Black Water Sister

April 1, 2021

Jessamyn Teoh is moving back to Malaysia with her parents, after 19 years in the U.S. A few months out of college, Jess is unemployed and separated from her girlfriend--not that anyone else knows she's a lesbian. When she starts hearing voices, Jess presumes it's caused by the stress of moving in with her relatives and figuring out how to live in Penang. Yet the voice in her head reveals itself to be a ghost: the ghost of her grandmother Ah Ma, who herself was a medium. Jess finds herself pulled into family secrets as she tries to learn more about her grandmother and her family, and why Ah Ma's deity, the Black Water Sister, wants revenge against a local businessman and gang boss. Jess's willingness to help her grandmother find vengeance comes at a price, one that may cost Jess her own soul as part of the Black Water Sister's larger plan. Cho (The True Queen) blends Malaysia's Chinese diaspora culture with Jess's U.S. upbringing; she lays bare the internal clash between Jess's own identity and desires and her impulse to be a "good daughter." VERDICT An immersive tale of family secrets, deities, spirits, and religious belief. Cho offers a complex emotional roller-coaster of a read.--Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton

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May 1, 2021
Jessamyn Teoh's grandmother is back from the dead--but Jess is the only one who can hear her. After financial setbacks, Harvard graduate Jess and her parents move back to Malaysia looking for a fresh start. Having grown up in the United States, Jess finds returning to Malaysia is an adjustment, as she tries to balance her family's expectations (she's living in her aunt's house, after all) with her own ideas about what her life should look like (maybe her girlfriend shouldn't be secret). In the middle of making sure her father doesn't work too hard and entertaining a steady stream of her aunt's friends, Jess is visited by her grandmother's ghost, who definitely has unfinished business. Soon, Jess is mixed up in a world of real estate tycoons, petty gangsters, and gods who really don't like it when you tamper with their shrines--and the Black Water Sister is the worst of them all. Fast-paced and full of witty one-liners, with a solid grounding in contemporary Malaysia, this is a fun urban fantasy that touches on the ways in which trauma and violence echo through generations. Cho's evocation of place is impeccable, but while the plot moves quickly between supernatural events and familial squabbles, the relationships between characters remain somewhat underdeveloped; the most important journey is the one Jess takes toward understanding herself and her own autonomy. A charming romp through a world where Malaysian spirits are very real.

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Starred review from April 15, 2021
This latest novel from Cho (The True Queen, 2019) follows Jessamyn, a young, closeted lesbian who moves to Malaysia with her immigrant parents after her father's recovery from cancer. Jessamyn's already stressful life of hiding her long-distance girlfriend from her parents is further complicated when the dead grandmother she never met starts talking to her. Suddenly she has to deal with a rude, overbearing ghost constantly telling her to get vengeance on a local gangster-turned-tycoon and pushing Jessamyn into a world of spirits, ghosts, and small gods. Things heat up even more when she attracts the attention of the Black Water Sister, a small goddess with a huge appetite for vengeance that her Ah Ma used to be the medium for. Cho effortlessly balances the variety of tensions at play in Jessamyn's head, whether it's her love of her girlfriend conflicting with her concerns about losing her parents' love, her skeptical U.S. upbringing clashing with the world of the occult her grandmother forces her into, or her desire to just be left alone when faced with the intoxicating but overwhelming violence of the Black Water Sister. Highly recommended both for fans of Cho's earlier work and for anyone interested in fantasy that features queer protagonists or non-Western settings and influences.

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