Bleona Jashari > Recent Status Updates

very confused so far. what’s with all the halls?

‘I loved you. That was true. With what’s left of me I can’t help but love you still. This is how you win, Red: a long game, a subtle hand played well. You played me like a symphony, and I hope you won’t mind my feeling a little proud of you for such a magnificent betrayal.’ 😭

‘I sought loneliness when I was young. You’ve seen me there: on my promontory, patient and unaware. But when I think of you, I want to be alone together. I want to strive against and for. I want to live in contact. I want to be a context for you, and you for me. I love you, and I love you, and I want to find out what that means together.’

‘I dream of you. I keep more of you inside my mind, my physical, personal, squishy mind, than I keep of any other world or time.’

‘But if you hunger, I swell. You have me watching birds, and though I don’t know their names like you know them, I have seen small bright singers puff before they trill. That’s how I feel. I sing myself out to you, and my talons clutch the branch, and I am wrung out until your next letter gives me breath, fills me to bursting.’

‘You wrote of being in a village upthread together, living as friends and neighbours do, and I could have swallowed this valley whole and still not have sated my hunger for the thought. Instead I wick the longing into thread, pass it through your needle eye, and sew it into hiding somewhere beneath my skin, embroider my next letter to you one stitch at a time.’ 🫠

Satake lived his life in the secret embrace of a dark memory, and the only woman he needed wasn't alive.

i’m concerned …

i’m realizing i’ve been wildly under interpreting reality. apparently every man, animal or melting patch of snow comes with either a scientific explanation or a deeply ominous chart

couldn’t be me just noticing things and moving on

10% in. excellent book, minor issue: it requires me to understand celestial references.

Picked this up because “elderly cleaning lady befriends a genius octopus” is exactly the kind of oddly specific premise I can’t resist (plus that suspiciously high Goodreads rating). So far so good, though curious to see where this goes. Will be updating!

The Alchemist really said: abandon your home, wander the desert, negotiate with celestial elements, become the wind, and then discover your treasure was… back at home. Groundbreaking. Add in the casual sexism (men fight, women pray, kids conveniently out of sight) and prose so barebones I only learned two words, and you’ve got a book that spends 170 pages trying very hard to sound deep.

The men of the oasis surrounded the horsemen from the desert and within half an hour all of the intruders were dead. The children had been kept at the other side of a grove of palm trees, and the women had remained in their tents, praying for the safekeeping of their husbands, neither saw anything of the battle.

So men get to fight for their “personal legend,” while women get to… pray in tents? Revolutionary.

This book keeps slapping me with gentle wisdom. Almost halfway in and I’m questioning how many times I’ve given up pieces of my “Personal Legend” for convenience.

Finished it. Can’t tell you what happened, but I can tell you Elm and Ione are everything.

Love the gothic, slightly claustrophobic setting and the way the characters fit into it. The plot doesn’t feel recycled, which is rare. The mist? No clue. Might be magical, might just be weather with a flair for the dramatic.

About 11% in and this is feeling like a lot of words to say very little. The POVs alternate between two brothers, but Ivan’s chapters also slip into Margaret’s perspective (why?). I can’t connect with anyone, not even Ivan who’s 22, on the autism spectrum, and has niche interests.
Idk but rn it’s reading like two brothers complaining about life while escalating their toxic relationships with unstable women.

A book that lays bare what it means to fight your way into a system that was never built for you. Sciona is brilliant, flawed, and furious, trying to earn legitimacy in a world that weaponizes her ambition against her. The magic system is one of the most original I’ve read, and it ties directly into the book’s critique of imperialism and erasure. A quiet romance that fits the weight of it all.

This one lingers.

Beauty and the Beast, but make it extra shadowy and Pintherest aesthetic. Mysterious manor? Check. Brooding male lead with the emotional availability of a brick wall? Double check. A glass-encased flower that we’re pretending is original? Sure. Next thing you know, the candlesticks will start singing. And of course, the heroine thinks she can fix it all with sheer willpower and a broom. Bless her heart.

Just finished and I want to talk about Arin for a bit. No one yearns like this man. He yearns with his whole chest. Like that’s some Olympic-level yearning.

Meanwhile, Sylvia is trying not to combust emotionally or magically, and honestly, fair. Big dramatic choices were made. Chaos ensued. Politics politicked. I was stressed and fed.

Was I hooked? More than book one. Do I crave more? Also no, I need to lie down.

This had everything: angst, tension, betrayal, forced alliance, magical identity crisis. And somehow? My brain just said “Cool” and moved on. Still good. Just not scream-into-the-void good. Like, yes, I’ll read the sequel because even though it left me slightly underwhelmed I’m still emotionally invested like a clown. But will I think about it tomorrow? Probably not.

She made a deal again?? I know it was to save Henry’s life but nevertheless her toxic relationship with Luc is starting to look suspiciously like a subscription plan.

Luc and Addie are kissing?
Lord have mercy. On my soul, on my standards and on whatever’s left of my moral alignment.

Sinatra, really?
Luc is basically the godfather of the Billboard Hot 100 and no one’s talking about it.

Luc pulled the “you belong to me” card. I fear there’s no coming back from this.

Luc: kneels in the rain and shows basic empathy
Me: Oh great, now he has layers.
This is emotional manipulation 101 and unfortunately… it’s working.

Even Joan of Arc made a deal with Luc?? Next you’ll tell me Mother Teresa had him on speed dial.

"She has a way of running off, my wife. Now" he says, a sly smile on his lips "what's brought you back to me?"
"My love," she says. "I forgot my ticket"

They’re acting, sure but tell me why this feels like foreplay for emotionally unavailable immortals. Luc’s giving “possessive husband” Addie’s giving “petty wife” and I’m here questioning my morals, my taste in men and my understanding of boundaries.

So Beethoven made a literal deal with the devil and still got name dropped in every child prodigy story ever. Next time someone uses him as a genius example I’m pulling out the demonic pact receipts. Luc, if you’re reading this, I’m free Saturday. Bring the contract.

Uh-oh, the first cracks are showing. Not surprising, considering the facts:
they built this whole relationship on one bookstore meet-cute, Addie’s cursed, Henry’s depressed, and neither of them has had a stable thought in 400 pages.