The Undertaking of Lily Chen

by: Danica Novgorodoff

In the mountains of northern China, ancient custom demands that every man have a wife to keep him company in the afterlife.
Deshi Li's brother is dead--and unmarried. Which means that Deshi must find him an eligible body before the week is up.
Lily Chen, sweet as a snakebote, needs money and a fast ride out of town.
Haunted by the gods of their ancestors and the expectations of the new world, Deshi and Lily embark on a journey with two very different destinations in mind.
They travel through a land where the ground is hard and the graves are shallow, where marriage can be murder, and where Lily Chen is wanted--dead or alive. {cover copy}
This was a total cover buy. I was perusing Book Outlet's kids/YA section and stumbled on this. When I got it in, I realized it was a graphic novel, which was a fun surprise. When I started reading it, I realized it was most definitely not a kids book. Oops. For a while, I couldn't help but feeling it was weird. I didn't particularly like the personalities of the characters, but it was down more to the way they spoke than their actual personalities. It was kinda vulgar. And the artwork threw me off a bit. I wish the whole thing was as pretty as the cover {because I mean seriously, look how pretty! Do you see the skull?} but the way the characters were drawn was a little not to my taste, so that was disappointing. But I read this quite quickly and did find myself weirdly hooked, despite the things that made me feel awkward about it. Once I finished it, I could look back and say that it was actually an overall cool story, but I can't deny that I often said to myself "this is a weird book" while I read it. 

{view on Goodreads}