

This book is written with the precision of ...more

Kuansiew wants to read

Good Vibes, Good Life: How Self-Love Is the Key to Unlocking Your Greatness
by Vex King (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Kuansiew’s Followers

Kuansiew’s Bookshelves

Kuansiew’s Friends

2026 Reading Challenge

Kuansiew

Goodreads Author

Learn more
Ask the Author

Combine Editions
Kuansiew’s books

11 posts
Kuansiew's Blog

Too Busy Building

Kuansiew is Currently Reading

rss
Kuansiew’s Recent Updates

Kuansiew’s Friend Comments

	Take a Deep Breath for Me: A Memoir it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	I Miss You it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Kuansiew’s Followers

Kuansiew

Goodreads Author

rssKuansiew’s Recent Updates

rss
Kuansiew’s Recent Updates