Ghost Bride

by Yangsze Choo

I think I had expected an unusual romance story.  However, this book was much more unusual than that.
Li Lan is a young Chinese girl who is living in Malaya with her opium addicted father.  He had been a successful businessman but seems to have gone to "pot" after his wife died.  His money has all been wasted and they are living in poverty.
Li Lan receives an unusual request, to become the Ghost Bride for her cousin who recently died.  This means she would be wed to a ghost, which would mean living in his family home, in comfort but with no prospect for love or children.

She turns down the request but is then haunted by dreams from the ghostly bridegroom.  She and her nurse go to see a sorcerer who gives her medicine to take a bedtime to avoid the dreams. In the meantime she seem to be falling for the cousin of the dead man, heir to the family fortune.  However she fears he may be responsible for his cousins death,  Somehow she takes too much and finds herself separated from her body.  She likes the freedom of being able to slink around, go through walls. She then meets an unusual man who asks her to go into the Land of the Dead to find some information for her.  She decides to do it but also wants to go to find her mother.  People gain goods and power in this world based on the offerings their family members make for them in the real world.  No offerings, no goods, no power. She offers to be a servant in the dead man's family home, some kind of replica of the real world, in the purgatory land of the dead and is caught out.  While there she meets her mothers ghost, she also is working as a servant to the household.  She escapes from the house and the nether world with the help of a wandering spirit, but then realizes that the spirit has tricked her and taken over her body.

She is eventually able to get her body back and is proposed to both by the strange otherwordly creature/dragon and by the cousin of the dead man.  She eventually finds out who killed the young man, it is not her prospective fiancee. One of his uncle comes to offer to send her to England for an education --- he doesn't want the marriage to take place.  Her potential "mother-in-law" tries to kill her and one of the other wives of the family. She realizes if she marries the young man she will hav lots of interpersonal conflict to deal with in that family and she doesn't really love the young man, she wants him to have a chance at love.  She decides she would rather have a life with her otherworldy lover than the cousin of the dead man.

This was an interesting story, you weren't sure what to expect or what direction things would go in.
It was different, but kept you engaged.