Told in the first person by a teenager whose mother has died and whose father is addicted to opium, Yangsze Choo’s The Ghost Bride depends on the reader’s concern about her future: will she have to marry the ghost of a rather repulsive young man who died under mysterious circumstances.

Luckily she has at least one other option: the repulsive young man’s much handsomer cousin. His name is Tian Bai.

And later in the book she meets another option: a mysterious man who always wears a conical bamboo hat which completely shields his face. However, Choo’s descriptions of his voice –“bored, aristocratic tones so at odds with the attractive timbre” (224); his footprints — “he left a neat, elegant track behind him” (157); his hands — “beautifully boned, larger, and far stronger than mine” (257) — leave no doubt about who Li Lam will end up with.

But.

But.

But.

Er Lang is in the mode of every other hero in YA fantasy novels: distant, amused, logical, protective, reticent, forbidden.

Still it was an enjoyable read for Choo’s blending of Chinese folklore about ghosts and the afterlife with life in Malaya in the late nineteenth century.