More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
October 19 - October 21, 2025
She takes a quick moment to send a text to her son, reminding him that he’s sleeping his life away and should have been up and at it before her. He is, after all, a young man with a whole world to conquer. Late mornings, Vera believes, are only for toddlers and Europeans.
cold water, Vera believes, would freeze the fats in your arteries and give you heart disease.
Vera had been particularly pleased about using the phrase “slip and slide into her DM.” Vera insists on keeping up to date with every trend.
Before she goes to bed, she sends Tilly a reminder to go to bed early because going to bed late causes prostate cancer, everyone knows that.
Isn’t that what being married means? Loving what the other person loves?
She’s very proud of her crime scene; it must surely be the most pleasant crime scene the cops have ever been to.
Okay, perhaps the fact that she’s taken something out of the dead man’s clenched fist has given her a bit of an unfair advantage. But no, it’s likely to be the tea.
because nobody sniffs out wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands,
Technology, what a wonderful and terrible thing.
In her experience, it’s best to nod and agree with what people say before doing exactly what you wanted from the very beginning.
Vera can’t remember the last time she had so much fun. People always say that your wedding day is the happiest day of your life, but honestly, people should try solving murders more often.
‘There’s no such thing as a writer’s block, darling. It’s all in your mind. If you want to create art, go ahead and do it.’ ”
So what if Marshall had very inconsiderately died from an allergic reaction instead of graciously dying from something more exciting and violent?
down her destiny of solving Marshall’s murder. Destiny, Vera thinks, is something to be hunted down and grabbed tightly with both hands and shaken until it gives her exactly what she wants.
Honestly, what is the point of having a police station without some *~drama~*?
This is the problem with creative people; their self-image is divided into two parts—one thinks that they’re a genius who will one day create a masterpiece of such breathtaking brilliance that it will still be discussed with reverence hundreds of years later; the other part thinks they are trash raccoons rooting around in the dark and coming up with nothing but more trash. There is no in-between. It’s either “super genius” or “trash raccoon,” and somehow these parts coexist within the head of one very tortured artist.
He’d rather run away from problems than face them. Well, no longer.
Why didn’t he just stay the hell away? Because guilty people can’t stay away from the crime scene.
Vera may be sixty, but that doesn’t mean she is immune to vanity.
“Unrealized dreams are one of saddest things in life,” Vera says. “Well, after serious illness and death and all that.”
“You don’t describe your job like that,” Vera scolds. “Is a ‘small job,’ hah! Can you see men saying that? No, men will talk it up with bullshit, that is why they get even bigger job next time. There is no such thing as ‘small job.’ And don’t say in that silly tone, oh so apologetic, I am just silly woman having a small job. No!” Her index finger shoots up and points at Julia’s face like a sword. “You go and do this job proudly.”
If only every bad thing in life could be removed just by mopping it away.
No one is perfect, making right decisions all the time. Only those who are so privileged can make right decision all the time. The rest of us, we have to struggle, keep afloat. Sometimes we do things we are not proud of.
that time she’d made the mistake of ordering peony tea, which had ended up tasting like gecko, not that she would know what gecko tasted of, but it just tasted like geckoes would, Vera was sure of it.

