Like the other books, Peony is about China, this time set in the 17th-century. It is about a young girl about to be married to a man she has never met when she falls in love with a stranger at her father's house. The people of the house have just watched a play about a woman who dies from love-sickness, and Peony's life begins to follow the same trends. She is consumed by her love for this stranger and cannot imagine marrying someone else and so she wastes away. Peony does not know until it is too late for her to be saved that the young man she is in love with and the man she is to marry are one in the same. The rest of the story follows her as a ghost stuck in the land of the living, trying to influence those around her while she tries to move on to the afterlife.
Mostly, my issue with the story was that I didn't care for the main character - I had a hard time finding any redeeming qualities in her. I thought she was way too self-centered and so unaware of what was going on around her. I thought it was interesting to learn about the death practices in ancient China as well as their beliefs in the afterlife, but I thought Peony's trials and tribulations as a ghost were boring and that some of her interactions with the living were beyond weird. If you are a big Lisa See fan, this book didn't take too long to read and you might feel differently about it - otherwise, I would recommend that you try one of her other books.
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