Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

MysterFantsyMance

The Fox Wife: A Novel by Yangsze Choo

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Cbr16bingo Smash mystery/fantasy/romance = MysterFantsyMance The Fox Wife is a beautiful novel that combines mystery, fantasy and romance, and even some history. Set in China and Japan in the early 20th century, its main characters deal with the pangs of first love, lost love, obsessive love, and the loss of children against a backdrop of revolution and a world in the grip of major change. Author Yangsze Choo writes at the end of this story about her personal interest in the fox legends of China […]

“I exist as either a small canid with thick fur, pointed ears, and neat black feet, or a young woman. Neither are safe forms in a world run by men.”

The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo

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I added The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo to my Libby queue after reading narfna’s Cannonball Read review, because their description of a slow (but not in a boring way), slightly melancholic but heartfelt historical fiction/fantasy novel sounded like catnip (foxnip??) to me. I’ve been in a review rut since…last September…(despite having read quite a few excellent books in the meantime!), and this short, engaging, lovely little story seemed like the absolutely perfect book to get back on the ol’ wagon with.  The Fox Wife […]

“For all stories have an ending as well as a beginning. But a beginning is where you choose to plant your foot, and the ending is only the edge of one’s own knowledge.”

The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo

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Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the content of my review. I quite enjoyed my time with this lovely little book. You might want to have the proper expectations going in, though, because the blurb is a little misleading. I had no expectations so I was fine. This is a mystery, but not, and this is a revenge story, but not. It’s melancholy and full of grief, but also cheeky and the main characters are also full of love, […]

The Scope May Have Been Too Wide/Ambitious

The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo

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I loved Yangsze Choo’s novel, The Ghost Bride, so I was happy when I discovered that this novel had been released, and immediately bought it. It is set in 1930s Malaysia and has three different characters whose lives end up interweaving in odd ways. There is Ji Lin, a young woman, who is working in the city as a dress maker and moon lighting as a dancer.  Though she had higher ambitions, her family would not let her go into a profession, and only eventually […]

Not Very Good

The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo

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I don’t know what else to say about this book besides I didn’t enjoy it. The dual POVs didn’t help and the whole thing with Jin Li and who she really loved grossed me out. Sorry, I just thought that the whole book was a mess and I still don’t understand everything that was going on. “The Night Tiger” follows Jin Li who is working at a dance hall trying to earn money to pay down her mother’s gambling debts. We have her recounting her […]

Death and the Maiden

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

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I really, really wish I liked this book more than I did. It really has quite a bit going for it, I really enjoyed about 85% of the book a lot, but it didn’t quite stick the landing for me. Set in Nineteenth Century British Malaya, Li Lan is the only child of a Chinese businessman. The family fortunes have dwindled to almost nothing since the family was hit with small pox, disfiguring Li Lan’s father and killing her mother when she was very young.  […]



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