The Ghost Bride

by Yangsze Choo

And that I want to be his bride.

The last line of this novel came to me when I had almost reached the end of the novel. I tend to write with no outline, and just a hazy idea of what might possibly come up next. When things work out, it’s a nice surprise for me as well! So I was very pleased when I suddenly realized what might happen to Li Lan at the end of the book, and how the last line might read. Writing is a solitary profession, but I do vaguely remember standing in line that morning at Trader Joe's (one of my usual haunts) with a big dopey smile. As a matter of fact, I think it was also while I was pushing a shopping cart in Trader Joe's on another day, that my agent texted to tell me that Netflix was interested in optioning The Ghost Bride as an Original series. I was so thrilled that I almost ran my cart into a large display of bananas. The good news is that the Netflix series will be out in 2020 with a cast of wonderful Taiwanese/Malaysian actors. I'm very excited to see it, as it sounds like the story will be slightly different from the novel! Thank you so much for reading The Ghost Bride. When I started this novel, I had no idea that it would ever be published, or that anyone would want to read a story about an obscure Chinese cultural practice in SE Asia. By the way, you might be interested to know that there were actually two endings for this book. The original ending was what I considered to be historically accurate, but rather dark… This ending is the second one that I came up with. If you liked The Ghost Bride, you might also enjoy my second novel, The Night Tiger. Also set in colonial Malaysia, but in the 1930s (when they had electricity and running water), The Night Tiger is one of Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club picks, Amazon’s Best Book of the Month, and one of USAToday, Audible, and Bookbub’s best books of the year so far. Thank you again, and I wish you all the best and many more hours of happy reading to come!