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Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   
Cover of Songs for Ghosts bt Claire Kumagi

Folktales and cycles through history

Songs for Ghosts by Clara Kumagai

July 17, 2025 by LB Leave a Comment

Songs for Ghosts fulfills the “culture” square on CBR17 Bingo. Songs for Ghosts is a beautiful, tragic story of the power of stories and love, as well as the way past choices can create cycles throughout time. I’m unfamiliar with it, but in the afterword the author talks about Songs for Ghosts being a retelling of Madama Butterfly opera by Puccini where Cio-Cio-San has more agency than just the reductive submissive wife trope. Adam is a seventeen year old whose boyfriend just broke up with […]

Filed Under: Fiction, Horror, Young Adult Tagged With: achillean, biwa, cbr17bingo, Clara Kumagai, folklore, historical fiction, historical horror, japanese, Multicultural, Nagasaki, queer, songs for ghosts, sophomore novel, World War II

LB's CBR17 Review No:14 · Genres: Fiction, Horror, Young Adult · Tags: achillean, biwa, cbr17bingo, Clara Kumagai, folklore, historical fiction, historical horror, japanese, Multicultural, Nagasaki, queer, songs for ghosts, sophomore novel, World War II ·
Rating:
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