I adore the idea of looking at history through a fictional lens, and that's exactly what this book does. Stunning.

🦁 🦁 🦁 🦁 🦁
Forsberg doesn’t just write stories she weaves magic.

Porcelain Menagerie is the incredible second book by the author who wrote one of my favourite books last year "Rhino Keeper".

From the first page, Forsberg writes with a precision that cuts, not flashy, but brutal in its elegance. You don’t so much read this book as sink into it, slowly, as it devours you.

What sets this apart isn’t just plot, though Forsberg can twist a story like a silk ribbon in a storm, it’s the texture of her prose. Every sentence has teeth, every image a pulse. She doesn’t rely on exposition to build world, she conjures them.

There’s a wonderful intimacy in how she writes her characters, (Johann in particular) raw, unvarnished and beautifully complex

I appreciated the dual timeline approach, it really did paint the picture of a crazily obsessed king.

Forsberg has carved something rare here, a story that lives under your skin. If you want a book that makes your bones hum, that leaves you breathless with its grace, then this is it.

Like Clara before, Buda stole my ❤️
Those final two lines of the epilogue were perfect

Do read the trigger warning for chapter 30.