A review by ohmage_resistance
Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho

emotional
This was a really good short story collection. Most stories follow ideas about just modern, generally pretty relatable problems but with some Malaysian fantasy twist. The stories generally featured a lot of female characters with a focus on generally on family dynamics (especially between female family members) or sometimes romance (both lesbian, straight, and F/NB). It sometimes got a little too heavy on the romance for me, but I suspect that won't bother a lot of other people,

A lot of the stories and especially the dialogue were written with Malaysian English or with phrases of Malay, Mandarin, or other languages occasionally appearing. Props to Emily Woo Zeller for doing a good job bring this all to life with the audiobook (I personally can't comment on the accuracy, but other reviews who are more informed culturally seem to think she did a good job).

Only a few stories didn't work for me. The worst one imo was "The Earth Spirit’s Favorite Anecdote" where
the eventual love interest of the MC did some pretty terrible things like sending people to invade the MC's home. No, no remorse for this was shown
I mean, I liked the MC's narration, but that wasn't enough to make up for the spoilered stuff. "Liyana" also wasn't my favorite, although I'll give it credit for being
creepy and tragic with that twist
On the other hand, I'm having trouble listing particularly good ones because there's just too many that are all well written and meaningful that it's hard to single any out. I particularly liked "The Fishbowl",  "The House of Aunts",  
“The Mystery of the Suet Swain”,  “The  Perseverance of Angela’s Past Life”,  and “If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again"
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