”One evening, my father asked me if I would like to become a ghost bride… “
Part 19th century novel, part magical journey to the Chinese world of the dead, Yangsze Choo’s debut novel The Ghost Bride is a startlingly original historical fantasy infused with Chinese folklore, romantic intrigue, and unexpected supernatural twists. Reminiscent of Lisa See’s Peony in Love and Neil Gaiman’s … Love and Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, The Ghost Bride is a wondrous coming-of-age story from a remarkable new voice in fiction.
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An intriguing read unlike anything you’ve read before! In colonial Malaya (Malaysia), Li Lan is approached by the wealthy family of Lim Tian Ching with a marriage offer – the only drawback is that he is recently deceased. She will serve as a spirit bride, with all of the honors of a widow. When Li Lan’s spirit is separated from her body, she must find a way out of the spirit world – and away from the spirit of Lim Tian Ching, who has made her life difficult even from beyond.
The author grabs you from the beginning and doesn’t let you go. The characters are complex and realistic – from Li Lan’s father, who has let their family fortune dwindle, to Tian Bai, Lim Tian Ching’s cousin and to whom Li Lan develops romantic feelings. A fascinating glimpse into Chinese and Malaysian culture, as well as the perspective of the afterlife that inspired the story. A thought-provoking supernatural adventure!
Weird and wonderful! Li Lan has few prospects for marriage until a wealthy family offers for her hand–to be the ghost bride of the restless spirit of their recently deceased son. She will be treated as his wife in every way, with wealth and a place in their magnificent home, if she agrees… what could possibly go wrong?
This little practiced Chinese custom is the basis for the novel, but once she agrees, she ends up crossing into the afterworld of her Chinese culture, and that’s when things get weird. Really. This is fantasy, beautifully written and literary, with a young woman at its heart that you’ll root for!
2.5 Stars. This was pitched to me as Spirited Away with Malaysian folklore. Spirited Away is one of my favorite movies of all time. I had high expectations going in. The story follows a young woman who is haunted by the spirit of a young man she was betrothed to. She needs to visit the spirit world to make him go away so she can marry the man she is intrigued by. This book had little in common with Spirited Away apart from a journey to the spirit world. The supporting characters in this book are boring and unlikeable. Even the protagonist doesn’t like them. Furthermore, with much of the story happening in the spirit world, the suspense of the novel is eliminated because the author is able to make the character escape trouble with whatever magic is convenient for the moment. One of the characters feels simply like a returning deus ex machina. While I enjoyed the Malaysian culture in the book, the story was so often too convenient and the characters too unlikeable.
Wow! What a dazzling writing! There was a para about clocks, I think I read that para several times … it was so beautiful. I think I stopped reading this because I felt I’m forgetting the good lines that I wanted to remember in the previous pages, because this book is giving me good lines in almost every other page, and I’m forgetting them since I read multiple books at a time. Usually, for such books, I get myself a hard copy and a pink pen. So this book is currently shelved as ‘Will buy Hard Cover’ to my Goodreads shelf.
This is an interesting journey through the Chinese (Malacca) view of the afterlife, betrayal, revenge from ghosts, and more. Li Lan, her family now impoverished, is asked by her father if she wants to be a Ghost Bride. The father will have his debts paid, and the dead son of a wealthy family will have a bride to ‘tend’ him in life. But she can never really marry or have children of her own.
There’s a mystery around her mother’s death, and her selfish fiancé haunts her dreams.
Li Lan manages to travel to the dangerous afterlife, but her time there takes up most of the book. I wish she had stayed longer in the real world. Also, the ending is summed up as she makes new plans. That important part should have been shown to the reader.
This was a seasonally appropriate, spooky read set in 1890s Malaysia. It’s centres around Li Lan, a young woman whose family has fallen on hard times and has few prospects of marriage. Her life is turned upside down when her father is approached by the wealthy and influential Lim family, who want her to marry their son. There’s just one catch – their son is dead. Haunted by a ghostly and malevolent suitor, Li Lan must travel to the land of the dead to find a way to banish him and fight for her life and freedom. This is was ultimately a fun read. It was slow in parts but the world building was great and it was very interesting to get into Malaysian mythology and lore around death and the afterlife.
The characters, setting, and story are interesting.
Just like Yangsze Choo’s THE NIGHT TIGER, THE GHOST BRIDE is a beautifully inventive adventure steeped in Chinese folklore. Seventeen-year-old Li Lan has few marriage prospects, due to her father’s debts and lost fortune. When the wealthy Lim family asks Li Lan to be a “ghost bride” to their recently deceased son, Li Lan has the opportunity to eradicate her father’s debts and live a comfortable existence for the rest of her days. But as she enters the shadowy world of the dead, filled with ghosts and terrifying creatures, to confront her betrothed, she learns dark truths about the Lim family, as well as her own. I am in awe of Yangsze Choo’s imagination. Every moment in this book is magical, wildly original, and vividly portrayed. I found the concept of a “ghost bride” to be fascinating and eerie, and I enjoyed following Li Lan through the Plains of the Dead as she went in search of the ghostly would-be groom who’s been haunting her dreams—and, in the process, ends up finding so much more than what she bargained for. The brilliance of Choo’s world-building cannot be overstated; setting here is truly another character, as cliche as it is to say, and there are images and scenes that I know I will never forget.
Fascinating story. I couldn’t put it down.
As the cliche says didn’t want to put this book down! It had great characters and a nice romance that didn’t overshadow the main arc. A wonderfully constructed world that begs for you to go deeper.
Likes: setting/history/cultures I didn’t know about before
the story is embedded in those histories/cultures etc and wouldn’t be possible without them
interesting heroine
whole new mythology I didn’t know about–mostly Chinese but mixed with Malaya (Malayan?) and some other cultures. I can’t emphasize this enough.
I didn’t know where the story was going to take me and that was exciting
Dislikes: sometimes the heroine was so passive I had to put the book down (contextually this does make sense as she is a very sheltered, well-bred but impoverished young lady of Chinese descent in late 1800s Malaya)
Not a fan ois book.
Started off good, then got weird and then stopped reading it.
So beautiful! This strange, lyrical, unsettling, romantic book wriggled its way into my heart and moved me in a way that not enough books have lately. How odd that a book about being dead (or almost) should bring my reading enthusiasm back to life.
What this reminded me of most was the film Spirited Away by Miyazaki, both in theme and in feel. Have you ever had a disturbing dream where you’ve died and become a ghost and most people can’t see you anymore, and/or you have to wander in a bizarre place where other people (or spirits or things) seem to know the rules but you don’t? Li Lan finds herself in that actual situation when, first, she starts to be haunted by a recently deceased young man seeking her as his bride, and then second, falls into a medicine-overdose coma that enables her to wander the afterlife herself in search of some answers to her predicament.
However, Li Lan is a bit more grown up than the girl in Spirited Away, in her late teens and of marriageable age for her culture. So although she’s not too keen on this would-be ghost husband, she does find romance in another quarter…or two…
Yes, there’s a love triangle, BUT it’s one of the most levelheaded and carefully considered love triangles I’ve read, and I thought it was wonderfully done. Li Lan carefully thinks through the pros and cons of her possibilities–which are especially strange given her supernatural situation!–as well as consulting her heart.
And Er Lang–oh, Er Lang! How I loved him, even from the little we saw of him.
All of this is set in the intriguing, beautiful, eerie world of an afterlife based in Chinese mythology and the mixed cultures of late-1800s Malaya (Malaysia), much of which was unknown to me and therefore all the more fascinating. The details are lovely and seductive: the paper and “strings of cash” burned for the dead, the courtyards and graveyards and starfruit trees, the rice powder used as makeup, the delicacies served at festivals and parties. And that’s just the living world. The afterlife is a glowing, scary, dreamy, poignant, creature-populated version of the living, with many mysteries that remain unexplored even after Li Lan’s extensive wandering.
Dare I hope for a sequel? Well, even if there isn’t, I do love how it ended. It was just as I hoped.
I got this from the library, and am ordering myself a hard copy now because I want to keep it! Well done, Yangsze Choo!
Li Lan and her family are down on their luck and life has become increasingly difficult. One day there was a wedding proposal-except the groom was dead. The Lim family wanted Li Lan to become the ghost bride of their deceased heir. Li Lan’s life will certainly never be the same.
This book is usually not something I would read, but I decided that I needed to broaden my horizons. I did enjoy Ghoat Bride but I found a little difficulty and frustration with some terms-but that is mainly because of the cultural aspect.
I found the story entertaining and I couldn’t decipher which direction the plot was going to go. I enjoyed the characters and I loved how Li Lan grew and matured throughout the story.
The only thing is disliked about the book was I felt it left things unsaid or unresolved. Li Lan’s story left me wanting more. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not.