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A review by nonesensed
The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo
3.0
Li Lan's father is a widower far too fond of opium and far too trusting of old business partners. This has left her close to 18 with little money and still unmarried. Still, surely her father isn't desperate enough to force her into a ghost marriage? Not even when it's the family that holds her father's debts that comes asking and their dead son starts haunting her dreams.
Enjoyed the setting of this one, but I was a little thrown by how both important and simultaneously unimportant the love interests were to the story. The world-building here is great, the mystery Li Lan needs to solve to avoid the ghost marriage is interesting, it's just that the end-goal of the whole story ends up being Which Boy Will Li Lan Pick - and yes, I know she's from a time and place where her marriage is her life. It's just not a plot that interests me personally. A good book, I just didn't click fully with it. (This is mostly that when there is a main character who happens to be a woman and who's about to be forced into marrying someone against her will, I personally just want her to go apeshit and burn down the world. Not saying that's how the book should have been written, this is just a me thing.)
Enjoyed the setting of this one, but I was a little thrown by how both important and simultaneously unimportant the love interests were to the story. The world-building here is great, the mystery Li Lan needs to solve to avoid the ghost marriage is interesting, it's just that the end-goal of the whole story ends up being Which Boy Will Li Lan Pick - and yes, I know she's from a time and place where her marriage is her life. It's just not a plot that interests me personally. A good book, I just didn't click fully with it. (This is mostly that when there is a main character who happens to be a woman and who's about to be forced into marrying someone against her will, I personally just want her to go apeshit and burn down the world. Not saying that's how the book should have been written, this is just a me thing.)