Part A Christmas Carol, and part Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, this is a story about looking back on your life to correct wrongs and nudge the living in the right direction. ( )

3.5 - rounded down.

Leiyin is dead. This we know at paragraph one. She is caught between the afterlife and the world, and she is in the company of her three souls, yang, yin and hu. She does not remember her life (nor do the souls), but they all know there is something she must atone for before she can proceed to the afterlife and reincarnation. So, bit by bit, she views her life as the events unfolded and remembers each event as it occurred. She also wrestles with the dilemma of how to correct anything she has done, given her current state of being makes her unable to interact directly with anyone alive.

The story had me from the beginning, in wanting to see how Leiyin’s life ended in her so early death and what mistakes a girl could have made that would be so serious in that short length of time. The characters are intriguing but sometimes seem mildly unrealistic, and several of them are too one-dimensional to arouse any feeling whatsoever (a little to Snidely Whiplash for my tastes). Additionally there is the magical aspect of looking back over a life, which is more of a barrier than a facilitator for me. There is political intrigue, as the communists are rising in China and the Japanese are encroaching as well, which adds another level of urgency and importance to the characters behaviors. Leiyin encounters both love and lust, and as young girls often do, confuses the two. Her struggles are the kind that can come to every life, with both good and bad existing side-by-side. She misunderstands people and their motives, she fails to appreciate and respect her family and others who are good to her, she takes for granted kindnesses and privileges, she allows herself to be duped unnecessarily, and she suffers from rebellion and ambition. But, she is basically a good person and our sympathies are with her in her inability to move beyond the world she is no longer allowed to be a part of.

The device of the souls was a bit irritating to me in the beginning; I wanted the story to move in a linear fashion without the interruptions. However, as the story progressed, I came to understand how they made some aspects of revelation possible that would not have been possible otherwise. I enjoyed the story and found the ending satisfactory. I would classify this as a novel that is all in good fun, however, and not one that has anything profound to say. Taking into account that this is a first novel, I think Janie Chang has potential. I might try her again someday.
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Got this because the narrator was recommended - so I found an interesting book she had narrated.

Loved this. Didn’t want it to end. Loved the characters but mostly the story was so unique.

So it starts as a 17 year old headstrong student from a wealthy Chinese family in 1928. Laiyen falls in live with an unsuitable man - Han Chen is a poet, a translator of Russian literature, not from a worthy family, and a communist. She runs away to go to college and impress him, is caught and forced into marriage in the backwater of Pinghu.

I am done with headstrong young women, ‘coming of age’ stories. The difference here is that we are seeing Laiyen with the eyes of her ghost in 1935, with the commentary of her three souls by her side. She has done something terrible before her death that she must atone for before she can ascend to the afterlife. What?! And as she sees her life play out, they notice clues of things - like that her older brother Tongyen is also in love with Han Chen.

So many things I loved about this story. The secret letters with her sisters. Her middle sister disgracing them all when she flees to Hong Kong with a movie director to become a star. Reconciling her life in Pinghu - she is content with her husband BaiJen and loves being a mother to WaiLen. And her passion for HanChen, her death while pregnant with his son, her betrayal when she learned how HanChen deceived her.

And then her life as a ghost - how she can inhabit dreams, talk to the dreamer and influence life to engineer the atonement she needs. There are so many surprises coming - seeing her childhood friend NonMei again as her daughters teacher, exposing her brother TongYen as a double agent. It was such a great story, so many great characters. ( )

This book was so engaging that I had to do the book/audiobook combination - I just had to know what happened next. At the beginning of the book, we know that our main character, Leiyin, has died, and we spend the rest of the novel watching her and her three souls review her life and death in revolution-era China and try to make amends for her actions so that she can pass on. Beautifully written. ( )

Unique and memorable. A page-turner of an ending too. ( )