books 2007: Peony in Love, by Lisa See

[supercheesegirl]

I mentioned to my mom that I've been reading a lot of ghost love stories, so she lent me this. Lisa See also wrote Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, which my mom also loved (she has a thing about footbinding books) and which I swear to freakin' God I read but which isn't showing up in a book post anywhere and you know I post these things obsessively so I must not have read it, but I guess I feel like I did because my mom's talked about it so much? Anyway, Peony in Love. This book was really sad. More so than my usual ghost love story. And it made me mad, because Peony was really stupid. She had such a pointless death! She starved herself because she wasn't going to marry the man she loved, but it turned out he was the man she was betrothed to! Idiot! If she had told the guy her name, or had looked when her father pointed him out, or any number of other things, she wouldn't have died and would have had a nice life. At least she recognized her idiocy herself after she died. I was really, really shocked when she died, too--I knew it was a ghost story, but I didn't realize the narrator was going to be the ghost. That really threw me off. Overall, it was a good book, but not my favorite ghost love story. I was going to say that I didn't like See's other book either and so I wasn't going to read anything else of hers, but apparently I never read it (but I remember the freakin' footbinding! and her best friend that she wrote to!) so I guess I should give her another chance.