Reviews - Black water sister

2.4k reviews for:

Black water sister

Zen Cho

3.89 AVERAGE

sadgoosecoop's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous funny hopeful lighthearted fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Fun read, very quick. My partner picked out this book and I ended up having a ton of fun reading it! The audiobook is awesome.

book_gremlin42's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

smagdalenw's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark emotional hopeful informative mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

bkwormco's review against another edition

3.0

It dragged a bit toward the end, but overall a good read.

tympestbooks's review against another edition

5.0

With a move back to Malaysia, a country she has not been too since she was a small child, no job prospects there, and a girlfriend she cannot tell her parents about, Jess Teoh expected that the voice in her head was a result of stress. Stress made sense. Her long estranged grandmother’s ghost did not. At least, her grandmother’s ghost did not make sense until her complaints and demands got oddly specific. About the shrine to a mysterious goddess, the Black Water Sister, that has to be protected from a businessman who wants to tear it all down to build condos. Ah Ma served as the Black Water Sister’s medium in life and sees no reason not to drag her grand daughter into a world of of gods and spirits, to use her body and secrets to force her into dangerous circumstances and, maybe, even her own servitude to the Black Water Sister. If Jess wants to keep her life her own she will have to balance finding retribution for her grandmother with fighting for control of her body and mind, lest the Black Water Sister take everything and leave Jess destroyed.

Zen Cho’s Black Water Sister is another one of those books that I enjoyed quite a bit, but find myself not entirely sure how to go about talking about it. For long spans it feels like the plot is pattering about not really doing much, but that does not feel like wasted page space. Black Water Sister feels as much like a story about being an outsider as it does a story about dealing with a pushy ghost and an angry goddess.

Jess is absolutely an outsider throughout the book. She was raised in the United States speaking mostly English, so she finds herself adrift amongst her family and with out much ability to connect with new people and with serious difficulties finding a job. Jess cannot talk to her family about the problems she is having for fear of seeming ungrateful, or to her parents about her problems for fear of adding to their stress. She cannot even begin to talk about her girlfriend, Sharanya, something that said girlfriend is continually frustrated by. And no one, except her erstwhile uncle, would understand if she tried to talk to them about Ah Ma’s voice in her head. It leaves the reader only slightly behind Jess in trying to figure out what was going on while also ensuring that the reader gets an explanation of how the spirits and gods work as Jess struggles to figure things out.

There are layers to Jess’ problems. So much of what happens to her is the result of Ah Ma or her uncle, Ah Ku, not telling her important details of what is happening to her or their plans for dealing with the developer who had angered the Black Water Sister. It is all very well done with a sort of looming sense of doom as Ah Ma’s plots land Jess in deeper and deeper trouble both with mortal humans and the goddess herself. There were points were it really felt like there was no possibility of a good ending for Jess and others where it felt like she would be lucky to survive as herself. It was brilliant and by turns something that I could not put down and something that I just had to step away from because of how well Cho built that atmosphere, that sense of inevitability.

A lot of the writing is like that. The side characters, Jess’ parents and her other living family members, felt well rounded and very human. The Black Water Sister was by turns a mass of anger at those who might threaten her shrine and possessive of and protective of Jess, but always in a way that left a clear through line to her as a character. She was more than human, but still bound to what she had been and her history despite that. The city feels unfamiliar but alive. Jess feels so very like some of the people I went to school or worked with, it is really easy to identify with her. The danger feels solid. Again, like Jess might not be able to make it out as herself. It all adds up to a book that I have a hard time talking about but also wish that I could read for the first time again.

That is, ultimately, the big thing with Black Water Sister. I have had a really hard time figuring out how to talk about it and rambled far more than I would have liked in doing so, but it is one of a hand full of books I wish I could read for the first time again. And that makes me really want to go back to Zen Cho’s earlier books and see what she writes next. For me, Black Water Sister more than earns a five out of five.

*

As a final note, full spoiler alert, but this was one of the bits where I needed to put the book down and I figured that might mean that a trigger warning was warranted. There is an attempted rape scene late in the book that is fairly harrowing, the scene leading up to it starts when Jess is forced into a car after talking to the developer.

This book was provided to me through netGalley for honest review. Review was previously posted at https://tympestbooks.wordpress.com/2021/06/18/black-water-sister/