By Yangzse Choo
This is an oldie but a goodie!
The Ghost Bride is set in 1880s Malaysia, which was then part of the British Empire. Li Lan, the daughter of a respectable Chinese merchant, hopes for a favorable marriage. Sadly, her mother is dead. Her father has lost his fortune consumed by the numbing effects of opium after the loss of his wife. Thus, Li Lan has few suitors and faces her dismal prospects alone, except for the support of Amah, her loving governess.
The wealthy Lim Family, old family friends and business associates, approach Li Lan to become a ghost bride for their son, Lim Tian Ching, who recently died under mysterious circumstances. As a ghost bride in a very wealthy family, Li Lan would be taken care of for the rest of her life. But she would never know love. Li Lan wants more of her life than being a ghost bride, especially after falling in love with Tian Bai, the ghost groom’s cousin, and heir to the family fortune.
Haunted every night by the spirit of her would-be groom, Li Lan and her Amah consult a medium to rid them of the spirit. But her defiance in the face of societal pressures finds her drawn every night into the shadowy parallel world of the Chinese afterlife, where Lim Tian Ching haunts her spirit and wants to lay claim on her soul. The medium prescribes some medicine to help with the hauntings, but Li Lin, overwhelmed by sleepless nights and dismal days, overdoses. The overdose accidentally separates her spirt from her body.
The thread connecting Li Lan’s body to her spirit is in danger of snapping which would seal Li Lan’s fate in the afterlife. But it is in the shadowy parallel world of the Chinese afterlife, where Li Lan finds answers to her own family secrets as well as the truth about the death of Lim Tian Ching. Will she be able to survive in the afterlife long enough to find her way back to her comatose body? With the help of Er Lang, a demigod in the afterlife, she tries to make her way back to the land of the living. While on this dangerous quest, she begins to fall in love with the demigod. A love triangle emerges between the living and the dead and mortal and demigod. Who will Li Lan choose? Will she finally be set free in body and spirit?
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