For me, I’m definitely keen on reading more from June Hur now.

Overall, this was a fantastic read – I enjoyed the setting, the plot, and the characters! If you’re looking for a mystery set in Korea, you definitely have to pick this up. Hyeon’s relationship with Eojin does develop into a romance and while I wasn’t swooning over it, I did find it very natural and I liked how they both contributed to the relationship and the investigation. That is what the laws and restrictions binding our lives breed: determination and cunning.”

“We are women,” she continued, “and nothing short of death stops us from doing precisely what we wish to do. But she has her own goals, and this tension between propriety and desire was illustrated so clearly in the words of Lady Hyegyoung, the wife of Crown Pring Jangheon: Hyeon has duties – as a nurse, as a daughter, and as a woman in general. Baek Hyeon’s need for her father’s approval is one big one, but her tense relationship with her mother was amazing to watch unfold.Īnd of course, the strict Confucian rules under which men and women must act complicate everything. This was honestly such an engrossing book! Apart from the murder mystery, which had me guessing till the end, I really adored the way Hur depicts relationships and how complicated they are. To do this, she teams up with Eojin, a prodigy who is an inspector and the two of them face palace politics in their quest to find the truth. Hyeon’s mentor, nurse Jeongsu has been fingered as the main culprit and Baek Hyeon is determined to prove her innocent. Determined to win her approval, she sets her mind to excelling at her profession, but everything is derailed when a massacre occurs. 18-year-old Baek Hyeon is a palace nurse and the illegitimate daughter of a Minister of Justice. The Red Palace is a murder mystery set in 18th-century Joseon. I had a very interesting time listening to the tour guide and I was quite struck by the fact that something I learnt in the tour – that the King is always depicted with certain symbols, such as the mountain, moon, and sun on a screen – was also echoed in the book as our protagonist Baek Hyeong sees the king sitting in front of a screen with the same symbols. I read this the day I visited Gyeongbokgung palace, formerly the main royal palace of the Joseon dynasty.

The red palace book