I read a lot of romance novels I don't log on Goodreads, but I wanted to include this erotica trilogy because it's so different. When I read the synopsis I didn't think it would be my thing at all, but after awhile I read through all of Jeannie Lin's other work and there was nothing else left for me to devour, so. The beginning made me uncomfortable, because of the power differential; non-consensual sex is usually one of my hard limits, and if you swapped the genders (privileged man wants female employee to sleep with him, won't take no for an answer) I wouldn't have given it a second look. But the more I got into Princess Shanyin's world, I realized that in a brutal emperor's inner circle, there's only so much consent anyone can give, and it became interesting to see how sex, power, and pleasure played out in this environment.* I enjoyed Shanyin's evolution over the changes in circumstance she endures throughout the books. And, ngl, it did me some good to read three books about a woman just going after her own pleasure so, so thoroughly.

*However: I still think getting past the significant power imbalance between Shanyin and Yuan in the first book depends on swallowing the premise that they have an irresistible chemistry that he doesn't truly want to deny. Basically, in order to stomach her treatment of him, I had to accept that he really did want her as much as she wanted him, and that makes it... if not okay, at least not so abhorrent that I had to stop reading. Some people would say I'm overthinking this. And some people, I imagine, would still call it rape.