Take a photo of a barcode or cover
gorgonine 's review for:
The Ghost Bride
by Yangsze Choo
Plot: A rich woman proposes an impoverished girl marry her son's ghost, and despite the girls' protests she finds herself haunted till she has to take drastic measures.
1. This book is slower than what I usually like because my preferences lean more towards snappy dialogue than lyrical descriptions. However, there was enough meat in the plot- enough stakes, menace and interesting worldbuilding to keep me reading at a relatively steady pace.
2. This story took a lot of turns I wasn't expecting? I mean, not as a murder mystery (there is one of those in here, sort of; and it was fair but not mind-blowing) but genre-wise? It starts off as a perfectly normal historical with potential romance and then turns into a ghost story, an adventure story, a quasi-spy mystery and a sortof mystery-thriller lite towards the end. Oh, and there's a bit of paranormal romance in there as well. None of this was bad, mind you. But it wasn't quite what I was expecting.
3. Li Lan isn't what you'd call an interesting character, at least not at first. But I absolutely bought her progression from "sheltered naive innocent prone to panicking" to "resourceful, restless and mildly irritated woman" over the course of the book. It's subtle, happens in stages and is completely believable. And we don't even have to go through long monologues about how different she feels now and how much more empowered she is- the changes in her personality are evident from her actions.
4. Her interactions with Er Lang (and Er Lang himself) are hilarious and I want another book in this universe just so I can see them snipe at each other while they solve another bureaucratic corruption case.
5. This book felt a lot longer than it actually was, and it took a while for me to get really interested in the story, but it was well worth my time by the end.
1. This book is slower than what I usually like because my preferences lean more towards snappy dialogue than lyrical descriptions. However, there was enough meat in the plot- enough stakes, menace and interesting worldbuilding to keep me reading at a relatively steady pace.
2. This story took a lot of turns I wasn't expecting? I mean, not as a murder mystery (there is one of those in here, sort of; and it was fair but not mind-blowing) but genre-wise? It starts off as a perfectly normal historical with potential romance and then turns into a ghost story, an adventure story, a quasi-spy mystery and a sortof mystery-thriller lite towards the end. Oh, and there's a bit of paranormal romance in there as well. None of this was bad, mind you. But it wasn't quite what I was expecting.
3. Li Lan isn't what you'd call an interesting character, at least not at first. But I absolutely bought her progression from "sheltered naive innocent prone to panicking" to "resourceful, restless and mildly irritated woman" over the course of the book. It's subtle, happens in stages and is completely believable. And we don't even have to go through long monologues about how different she feels now and how much more empowered she is- the changes in her personality are evident from her actions.
4. Her interactions with Er Lang (and Er Lang himself) are hilarious and I want another book in this universe just so I can see them snipe at each other while they solve another bureaucratic corruption case.
5. This book felt a lot longer than it actually was, and it took a while for me to get really interested in the story, but it was well worth my time by the end.