Pragathi Ram > Recent Status Updates

There is just… so much going on here…
The ‘idiots’ in question, the prospective buyers + realtor + rabbit in the apartment seem to be less worried about getting killed
Poor bank robber being ripped apart by these random ppl
Robber: “I’ve never… done this before. I’m… I’m not a criminal.”
Zara: “I certainly hope not, because you really are shocking bad at it.”

Damn the connections between the characters in this book are so interesting
Although I’m not used to an author being this explicit about them until the end
I’d thought this was a story about parenthood but it seems like it’s going to be a story about a lot of things

“Perhaps this is a story about a bridge.”

This author has such an interesting writing style so that you feel like you’re both engrossed in the story and you’re also learning from the narrator/author themselves
I have not read many books on parenting so the insights here are new to me

“They trust us, which is a crushing responsibility, because they haven’t yet realized that we don’t actually know what we’re doing.”

“I feel things too.”
So she’s all but admitting that she’s Flawed…
Okay I understand the forbidden aspect of this romance but I think there was just a LOT going on in this scene
I did appreciate how everything finally got revealed between both characters and now they can work together
But Ayla’s right, the problem is still there, Crier still wouldn’t admit to the atrocities her father committed

Ayla: “You shouldn’t have. It was reckless, it was dangerous, it was—“
Crier: “Worth it.”
Crier is so much more straight forward about her feelings cause I think she just doesn’t understand the intricacies of how Ayla might respond and she’s just genuinely curious about that as well
I wonder if Crier will tell Ayla about the necklace, seems like a good time

The political intrigue, the lives at stake, the plot twists, and the SAPPHIC YEARNING
“She had to remind herself to breathe. Ayla preferred it when she breathed.”
This is exactly the book I need rn
Crier is still pretty naive to the world but I love to see her taking action against her father and learning new things because of Ayla’s influence on her it’s very well done

Sadie’s mom is so real for telling her she deserves to have fun
Sadie’s dad was an asshole for fully leaving his family after his CHILD chose to protect her mom from getting beat up
Sadie needs to be honest with Abigail
Julius you’re gonna have to say it with your chest one of these days cause Sadie is fully clueless still somehow

Crier is trying to earn Ayla’s trust with the music room key and such but at the same time she already can’t seem to get her mind off of her.
I KNEW that Kinok already knew about Crier’s Flaw and every time that man says “Trust me” I get more suspicious of his motives and I think Crier should be more suspicious too.

Ayla may uncover something about him and end up warning Crier about his intentions.

“Crier was Flawed. She was broken.”
Ok we have our two main characters their motivations, Crier’s flaw and Ayla’s family. Crier asking Ayla to be her Handmaiden honestly makes sense given they both know each other’s secrets but realistically ( I say even though this is a fantasy) if Ayla said anything then Crier could just deny it
“A kind of inner falling.” That’s her main motive for keeping Ayla

“You’re prettier when you don’t talk.”

He fucking memorized her emails… he memorized them word for word… just cause he wants to remember what she thinks of him.. DAMN
“Well, Julius Gong, it sounds like you’re the one obsessed with me.”

These two are so stupid but somehow I cannot get enough

Damn okay lots to unpack…
I feel like Sadie is very unable to recognize the distinction between her feelings for Julius, partly because he does keep saying all these rude things to her, but it’s also clouding her ability to see that she just likes him. She swears to herself that he’s just a guy, yet she thinks about him all the time. She can’t see that he’s asking about her first bf cause he IS jealous

“My little brother talks about you all the time.” Oh Julius you’re cooked buddy…
Honestly surprised that the fmc made the connection with Julius beating up Andrew but then it’s his reaction towards it that makes her back off.
I hadn’t even caught the bit about him worrying about ruining his hands but letting them bleed and crack for her 😭😭

Part of this feels slow burn but it also feels like Julius has been harboring a crush for Sadie for a while and genuinely just doesn’t know how to react to it.
Never related more:
“Most of the time it seemed to me that I was only pretending to be smart. Like an actor that has to play a neurosurgeon. What mattered was convincing other people that I was intelligent.” I hope this doesn’t find you

SADIE WEN THOSE EMAILS??
Do not deny it girl you are very obsessed with this man…
Love Abigail she’s a real one.

Circe describing Telegonus’s upbringing was terrifying and so explicit and so real I was very impressed.
It also cements the fact that mothers are the true badasses in this world because what do you mean she gave birth by herself with a knife and a mirror and then stood up to Athena herself so she could keep her child??

Interesting so far but questionable writing style. I feel like most of the prose is very simply written but then the author will launch into a random spiel which will feel very well thought out and profound.

Now we see the true extent to the nature of mortal men as being completely unlike what Circe had thought
I was about to applaud Odysseus (in this book) for mentioning his wife like immediately and how lovingly he spoke about her
But none of that really matters if he still agreed to sleep with Circe, yes you could say he was doing it to save his men but… um no

“No one spoke of Pasiphaë anymore. Now, at a stroke, she made her fading star shine again. All the world would tell the story of the queen of Crete, maker and mother of the great flesh-eating bull.” Insane behavior
“It would know no comrade, no lover. It would never see the sun, never take a free step. There was nothing it might ever have in the world but hatred and darkness and its teeth.”

Circe grew so much in the course of like a single chapter, like now she has a whole lion pet and she transforms things at will and all these great creatures now fear her.
I do still think she wants power so she can prove to her family they made a mistake casting her out so she’s not totally over that part of it yet
Excited for her to see Pasiphaë give birth to a half cow kid and how she’ll react

Poor Circe
I do think she was a little naive considering that every god she’s seen has acted ONLY from self interest so turning Glaucos into a god wasn’t ever going to be a solution
I also pity Scylla cause I feel like Circe unfairly punished the girl just for doing what she was taught her purpose in life should be, to marry a god
It’s Glaucos’s fault Circe is heartbroken bc he gave her up

So Mr Elliot sucks Like this man basically abandoned his family to marry someone without even telling them
Then his wife dies and he shows up at the estate one day and makes an acquaintance with Anne —the “prettiest” Elliot daughter—and basically starts to court her in Wentworth’s absence
Then he starts on basically suggesting they should get married like dude what the heck

Circe’s upbringing is so interesting because she’s veritably abandoned by everyone she ever loved or should have been able to trust for no particular reason aside from the fact that she doesn’t interest them. There’s something different about her that she still hasn’t figured out yet.
I do love how Miller is connecting Circe to all these other mythological tales though it’s fascinating

Captain Benwick going for Louisa kind of makes sense… like it was surprising but time spent together really does matter.
Anne is still very much trying to avoid the fact that she’s still in love with Wentworth especially cause the news of him being unattached makes her so happy.
But we haven’t seen him in a while, where is our male lead?

Poor Anne has to keep spending time with all these people talking about the man she loved possibly marrying someone else.
I don’t think he’s really forgiven her in any sense, he’s nice to her but that’s just being a gentleman. Wentworth also has the added pressure of being a navy man and so having to showcase his polite mannerisms.
Louisa and him honestly seem good together although she’s not as smart

The entire chapter leading up to their meeting only for it to be anticlimactic to some effect was so gripping.
I am so freaking exciting to see these two fall in love again and to see Anne see the faults of her past actions which she does regret, but I wonder how she’ll charm him again?
Honestly I think Wentworth wants to marry quickly purely so he can eliminate Anne as an option from his mind

I can definitely get the haughtiness from both Sir Walter and his daughters especially through Mary. I think that Anne is supposed to be less stuck up because she’s the female lead and also because she’s had that past experience with Mr.Wentworth and is still determined that all her elders were wrong in advising her against him.

I missed Jane Austen’s writing, the intrigue, the gossip, caring about these people’s lives that I had no control over.
The heir of the Elliot estate really should be ashamed of himself like not letting anyone know of his plans to marry another woman?! Elizabeth though, I feel, should learn to put her foot down and chart her own path away from her father

I can’t express how happy it makes me to see names and places like my own in a history book. I’ve literally never seen that before.