The Ghost Bride

As a Chinese who was born and raised in South East Asia, I connected to this book on so many levels. Malaysia is very close to my home country and the language is similar for the most part, so I find the usage of Malay terms really interesting. A lot of things in this book feel super familiar to me, ranging from the food, the traditional clothing (specifically kebaya and batik), to Chinese notions about the afterlife. The paper houses, paper servants, paper furniture―I've seen those on my grandparents' funeral. That makes the spirit world section kind of eerie, but in a good way.

The plot of The Ghost Bride moves rather slowly, and there are many times when the book takes side trips to focus on other issues. That distracted me from the main conflict with Lim Tian Ching for more than half of the book, but it surprisingly gave depth to other characters, so I don't really have any complaints regarding this aspect. A part of me wishes for the relationships to be handled better since the thing with Tian Bai dragged on towards the end, but I also found it understandable because marriage was a sensitive issue for Chinese women in that period.

Well, that or I'm just being 100% biased and happy with the end result. Before I knew it, I started wishing for Li Lan to switch to this mysterious stranger with a beautiful voice, and nothing coukd describe my joy upon reading the last two lines in the story. It was so brilliant. :'D

As far as heroines go, I liked Li Lan just fine. She makes mistakes and gets herself into trouble numerous times, but she honestly accepts the fact that she was wrong. Most of the time she's sweet and nice, but she has firm beliefs and always holds onto them. As much as I like how nice Tian Bai is, I think Li Lan's personality shines more when she's with Er Lang, and I really like the chemistry between them.

Thanks to Mitsu for sending this book to me. Without her it'd probably take me ages to wade through my reading backlog and reach this book.