Finally, I got to this novel. It's the same author of "Backtracking" that I could not shut up about in several "short reviews" posts, especially when it started to be published.
All I can say that it was worth the wait. Maybe I'm not as smitten as with the Backtracking, but it's still a very worthy read in the scope of self-publishing of JJ
Unfortunately, this story has no better cover and always used this default type.
Summary: Deputy captain of the criminal investigation Lu Yan has been looking into several murders that occured in their city. He has no lead except a blurry video of a hired driver, wearing a dark baseball cap and exposing his pale and sharp jaw. And one day he meets a man and something clicks that motivates to find out who this man is, there is no connection, but his intuition told him that this man is the one from the video.
The man's name is Shen Qiao, he is a pretty well-known doctor, said to be a genius who is currently pursued by three prominent figures, sons of wealthy families, who are good brothers and were once classmates and whose fate is connected to a suicide of young boy from 18 years ago.
#TW: sui*ide, SA, violence
Again, like Backtracing this is a revenge type of story, while this one relies heavily on revenge of the emotional nature. But the type of revenge that is served slowly and meticuously.
Before I will dive into it, I must say that I read through MTL and I can't say anything about the quality or style of the writing, I think the story was quite simple without much embellishment and not everything was spoon-fed to you, so you can have your own theories.
The structure of the story is pretty simple, these three "sons of wealthy families" were all involved with MC's brother in one way or another, I don't want to spoiler it too much before the spoilers section and now MC is back to feed back what they deserve.
I mainly described everything in the summary and here. Now the most precious SPOILERS section.
/!-SPOILERS-!/
Even if I will tell the main spoilers, but I will leave out a lot, since this story needs to be appreciated.
Although the MC of Backtracking served justice, but he still did so for himself and there was no such an emotional drama or the idea of involving three perpetrators emotionally.
Shen Qiao's way of revenge was quite simple, he studied the three people for years, all their behavior patterns, most-likely choices and what would attract them before approaching all three. But he did so in a different way, even if the one thing was a common trait - he acted indifferently with all three.
I find that his beauty trap.. though it's too lowly to call it that, basically it works because of few reasons, one is that Shen Qiao is extremely beautiful (in this case I support the character's mention of beauty, since it works as a mean to something) and also he is accomplished for his age. He is really detached and aloof, a person of great mystery for people who saw everything in their life, esspecially too many servile types.
And the choice of being emotionally entangled is chosen for the sake of paying back for what his brother went through, complete emotional breakdown of being toyed around, abused, violated and manipulated. Pan Xingyou, abused Shen Qiao's brother for several years in school physically, Meng Ji assaulted Wen Nianqian (brother) many times and Xie Yue appeared in the image of a friend who was the last light in Wen Nianqian's life before disclosing that he knows two of his perpetrators and they're close friends.
Although I say emotionally entangled, the basic thing was to make all three people fall for him, even though he himself stayed indifferent, there is no emotional drama, no physical contact etc. He was and stayed the indifferent self until the very end.
All three are called "friends" but actually by their actions later you can see they can easily turn on each other. Deep inside they're absolutely selfish people.
Where they stood when the story only starts.
Pan Xingyou is an unruly young master of his family, he was in love with Xie Yue all his life but couldn't get him since they're both tops, yet he slept with anyone Xie Yue slept with, known fact in their circle. Messy, I know.
Xie Yue considers himself very high above everyone else, he likes to play a role and doesn't disclose anything about himself even his parents are in the scope of people he despises. He loves to manipulate and play a role. People make him nauseous and he also has the conditon where instead of red he sees green.
Meng Ji, the true psycho of the three. He is sex addict and has violent tendencies. Very deceptive and many don't think he is much of anything, like in school no one might have known that he had such a relationship with his classmate. I'd say because of his means he was the last one standing and could have succeeded in many ways if Shen Qiao wasn't as collected and intelligent.
List of early victims. Like previously Shen Qiao also doesn't use his own hands to act. Even with the three main targets he uses the feelings of these three people for himself so they can elliminate each other (which basically they did). But early on we find that several people die:
- Wen Nanqian's classmate who took part in violence;
- Another classmate;
- Homeroom teacher, who took bribes and fabricated story about Wen Nanqian' who thought he finally left the hell of junior high;
- Adoptive father of Wen Nanqian, failed businessman who turned into a gambler and alcoholic, he gave keys to their house to Meng Ji;
- A reporter who covered the suicide of Wen Nanqian and used false claims that were not true.
How Shen Qiao approached all three.
Shen Qiao was an attending doctor of Pan Xingyou's grandfather, which allowed him to approach him in a natural way. they met during a party where he saved a young actor not for the good heart but to catch Xingyous attention.
As for Meng Ji, he used his love for extreme sports by befriending him and sent him to a mountain where Meng Ji got an infection and was blinded, his father knowing Shen Qiao treated Pan's patriarch invited him to treat his son, which SQ eventually did, attracting the attention of Meng Ji by his aloofness and disregard etc.
He also became a neighbor of Xie Yue and attracted his attention at first by making a worker always using machinery at home (though no repairs happened) and later gave hints that he was a fan without outwardly saying it. Basically 'I give you hints and I manipulatively give you hints so you can pay attention'. Which worked. Xie Yue believed they're same type of people, in a sense he was right. SQ was open to emotional manipulation with all three of them and that was his tactic.
Why all three had no idea they fell for the same man.
As mention all three are deeply selfish people, when they realized their feelings for SQ their first thought was to hide him away, especially from those who can potentially become love rivals, so they had no idea all three were acquainted with same person until much later.
I agree not everything was treated well and the plot has a type of "oh, this is a story" feeling.
Especially for the sake of story, although SQ is a genus doctor, he wasn't.. doctoring much. Though udnerstandable, some "experts" are said to be unavailable, especially if your clientell are wealthy people.
From another point, in the story he left for States and became famous there before returning solely for revenge.
And he spent a lot of time from the moment he happened to witness his brother's suicide to this day when the gears of revenge were set in action on studying all three people.
Shen Qiao's story is actually very tragic.
He could have had a steady and lovely family, he had loving parents, but a tragic accident took his father away, his mother got infected by donating blood and to not be a burden for her family, Shen Qiao's health was a matter of concern for years, she committed suicide by drowning in a river, Shen Qiao witnessed that. To lessen the burden his brother Wen Nanqian was adopted by relatives, but we know what happened from there, the couple had few good years before the wife got sick and passed away and the adoptive father lost his business.
Shen Qiao's maternal grandma is the only relative that stayed, but she suffered from Alzheimer when Shen Qiao was pretty young. If he was less mature or collected he might have broke down long ago. Especially when he witnessed the body of his brother (it was the day they promised to meet).
he stayed in the country for some time before leaving and developing abroad. And he returned I presume only after his grandma passed away.
He even had a connection to Lu Yan early on. Thing is Lu Yan's mother was investigative journalist and she was killed for one of her reports. It was obvious there is someone manipulating things behind it, but no connection was found. The prepetrator was one of those whow as reported by her.
SQ and her met in the morgue where she said she doesn;t believe it's that simple, he found diaries of his brother that supported the claim, but when he wanted to give them to her she was gone right before his eyes.
You can guess that despite the way SQ acts aloof and not bothered he actually has few instances of PTSD filled with hallucination.
He witnessed too much, so it's understandable why he decided to do what he did.
For the three perpetrators Wen Nanqian's life wasn't a life worth mentioning, none of them were even feeling truly remorseful by the end of it, but for Shen Qiao he was a loving brother who wanted so much to reconnect with his younger brother, even despite feeling like dirt and mess he looked forward to the future when he could finally live, but he was still haunted by his past and was not given the chance.
How it ended.
When the three men found out that they fell for the same men of course some things started to float. Especially when Shen Qiao suddenly started mentioning the suicide of his brother. But of course none of them affirmed their role in this. While Shen Qiao played along with their claims he slowly fed to the animosity between the three people.
The most unhinged, in a bad way, is still Meng Ji, he used underhanded means to set up two others together, filming the process too. Later he tried to fram Lu Yan for the death of his father, but who is Lu Yan, he got evidence to free himself of charges, but at that point Meng Ji smartly disappeared, leaving all the riches behind. Eventually Shen Qiao to get rid of him acted as a lure, which worked, during confrontation, which was like a movie tbh, both SQ and Meng Ji fell from the roof, while SQ was saved by Lu Yan and his small parachute, Meng Ji did not survive of course.
Pan Xingyou feeling mortified by what happened planned to get back for it. During the final conference when Xie Yue announced his retirement he caused fire and in a scuffle hurt Xie Yue, making him a eunuch. He was arrested for it and awaited his trial, not admitting that he was r* by Xie Yue. And that was his motive.
Xie Yue when he was hurt might have lost his manly function but outwardly he was the least touched by events, yeat who is Meng Ji, he will not let anyone have a safe life, so he released the video he took, which overturned the previous impression of Xie Yue, who committed suicide by jumping from the same building Wen Nanqian did. He also called SQ to witness it, called SQ a devil and that he will see him in hell.
All three actually reallized at one point that they were targetted, but not one of them acted against SQ by harming him or doing something extreme, because by that time they were too far gone, so crazily in love they couldn' do anything and felt powerless in their conflicting feelings. Loving in their own twisted way.
It's interesting that you cann call this story having 4 love lines. While 3 are crokked but the one with Lu Yan is the one that was true.
Even the obsession over Shen Qiao, Lu Yan might have been smitten, but you know it felt rather similar and different from feelings of those three people.
To Shen Qiao Lu Yan at first was chasing him, because he was feeling the connection, but the more he found out about Shen Qiao the farther he distanced from his initial goal. You could say both of them were mixed with a bit of darkness. But eventually Lu Yan became that leading saving light, who gave love, unconditional trust and comfort.
It's interesting how they never actually talked about anything, but they both understood that they know what they know, they just never brought it up. As if "I know what you did and I acquise but never say a word and I know that you know what I know but we both don't say a word" complicated like that.
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Overall, I was satisfied and couldn't put it down before I finished, it was very engaging.
When it comes to stories like that I'm not mad that every emotion is not described in micro detail, we have a bag that we can judge and this is how things are.
RATE: 4,75/5.
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