kari's Reviews > The Ghost Bride

In a word: disappointing.
This started out so positively, the first page had me hooked and then it went downhill, fell apart, became tedious and ended up a mess.
I think the main problem I have is that Li Lan is such a nothing character, sorry to say. She isn't interesting and has no personality. She has been educated in a fashion, that's the sum total of who she is. And she is like a child, easily distracted and believing of anything anyone anywhere tells her. Someone says this person( a good person) is a murderer, she believes it. Someone says this person(another good person)has run off to be a concubine and she believes it. Over and over.
She doesn't ever figure anything out for herself. Someone always tells her what she needs to know. She manages to find a spirit/ghost to tell her what she needs to know about the spirit world, who leads her to the Plains of the Dead where she meets yet another person who tells her how things are.
She never solves the mystery. The killer finally shows up and says "I did it" and exits.
The mystery of who is misbehaving in the afterlife is also told and not shown. We don't even get an idea of what will actually happen when the truth is revealed, other than the perpetrators will be dealt with. Okay then.
Obviously, from what I've said, there is almost total telling and little to no showing the plot. Yes, Li Lan floats about here and there and there and here and does a whole lot of nothing.
And waits for rescue after stupidly getting herself into trouble. Let me repeat that, she waits and calls out for rescue. This isn't a heroine.
She is also easily distracted by the newest pretty shiny thing to cross her path.
The ending is poorly done (view spoiler)[with a supernatural romance coming out of nowhere and a selfish girl who, even though she has witnessed firsthand what her almost death did to her loved ones, is willing to throw them and her life aside to run after the new shiny thing. And how convenient that he doesn't keep mistresses so he will marry her.
I might have almost been able to believe that the change in her made this her choice if I had seen a change in her. Er Lang tells her that he has changed her, but there is no evidence of it to convince me that this is true and, since this girl has a habit of believing whatever is said to her, I need to see for myself that she has been altered. Not well done.
Tian Bai has not done the first thing wrong, but she has decided to be cold to him because he had the audacity to be attracted to her when she wasn't her, he has the nerve to have been attracted to a more adult version of her and not the little girl. Pardon me for being icked out that this stupid girl would dislike a man who finds a grown woman more alluring than a woman who prefers to look like a child. I felt that was just so badly done, pushing forward some illogical reason for readers to think it is okay that she doesn't want the man she wept and woe is me'd over. This didn't make me find her more appealing as a character. BY the end of this book, I simply couldn't stand her. Her reason for her choice is: page 354 "In the darkness of a thousand withered souls, it was Er Lang's hand that I sought, and his voice that I longed to hear." Um, since Tian Bai wasn't capable of going into the land of the dead and she knew of only one being whom she could summon for help, this does NOT ring true. She didn't choose him over all others, he was the only choice available which hardly makes it a choice at all. (hide spoiler)]
Didn't like.