This is one of my TBR recommendations. I remember when the Netflix adaptation came out, it looked interesting but I never got around to watching it. I managed to spend a week laid up with bronchitis. In that time I managed to read two books. The Ghost Bride was one of them.
The Ghost Bride is something between a work of historical fiction and a ghost story. Set in Malay in 1893, it explores a world and a culture that I almost entirely unfamiliar with. The protagonist Li Lan is the only child of a good family fallen on hard times. Her father endlessly mourns her mother who died when she was a child. As a result, he spends too much time smoking opium and not enough time attending to practical matters.
Beautiful young woman that she is, she's had almost no marriage offers and nothing is being done to remedy this when the powerful Lim family approaches her father with the idea of Li Lan being a ghost bride for their deceased son, Lim Tian Ching. Ghost brides were a real thing although always rare. The idea was that a young woman would be married to the deceased, live out her life with her in-laws as a widow, and then travel through the underworld with her husband when she dies. It was never a common practice and was generally done to placate a restless spirit so it's all more than a bit tragic.
Li Lan, being in a tight spot without many options, considers the offer as she starts having vivid dreams of her potential husband. Ultimately, she gets pulled into the afterlife while her body lies in a coma and must unravel the mystery of Lim Tian Ching's death while helping a spirit government official, Er Liang, investigate corruption in the afterlife. It sounds pretty complicated, but it works well.
It was fun and I did get pretty wrapped up in the weird little romance going on.
I've started watching the show on Netflix but I don't think I'll continue it. The book is just so much better!
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