Book Review: Black Water Sister by Zen Cho

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho is a contemporary fantasy. When Jessamyn Teoh starts hearing a voice in her head, she chalks it up to stress. Closeted, broke and jobless, she’s moving back to Malaysia with her parents – a country she last saw when she was a toddler. She soon learns the new voice isn’t even hers, it’s the ghost of her estranged grandmother. In life, Ah Ma was a spirit medium, avatar of a mysterious deity called the Black Water Sister. Now she’s determined to settle a score against a business magnate who has offended the god—and she's decided Jess is going to help her do it, whether Jess wants to or not. Drawn into a world of gods, ghosts, and family secrets, Jess finds that making deals with capricious spirits is a dangerous business, but dealing with her grandmother is just as complicated. Especially when Ah Ma tries to spy on her personal life, threatens to spill her secrets to her family and uses her body to commit felonies.  As Jess fights for retribution for Ah Ma, she’ll also need to regain control of her body and destiny or the Black Water Sister may finish her off for good.

Black Water Sister is extremely well written and engaging. But, lets get a content/trigger warning out of the way. There are some scenes of abuse and assault in various degrees. They are important to the story, and not gratuitous, but if these are triggers for you please make sure you are prepared or wait until you are in a place to handle them. 

Life after college can be hard, more so when you move overseas with your parents while being haunted by your grandmother and trying to handle family pressures, relationship stress, and deciding on her next steps in life. There are many twists and turns, some of which I saw coming and many of which took me by surprise. Some still have me reeling even after having finished the read. I liked getting a better understanding of a country I honestly do not know much about, and the way different cultures mingle and collide there. Seeing the way beliefs and cultures combine, and how universal certain types of injustice and greed can be reminds readers that somethings have always been there and we still need to fight them and find a way forward. The characters are extremely dynamic, with the capacity for good and evil in almost every action and word. I still have questions about what happens to certain characters next, what paths they follow, but I was very satisfied with the conclusion to the immediate conflicts and the choices Jess made. 

Black Water Sister is a fascinating and engaging read. It is a roller coaster ride that stays with the readers.