Pros: I loved the worldbuilding. 19th century Malaya was a cool setting, and I appreciated all the little historical details that went with it like the Dutch ghost, all the Malay folklore, and Tien Bai's education abroad. What I liked most about this book was the way Choo built the afterlife world. It was very spooky and atmospheric. All of the rules and restrictions were interesting. The bond between Li Lan and her horse was really nice. My favourite characters in the book were Amah and Old Wong. This was a really cool imagining of what life would be like for someone in her time and place being caught between life and death. 

Cons: The plot was really meandering. There was a lot of time spent with Li Lan wandering around aimlessly, and while it showed off the cool worldbuilding, it left her motivations often muddled. She was a very weepy character which was all right but sometimes got a bit repitive. It was sometimes frustrating as a reader how big the disconnect was between what she was thinking and how she acted - she was often very passive in her conversations compared to what she was thinking. It wasn't unrealistic, but it did make her grate on me a bit. I was also never fully sold on Er Lang as a love interest. He was quite misogynistic and while this is true of most of the male characters in the book, which is appropriate to their place and time, it didn't make him seem that appealing.

I still like Yangsze's writing but I couldn't get into TGB as I did with TNT bc Li Lan wasn't very likable and the part where she's in the Plains of the Dead is a boring chunk of the book and Li Lan's thirsting over Tian Bai and then, out of the blue, Er Lang took me out. Like I get it, she's repressed and all but not every random dude you see is a snack calm down! Also either I'm misreading these blurbs or they're misleading ASF 
bc this book went in such a different way from what I had thought lol But still, the afterworld's world building and the richness of the different folk beliefs, culture and heritage, and Malaysian and Chinese history throughout the story make it worthwhile to stick around. And the whole messiness with Fan and the Third Concubine and Madam Lim and Yan Hong gave it the Telenovela feels (tm) and I love that ish so much lmao. And Er Lang his character did nothing for me for the most part but I'll admit he was sexy with Li Lan and I liked that, I guess. The last 20% was fun though, it was ok, I enjoyed reading it but is not its best xoxo

Li Lan finds out her father is considering a ghost marriage for her to the recently deceased son of a rich family, then she starts being visited in her dreams by the odious spectral suitor himself.

I like Li Lan as a protagonist. She seems practical and able to go with the flow, adapting to her very strange circumstances even though she's definitely stressed by what's happening. The worldbuilding flows seamlessly, giving context in a way that was appropriate to each moment without making me feel like it has paused for me to catch up. That's helped a great deal by the fact that much of the book functions as a tour of this book's version of the Chinese afterlife, and Li Lan is new to almost as much of it as I was. There's also a lot of detail about colonial Malaysia as a setting, focusing on what's most relevant to Li Lan's life.

The plot has remarkably few pivotal events, as much of it focuses on Li Lan's journey from place to place or her efforts to get some piece of information. It takes a very long time before she has what she needs to change anything, and even then she's trying to get back to the formerly unremarkable status quo of having her spirit reside in her body. Along the way she learns the messy history of her family and the Lim family, the ways they've been frustratingly entangled long before her father considered one of their sons as a potential husband for her. Keeping things complicated, the one he originally considered isn't the ghost suitor but his cousin. Technically by the end there are three different potential suitors, but that develops slowly throughout the book. It manages to not feel like a "girl has to pick between guys book" even though that's an integral part of the premise.

I especially enjoyed the lively cast of secondary characters, both the living and the dead. The tangle of their (after-)lives is a huge focus and was very intriguing (even if rarely happy).