Tag: words

Review: ‘Strangers From Hell’ K-drama (2019)

“It’s better to say what you want…and act how you’d like…rather than bottling it all up within yourself. That’s more human, don’t you think?” – Seo Moon-jo

I was looking for a mystery and a crime drama, and I had this drama at the back of my mind, so I decided to watch it, and I literally had no idea what this drama was all about, because based on the description, one can’t say what the drama is about. However, I just finished watching it and let me tell you my mind is not in the right place at the moment. Let’s just begin with the review, and I will explain it. So the drama is about a young man, Yoon Jong-woo, who recently moved to Seoul because of his job. But he has no place to live and finds every dorm room so expensive until he stumbled upon the advertisement of a dorm room available at a cheaper place at Eden Residence. However, the Eden residence is a very creepy place with other residents who are very bizarre and suspicious.

Let’s begin with the character of Yoon Jong-woo, played by Si-wan Yim. At first, when I saw him, I knew he had been dealing with a lot, and the boy was fed up. With such creepy residents he shares the restroom and kitchen with, his girlfriend is not listening to him, and his boss/friend just bragged about how he got him the job. I feel so pitiful for him and only him in the drama; the residents really brought the hell out of him. He also realises that people who are close to him are also not far away from good. But can we really talk about his acting? It’s mind-blowing.

Then we have the main character of the drama, who actually is a psychopath named Seo Moon-jo, played by Lee Dong-wook. The acting of his is incredible, he truly looked like a psychopath even when he pretended not to be. Just his standing brings creepiness to the scene. His laugh and smile are literally enough to show how big a psychopath he is. His talks were like another level of riddles. His and Yoon Jong-woo’s chemistry is incredible. I loved watching them, especially when Seo Moon-jo uses words like “babe” to annoy Yoon Jong-woo. We can actually see he was obsessed with Jong-woo, loved it.

Then we have the other residents, and let me tell you, without them doing any action or saying any dialogue, just them standing brings so much creepiness to the scene. I think when they do actions, it’s like ewww, but when they just stand in the corner of the room and smile, that legit knocks my breath away.

There is no character in the show except the police officer, So Jung-hwa, who is not suspicious or evil. The plot is incredible, it’s basically about a psychopath who unaliving people for fun and doesn’t regret it. The setting is fantastic, the hallway of the residence and the small, cramped room really brought another creepiness to the drama. The cinematography is top-notch, which really hooks me to the screen.

What I didn’t like was that the action was not in-depth, and only in the last three episodes did I feel the intensity of the drama. I felt that something was missing. I loved watching Yoon Jong-woo’s flashbacks and how much he has kept inside him, but still, I felt something was missing.

The ending, if you are a horror watcher, you will see it coming, and it’s so good.

I recommend it if you want to watch a drama with a psychopath vibe.

You don’t think you fit in here, do you?

“I’m Different from these people.”

But you’re also kind of anxious. – Seo Moon Jo to Yoon Jong-woo.

Total Episodes: 10

My Rating: 7/10 (Please check the trigger warnings)

Genre: Horror, Psychological, Thriller

Till we meet again, Be Happy, Be Grateful, and Keep Smiling – a girl who likes to write.

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Some random thoughts…

We are all broken. That’s how the light gets in. – Ernest Hemingway

My life has been in that phase where I am afraid to move on, while on the other hand, I am moving on and living an adult life. The thing is that I have yet to have a realisation, I think I have been in an auto mode for a long time, and that is the reason I am unable to grasp and actually accept my new adult life. When something happens, it happens so fast, and you don’t even get a chance to adjust, while on the other hand, the plan you have made and are waiting for takes such a long time. This is what we call the unpredictability of life. I have learned so far that someday I am not going to like how my life is going, while other days I will feel happy, and that’s okay. I just know that I will never give up and I will achieve the dream that I have been dreaming of for a long time. You have to start somewhere to reach the place that you actually want. Don’t feel heartbroken if life is not going the way you want because it won’t in the start, but that start will help you reach where you always wanted. I think life throws challenges because it wants to make us stronger to hold ourselves for a long time. I am actually speaking from my own experience, I have been through a winding road in my life that I can’t accept that I actually crossed it and am now on the other winding road, but if I compare, I have actually become so patient as well as strong, maybe because I know I have dealt enough to know what I should do. Just want to tell you that don’t give up, you are more than capable of anything you want and don’t regret anything. You did your best and still are doing, and trust me, ahead you are going to feel how strong you have become in managing life challenges.

Don’t compare yourself to others. Be like the sun and the moon and shine when it’s your time.

Till we meet again, Be Happy, Be Grateful, and Keep Smiling – a girl who likes to write

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Book Review: The Only One Left by Riley Sager

I think this is my first five-star thriller, and I have been waiting to write this review. The book has been stuck in my mind since last week, and I can’t wait to share it with you all. I never thought I would find a five-star thriller, but here I am. The Only One Left, another book by Riley Sager, I think he has become my favourite thriller writer, because the first book I read, The House Across the Lake, was a 4.5-star for me. This book follows the story of a caregiver, Kit McDeere, who gets an assignment to look after Lenora Hope, who lives at a house situated on a cliff. Lenora Hope is not an ordinary person but someone who has unalived her whole family.

Let’s start with the plot; it is everything I wanted in a thriller. There is a twist at every point, and it’s also horror, which makes this book thrilling and mind-blowing from start to finish. I was unable to get any twists right because when twists happened, I was shaken to the core. The storyline is so twisty, it felt at first that the story was going to be dragged, but what twist upon twist was just pouring. There are not many characters, as well as the setting is just one gothic mansion, but the writer did an incredible job by not just repeating the same thing again and again, but added a twist in almost every chapter.

The setting is definitely creepy, plus the mansion is on the cliff, so it makes the book more intimidating. The character of Kit is one of my favourites; she is actually a mind-blowing person for a thriller. The way she got tangled with Lenora Hope was chilling to watch. Lenora Hope is a character you can’t describe without a spoiler unless you have read the book. The characters are very complex, which made it hard for me to guess the twist, and I didn’t get it at all. I was not thinking about it; it just appeared when Kit found out I was shocked with her.

The ending is so beautiful, it is such an irony to write this about a thriller book, but believe me, when I read the last chapter, I was smiling because it was so heartwarming. I don’t think so, I haven’t read any thriller where the ending is so beautiful.

There is everything that I loved about this book, from its plotline to its characters. If you want to take any suggestion, please take this one.

Rating: 5/5

Till we meet again, Be Happy, Be Grateful, and Keep Smiling – a girl who likes to write.

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Friends at Different Stages of Life…

True friendship isn’t about being inseparable. It’s about being separated and nothing changes.

Just imagine you are sitting with your friends in the canteen during your lunch break and discussing your future and where you all will be in the next ten years, and you promise each other that you will be together in every step of your life. Now, ten years later, you find yourself alone doing something totally different while your other friends are doing something else. And that, my friend, is the reality of life. You never thought that one day the friends you used to share your bench with would now be so far away, living their lives while you are living yours. That’s what we call the different stages of life that everyone goes through. Nobody stays at the same stage because everyone has their own choice and their own path in life. One of your friends is getting married, one is moving to a different country, and one is opening their own business, while you are probably thinking about your future. Friends who share the same conversations every day are now living at different stages of their lives. Why does nobody talk about how lonely it feels trying to find the right path by yourself? It is crazy to see myself and my friends living a full adult life. Whenever I talk or think about my friends, I feel like we truly grew up so fast from canteen talk to adult talk, and now we stand at different stages of our lives. What hurts the most is that we will never be sitting and chatting happily in the canteen again, and we will never be children again. But we did make beautiful memories that all will cherish forever, and that’s the power of memories; whenever we want, we can reminisce about them. Now, wherever I look at my friends, I feel incredibly proud and happy, as they were the same people who used to make me laugh and make my life better. Cheers up, people, we might be at different stages of life, but the life we lived, the memories we created, will forever be there in our hearts.

Friendship is the purest form of love.

Till we meet again, Be Happy, Be Grateful, and Keep Smiling – a girl who likes to write

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Rejection…

To all the doors that closed on me: I’m coming back to buy the building.

I think failure and rejection are never talked about enough; everybody tells us about success, but nobody talks about how to deal with failures and rejections. And I am here to share my thoughts on how to deal with it. I will start by going straight to the point: yes, rejection hurts the most, and it will pinch you every now and then. You may seem fine upfront, but the rejection will be eating you from the inside. So here’s what I have to say: you are allowed to fail, you are allowed to start again, and you are allowed to take a break. Never ever compare yourself to others, everyone has their own journey. Maybe you are meant to be mentally stronger to enter your phase of success. Even after becoming successful, you can experience failure because it’s a part of your life. Life is all about rocky roads, one day you will feel like you have achieved everything, while another day you will feel like you are back at the start again. Whenever I take up a new challenge, I always say to myself that I believe in myself, whatever the result will be, I will give my best, and whatever happens, happens for a reason. You need to build up your courage by trying again, by examining your failure, and rather than dwelling on what has already happened, why not focus on improving yourself and becoming stronger? This way, when you do it all over again, you can do it better, and you’ll actually feel the difference. Have the courage to believe in yourself, and failure is a part of your life. Remember, just a part of your life, it doesn’t define your life, but the courage to take that failure and lead the way towards success will define your life. And never ever listen to others and never give them the right to say anything about you or your life, it’s your life and you know how capable you are of everything. So rejection is nothing to be embarrassed about, but learn from it and make it your strength to do better.

Rejection is the most powerful motivation.

Till we meet again, Be Happy, Be Grateful, and Keep Smiling – a girl who likes to write

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Book Review: I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

The amount of time I have heard people talk about this book, especially the middle plot twist, is what made me pick this book right away. The thriller book I am talking about is I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh. This book is about a mother, Jenna Gray, who, in a tragic accident, lost her son, Jacob. She is not able to cope with being in a house filled with memories of her son, so she decided to move to a small cottage on the Welsh coast. At the beginning, she started feeling better; however, suddenly her haunting past secrets seemed to follow her there.

The book is divided into two parts as well as two points of view. One, we have Jenna’s point of view from the first person and then the detective working on the case from the third person. I won’t lie, it took me some time to get the hang of different pov’s. I can’t really talk about the characters as there are spoilers pretty much in it. But the characters are not what we expect them to be, and it’s obvious that it’s a thriller book.

I went into this book thinking something absolutely different, and you might as well, but OMG, the middle plot twist. What was even that? I don’t think anyone could get it because it is so distinct and extraordinary. The plot twist happened so randomly that I read that again and again in order to understand what happened. There are many suspects which make it impossible to guess the plot twist. The plot is definitely confusing as there are two points of view, and the author did a great job of adding elements in a way that we can’t get the plot twist.

The storyline, as I said, is something totally different because I felt it was mostly romance, with thriller being a sub-genre. I think that the book was a little long, as most of the time there was just romance and not any thriller. I had to make sure that I was reading a thriller, not a romance book. Some detective parts felt unnecessary as they mostly focused on romance rather than solving the case.

The plot twists and the story are pretty good for a thriller book, as it gave me a headache, but the romance part killed it for me because I felt that it was unnecessary at some point, which made the book feel long. But the plot twists are really good, so maybe give it a try.

Rating: 3/5(please check trigger warnings)

Side Note: I just want to clarify that this is entirely my opinion; you are free to love this book, and I am free to give my opinion on this book. I would be very happy if you loved this book, but please do not take this review to heart; it is okay to have different tastes. Thank You.

Till we meet again, Be Happy, Be Grateful, and Keep Smiling – a girl who likes to write.

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Lost a version of myself

Maybe losing is a disguise to slow down life and truly live in it. – M A

Nobody talks about that, as you become an adult, you also lose a past version of yourself, a version that you never wanted to lose. We always thought that as we grow older, things would get better, but nobody talks about the battle with life, how much we have to work hard to overcome our insecurities to see the lessons from our failures, and whether we are going to make life better or not. At this point in my life, when I look back, I’ve lost a version of myself, a version that never overthinked about life that was really optimistic in whatever she wanted to do, but after seeing and going through the struggles, every time in my mind it goes through that I have become a version where I’ve lost the spark, the spark that people feel when they accomplish big, the spark that people feel after getting into their dream college. Even though I’ve been through all of those pages, that spark is what is missing. I am at that place in my life where things are moving way too fast, and I’m getting overwhelmed. I feel like we are moving so fast in every step of our lives, before we even appreciate where we are right now, we need to move on to achieve greater things. Time is moving so fast, which has also contributed to losing the excitement, because we truly are not living in the moment, but running a race. We have become like robots. Maybe we expect so much from life that at a certain point, when we reach a step, we are so exhausted that we become so dull, so that it takes time to get our sparks back. And then that version doesn’t exist anymore. I feel like we really need to take time and reflect on what we have in our lives right now, and enjoy what truly makes us happy and brings a spark in our eyes, rather than see a lost version…

The girl and her lost version…

Till we meet again, Be Happy, Be Grateful, and Keep Smiling – a girl who likes to write

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Review: ‘The Prisoner of Beauty’ C-drama (2025)

“Who says there’s no love between me and Lady Qiao? I admit, I married her for Panyi. But after spending time with her. I saw that she’s not only beautiful but concerned for the people. She has the talent and bearing worthy of my wife.” – Shao Wei

I think every other country’s drama can change, but Chinese drama will always maintain its supremacy. I have never watched any historical Chinese drama, but heard a lot, and finally, The Prisoner of Beauty, the recent Chinese historical drama, caught my eye. The drama follows the story of Xiao Qiao, who gets married to Shao Wei, her kingdom’s rival family, in order to end the hatred between them.

In this drama, there are every kind of trope which had me hooked. There is forbidden romance, arranged marriage, a rival’s daughter, a green flag, a smart, strong and cunning female lead. You know that I am a sucker for the arranged marriage trope, as it gives tension and intensity in a drama that I absolutely love.

Let’s start with our main attraction of the drama, the female lead, Xiao Qiao. I love female leads who are smart, cunning and absolutely hold their ground. Xiao Qiao is a huge green flag because she understands her husband, even though the marriage is all about alliance, she takes the best care of him. She understands him and the situation he went through as a child. I liked that she was shown as a mature female lead rather than stubborn in the wrong ways. She is so manipulative and cunning, OMG I loved that. I loved that even though she married the rival for alliance and even took care of her husband, she still held ground with her principles. She is an absolute drama queen; the acting just to get away with things was mind-blowing.

Then we have our male lead, Shao Wei, who went through a lot, and everything he does makes sense. The boy has a traumatising childhood, obviously, he can’t trust anyone, especially the female lead. However, even though he hated her, he still treated her with utmost importance. His fighting skills are amazing. However, he is absolutely clueless in romance. When Xiao Qiao is flirting with him, he acts so clueless, making me and Xiao Qiao wonder when he will understand. I loved his clueless side. Xiao Qiao helped bring out the child in him that he had lost and was just burdened by responsibility. He is so funny and shy when it comes to romance.

Their chemistry was pure and intense. I liked that their story was relatable, given that they were rivals. Slowly, there was a development rather than just like that. He took his time understanding and trusting her, and she understood that about him. The slow development was everything as they slowly realised that love is greater than hate. The love and respect he shows her, and always stands with her, and she always defends him and takes a stand for him, is so heartwarming to watch; they truly are worthy of each other.

The plot is all about the history between Shao Wei and Xiao Qiao’s family, and to remove the hatred marriage alliance is formed, it is so good and well written. I loved that in historical drama, loyalty is shown as top-notch. Be it Shao Wei’s companion or Xiao Qiao’s companion, the loyalty they have shown was beautiful to watch. The friendship group is amazing and hilarious.

The cinematography is amazing, given that it’s a historical drama, the culture and the costumes are just beautiful. All the side characters were amazing; they made the drama more fun. Shao Wei’s grandmother, a true Queen, knows how to properly give advice, a great woman.

I highly recommend it if you want to watch an arranged marriage between rivals, which includes forbidden romance and captivating leads.

“You’re an exceptional lady. I’ve never admired any woman the way I admire you.” – Shao Wei

Total Episodes: 36

My Rating: 8/10

Genre: Romance, Revenge, Historical Fiction

Till we meet again, Be Happy, Be Grateful, and Keep Smiling – a girl who likes to write.

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Stop waiting to feel ready!

Action cures fear. Move before you feel ready.

I have been in that stage of my life where I am ready to take up the biggest challenge of my life and go ahead with it like a job. And I am a person who is ready to do a job, but when the opportunity comes, I get so afraid and insecure that will I be able to do the job? And when I start, give it some time, I feel better. Adulthood is really hard because we are constantly upgrading ourselves, learning new things, and in that, we come across a lot of challenges. However, from my personal experiences, you will never feel ready. There will never be a moment where you will feel that from tomorrow I am going to do it, no, you need to show up and then only you are going to do it. Life is all about challenges; you have to take the first step, you have to show up. That’s the biggest thing I learned: there will be no realisation before I do anything, it will only happen after I do it. Because feeling ready is not a sudden emotion, it’s a practical aspect of life, and you need to be practical about it. Feeling ready is a decision you need to make. The first few moments will be uncomfortable; however, as you show up, things will get better, and you will feel like you were born ready. It’s all about your mindset, no matter what people say, if you are ready, make the decision to do things right in your life, it will happen, slowly, but you will feel the progress. Believe in yourself and your knowledge, it’s all going to be alright, and it’s all up to you. Don’t wait to feel ready; if you know you can do it, then take up the opportunity and go for it. That’s how you learn by trusting yourself and believing in your skills, so go for it and stop waiting to feel ready!

Stop waiting to feel ready. Ready is not a feeling. It’s a decision.

Till we meet again, Be Happy, Be Grateful, and Keep Smiling – a girl who likes to write

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Book Review: The House Across The Lake by Riley Sager

Yes, I am in my thriller era and will be in it for a long time. The next thriller pick of mine was The House Across The Lake by Riley Sager. I read so many good things about his writing, so I knew I had to pick, and I started with this book. The book follows the story of Casey Fletcher, an actress whose husband recently passed away, and she is trying to escape the press. So she retreated to her family’s lake house to find peace. However, the house across the lake was recently bought by a couple, Tom and Katherine Royce. The couple from outside seemed glamorous; however, as Casey from her house started spying on the couple through binoculars, things went absolutely crazy.

Let’s start with the character of Casey Fletcher, just like everyone says, never trust anyone in a thriller book. Even when the story is told from the main character’s point of view, that doesn’t mean they are not crazy. I couldn’t believe what I read when the plot twist happened; my jaw was on the floor, and I’m not exaggerating. I don’t think so, anyone would get the plot twist because the writer, through his writing, made everything so clear yet clever. I will just say Casey is absolutely crazy, but in a good way for a thriller book.

Then we have the couple, living across the lake and just like the description, there is a problem going on between the couple; however, I would say it can be deceitful. I don’t think so, I can say more otherwise it won’t be fun. However, it’s so good, the plot twists OMG what?!?!?! I really want to talk to the writer because what was he thinking writing the plot twist?

Then we have the plot, basically a drunkard girl who is trying to find peace, finds that the couple across the lake is not what they seem, as Katherine goes missing, and Casey thinks it’s Tom who has unalived her. And now she is trying to investigate, simple, right? No, it’s all deceitful in a good way. I absolutely couldn’t get the plot twists, and I don’t think anyone could because it’s so different and jaw-dropping. No, I seriously want to talk to the writer because the plot twist was mind-blowing and nobody can guess it because it’s so out of the world. And all the plot twists just come out at the same time, connecting the story, that’s my favourite part.

I highly recommend it if you want to read something different and jaw-dropping.

Rating: 5/5(please check trigger warnings)

Till we meet again, Be Happy, Be Grateful, and Keep Smiling – a girl who likes to write.

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