The Nine Fold Heaven by Mingmei Yip – ⭐ ⭐
Recommended: not really
If you really loved Camilla in Skeleton Women (that review here) and want to see more about what happens with her, her baby, and her baby daddy, then take a look at this one. Avoid if you, too, thought it would feature more from Shadow.
Summary:
Camilla returns to Shanghai to try to track down her lover Jinying, and to chase a fleeting hope that her baby may actually be alive. Wanted by gangsters, police, and androgynous gossip columnists, she’s got a lot of people to avoid while she completes her search.
Thoughts:
I did something extremely rare for me and bought this book at the same time as the first book, having read no more than the blurbs on each when I did so. I had really high hopes, and thought this one would be from Shadow’s perspective, or at least see more than a few lines of her in a few chapters. Honestly, I only read this for Shadow and we don’t get much, and it’s not very satisfying what we do get.
I kind of dragged my way through this, primarily because it’s about Camilla missing her baby (something I cannot relate to AT ALL) and longing for her lover, Jinying, whom I hated in the first place and didn’t want to hear any more about. It also felt a lot more predictable this time. I didn’t like the way events with Gao were handled, particularly because I liked him way better as a potential lead man. Ah, well – I’m not the one writing the book, am I?
