First of all, my thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an early copy of the book inreturn for an honest review.

The story is set in an alternative 1930s Shanghai. In this city, which coexists side by side with the real Shanghai, demons, gods, dragons, and the like reside. They travel between worlds, occupy themselves with their internal squabbles, and enjoy life. Our protagonist, who is also the narrator, is a 100 year old (which seems to translate to roughly 18 in human terms) half-god and half-vampire. She finds herself at the centre of a complex web of politics and power struggles, as she herself discovers who she is, and grows up as the story progresses.

What I loved most about the book was its freshness. It came across in many dimensions. The world building was perhaps not super innovative (see Iron Druid Chronicles), but the China deities angle was indeed fresh. I personally learned a lot just from the various mythical creatures mentioned, and was amazed yet again by the richness of Chinese mythology and legends.. The protagonist was charming (in her own way), and also funny and amusing. The tone of the story, as told through the eyes of the protagonist, had levity and humour, and made me chuckle at times.

I also liked the fact that book never took itself too seriously. It was an easy read, and no one was out there to save the world, avert a holocaust, or solve a centuries old problem. It was just a young girl who needs many questions answered about herself.

It was also satisfying to have a self contained book, rather than the beginning of a trilogy. Refreshing!

What I liked less was the love story angle. It was just unnecessary. Worse, it made the book come across as a hybrid between a nice urban fantasy set in China and an immature young adult frolic. It could have either been told better, or gotten put aside altogether.

Overall, an immensely impressive debut from a very talented author, who is gaining and honing her voice. I look forward to reading more of her work!

I recommend to anyone who likes fun urban fantasy (and hide from grimdark once in a while), and especially to those interested in Chinese folklore and myth.

Shanghai Immortal is kind of book that is right up my alley. Gorgeous book cover, Asian inspired fantasy centered upon Chinese demons and dietes... VAMPIRES. I was especially excited because it has been classified as an adult book, so I was hoping for some darker themes (despite the very bright cover). Unfortunately, it ended up being just OK, and barely so.

The story has promise, but the first half is really rough. Our main character, Jing, is completely intolerable. Not in the sense that her character is unlikeable/unrelatable, but more, I felt like her character didn't make sense. Jing is supposed to be just shy of a 100, and is referred to as an adult several times. You would not know this from how she speaks or refers to others. I felt like I was reading from the perspective of an angry 9 year old, with the limited vocabulary to match.

There are some nice moments within the story. Heartwarming and funny at times; the world itself is really interesting and the side characters are OK, though very surface. I had no problem envisioning the wonders of Shanghai-Hell and wish there was more exploration into it. The themes of abandonment and abuse that follow our character have promise, but aren't explored enough and resolve too quickly. Also... where are the vampires!?

I'll be honest, had this not been an ARC, I would have DNF'd it within the first few chapters. I have a few trigger words that will make me drop a book fast and Shanghai Immortal has quite a few of them. I am glad that I stuck with it, however, as the story did get more interesting/enjoyable in the second half.

Rating: Somewhere between 2.5-2.75 stars.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for the ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I had to dnf this one. This had such potential. But man did it fall short. I couldn't even get through a full chapter. The writing style is not for me and comes across as very juvenile.

Thank you so much to netgalley and the publisher for a chance to read this earc in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me an arc in exchange for an honest review. The following opinions are my own.

I feel like the synopsis really intrigued me for this book, unfortunately the execution left a bit to be desired. Lady Jing didn't always act her age? Which I found kind of weird how it would waver between 100 and childlike? It felt a bit middle grade as well. Which I wouldn't necessarily pick up if I knew this in advance.

This book is about to be a new obsession. Half-vampire, half-fox spirit Lady Jing's irreverent voice, the lush setting filled with unique details of the vibrant Shanghai of the 1930s and its immortal mirror, and a fresh take on Chinese lore makes this book a standout. Fans of c-dramas, fantasy that isn't afraid to be fun and sarcastic, twists on history, and voicey, character-driven writing will all find something to love here. The fast pace makes for a quick read, and A.Y. Chao is an author to watch.

You had me at half vampire and half fox spirit. I was drawn in by the gorgeous cover and the title piqued my interest. I was not disappointed. I loved every word.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced digital copy.

<u>*Thank you to Netgalley for the advance copy of Shanghai Immortal by A.Y. Chao*</u>

<i>I am a degenerate mix of unfortunate genes and circumstances.</i>

Shanghai Immortal is the adult fantasy debut of A.Y. Chao. A great story about Chinese folklore where deities and demons coexist in a 1930s Shanghai full of jazz, humans, and candies. The first part of this trilogy is a love letter to Chinese culture. A fun and magical ride that will make you laugh out loud and fall in love with the characters.

It’s a <b>fast-paced book</b> that will keep you hooked from the beginning. An easy and fun reading where the author presents a fantasy setting with great worldbuilding but that is close enough to the real world to make it relatable and natural.

One of the things I really enjoyed about this book were the <b>action scenes with demon swords</b> (I don’t want one, I need one NOW), because they were really entertaining and well explained

As I mentioned, <b>the worldbuilding is complex, full of Chinese folklore and magical creatures</b>, which was definitely my favourite part! I want my own Pixiu so I can call them cutie. The gods, demons, swords, and creatures are amazing. The fact that <b>Lady Jing, the main character, is half-vampire and half-deity</b> adds insight to the story. She feels misunderstood and that she doesn’t belong in her own world which makes her relatable.

<u>Her inner voice is such a fun part of this book</u>. She’s <b>irreverent, hilarious, and completely badass</b>. She’s 99 years old, however for an eternal life that’s not much. She’s immature, passionate, and impulsive. The author portraits her “teen years” perfectly. She’s also broken and a bit lost in her life, as many of us are too. However, if you are expecting a serious, fully developed adult character, this is not your book. But if you like unserious characters and you relate with her personality and mood, Lady Jing will be the perfect choice to make you laugh.

<b>Her relationship with Mr. Lee</b> is cute, sweet, and real. They like each other but must learn to understand each other too. I’m not a big fan of <b>romance</b> in fantasy books but this one was well-written, and it fits perfectly in the story.

Of course, this book includes the <b>found family trope</b>, my favourite one! The friendship between Lady Jing and Gigi is great and they are a fantastic duo. Their dynamic is amusing, and their scenes together made me laugh a lot. The <b>side characters</b> are an important part of this book and I’d like to know more about them in the next installments of the story.

<u>My least favourite part was the mystery that moves the plot forward</u>. I forgot about it often as I was more invested in Lady Jing’s journey. I think the mystery works well within the book and makes sense at the end, but sadly I was expecting a bigger plot twist at the end of the book.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and I look forward to reading more books by A.Y. Chao!

<b>If you love books with Asian folklore, fantasy, romance, dragons, and cheeky characters, you’ll love Shanghai Immortal</b>, a great book to enjoy a few hours of fun while drinking a mocktail. I’m sure it will make you laugh as loudly as I did reading it.

<b>5*/5*</b>

Rep: This book doesn’t have queer representation

Thankyou to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton, Hodderscape for a free e-arc in exchange of an honest review.

I didn't know what to expect with this but really enjoyed it.

I like the ying and yang aspect.
I found it really funny at times
I liked the character development of the main character and understood why she behaved how she did at the beginning, and people may say she is too immature, but she has never been given that option or ability to grow up or to process the things she went through as a small child.
The characters were great and really entertaining.
Simple story but i enjoyed it non the less.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the e-ARC copy!

Lady Jing is a sassy, somewhat aloof, and ultimately reluctant character. She's not very interested in playing Mahjong with the other ladies of the Hulijing court, well, especially not since she and Lady Soo don't get along too well. When Big Wang isn't in need of her to run errands, she's mostly enjoying her specialty dumplings or defying her keepers, Horsey and Bullhead, but sometimes, she looks up and wishes to see a real sunset in Immortal Shanghai.

When a human comes to Immortal Shanghai without the proper talismans, Lady Jing decides to do him a favor and thus finds herself more involved with this human than she ever wanted to be, especially when Big Wang, the King of Hell, decides to send her and Mr. Lee (the human) to Mortal Shanghai to have fun and get out for a little while. But the Hulijing court is upset at Lady Jing, especially after the attempted attack on Lady Soo. Lady Jing, Mr. Lee, and her friends are in for a treat, well, if they can survive in mortal Shanghai.

I loved this book. As a fan of fantasy, historical Chinese fiction, and mythology, I was ecstatic to read this book. A.Y. Chao really made reading this book an immersive experience and I was introduced to Chinese deities that I had never heard of but was glad to meet in this book. I enjoyed most of the characters, especially how well they interacted with each other and sharpened each other. I especially loved Lady Jing's reactions to courtly speech, which, after reading it for a little bit, I could understand why it annoyed her.

The only thing that sometimes bothered me was the pacing. Sometimes it went super fast and others it slowed to such a glacial pace that I had to put the book down and read something else. Otherwise, this was a wonderful book and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves Chinese mythology mixed with historical fiction.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this eARC.

oh my what an adventure this was.this was so witty and hilarious. some of the antics had me in stitches. i absolutely loved it. would definitely recommend. can't wait to get my special edition of this book with some artwork. going to be stunning.

In Shanghai Immortal our main character, Jing truly shines. On the surface she's reckless, does not care about flattery or the rules - in fact she kind of hates both - and is one to act first and think later. Jing never stands on ceremony and instead ends up in some extremely sticky and non-diplomatic situations. She can seem brash and her unwillingness to play diplomatic seems to rub people the wrong way. But when you get to know Jing you see the ways in which her actions are deeply impacted by her past.

The ways she felt unwanted, her being stuck between a vampire and fox spirit. She feels out of place and isolated. Jing feels stuck between two worlds and has difficulty fitting in. And, like many of us, has trouble seeing when people are truly on her side. She's not one to trust quickly because of how badly she was treated in the past. Once you see it, your heart instantly melts for her. The utter cruelty. With this core, Shanghai Immortal delivers a story with high paced action, plenty of witty banter, and a level of humor.

I know this book will have its audience and that cover is beautiful, but Shanghai Immortal wasn’t for me. Despite being an adult debut and having more mature themes, the writing felt very YA. Lady Jing, our main character, was not really someone I connected with. She did grow on me after a while and it was easy to understand her character but I had a rough time getting invested in her story. I’m really bummed because I love Chinese mythology and usually fantasy book that utilize it are always a win for me. I’ll still check out any future books Chao writes.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

The world-building in this novel is interesting - the idea of a sort of ghost world touching our own is intriguing but I found the main protagonist too annoying and also the main conceit of the plot (the hulijing mutiny) seemed kind of unbelieveable when everyone else in the story seemed to know dragon pearls couldn't be stolen or sold. The 20s feel was fun though.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for giving me the chance to read this book early!

Overall, I enjoy this charming and wild romp across both mortal and immortal Shanghai in the 1930s. Jing’s actions and thoughts in mortal Shanghai are completely believable as she, an immortal deity, sees aspects of the modern world she has never seen nor heard about before. I particularly loved her obsession with tootsie (to see) rolls!
And while I did enjoy her ultimate growth at the conclusion of this standalone, I found myself a bit aggravated by her immaturity for the majority of the book. I understand that her growing out of that immaturity while maintaining her reckless and unpolished charm is rather the point of this book, but her frequent cursing and muttering felt overly childish at times.
I was very interested in her background as a half-deity half-western vampire and had wished that had been explored a bit more, as well as the abilities her new dragon pearl would give her—especially in the context of the brewing brutal invasion, colonization, and war on the horizon. The book slightly touches on the Japanese invasion, but doesn’t go much further than merely mentioning it, and I almost wanted to see how the Immortal world plans to deal with it, and survive it.
Nevertheless, the romance was sweet and I was pleasantly charmed by Gigi just as much as Jing was by her friend by the end of the book.

I was pleasantly surprised by how humorous this book was! It follows Lady Jing, who is half vampire and half fox spirit and Mr. Lee, a mortal who is setting up a bank system for the King of Hell. I loved Jing, she was incredibly immature for her age but I totally got why she acted that way, and I loved her character development and the realizations she makes along the way. The pacing was great, never once was I bored and I found that when I got to the end I flipped the page expecting there to be more because I just wanted to stay in this world with these characters! This is definitely a character driven story, which is not usually my cup of tea, but I just found everything so fascinating, and the trauma Lady Jing had really tugged on my heartstrings. This is an adult fantasy standalone, and I'm so excited to see what this author comes up with next!

Thank you to NetGalley and Hodder and Stoughton for an ARC copy. All thoughts are my own.

Whilst the premise of this world enticed me to pick this one up, I found the language used by the author in both description and during dialogue to be the biggest barrier keeping me from enjoying Shanghai Immortal. This is meant to be set in the Jazz Age in Shanghai, and whilst the story is very much a fantasy in timeline and characters, the language is far too modern for it to fit. I have a degree in history, and this sometimes is a challenge to switch off when reading fantasy that mixes in with historical settings or eras, and in this case, I found it impossible to accept the use of modern words. The dialogue was also very sarcastic, and difficult for me to develop any interest in the characters and their actions. I admit to losing interest along the way.

Essentially, I was the wrong reader for this, and I've placed my rating at 3 stars: someone who doesn't have the same personal historical hang-ups and likes sassier commentary will enjoy this a great deal more than I did.

This book was so fun! I loved that it was set in jazz age shanghai. All of the main cast were amazing and the main character was so witty and funny. Cannot wait to read more from A.Y. Chao

The blurb of this sounded really good but unfortunately it didn’t live up to my expectations. I’m not sure if this is YA as it’s written very YA style. Gave 3⭐️ as it’s the author’s debut and not a terrible read.

Rating: 1.75 stars
Dnf at 27%

With such a title, you’d expect me to be beautiful – all hair, ta-tas, and ass, held together with lashings of poise and dignity. Well, I’ll disabuse you of that notion right now. I am a degenerate mix of unfortunate genes and circumstances. From my dearly departed mother – a hulijing, or ‘bitch of a fox-spirit’ as I prefer to call her – I inherited my feral lack of charm; from my father – some leech-faced vampire who couldn’t be bothered to stick around – a damned inconvenient predilection for blood.

I don't know whether that sounded like the beginning of a good book to you, but it didn't to me, and I was already put off by the first page.

I had to ditch my rating system, as I didn't read enough to be able to judge the plot and world-building.

My main problem with this book was that I did not like the writing style. It was too modern, juvenile and consisted of vulgar phrases and slang, so the random fancy words felt out of place. In some cases, the dictionary didn't help because it looked as if the author threw in literal translations or just straight up Chinese phrases and words. Like what is a piss-fart? Listen, l like when poc authors use terminology from their language, but they usually add a glossary, or it's just a name of something, or you can guess what the word is supposed to mean from the context. But in this case, some sentences made no sense. For example: I laugh, startling the mortal, then just as quickly understand how much mafan this means for me. Or: The mortal puts on an expression that looks like he badly needs to dabian. I've been told it means to shit if you couldn't guess. For some reason, the author felt the need to use mafan over 40 times. I looked up the shit stick, and it appears that it isn't just made up nonsense, so I'll forgive the use of that phrase, but I don't think anyone in the 1930s, which is a part of the setting, was saying ta-tas, bamboozled, or grown ass woman. Also, one guy was named Horsey.

I couldn't stand the main character either. She, with her 100 years of age, acted immature and then had the audacity to complain that nobody respects her. And she was the I-hate-dresses type of woman who kept complaining about her qipao and rolling it up.

This book was trying too hard to be funny with a strong-willed main character and it didn't work out at all. I don't want to be harsh, but it needed a better editor at the very least. Because the author made choices, and it seems like nobody was there to fix them.

Arc provided by publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

First, I would like to thank Netgalley for this ARC. I was happy to get an opportunity to read this before its release. I had been looking forward to this book since I first heard of it.

Shanghai Immortal, by A.Y. Chao.

Wow, I have a lot to say!

Lady Jing is one hell of a character! She definitely made me laugh a lot, honestly, more than I can count. It’s her sassy self, her funny and childish insults/remarks that will make you giggle. But that is only a fraction of her personality. We learn more about her as we read. As always, we know very little about the main character in the beginning. Like every other book (which isn’t bad) we get to know more about her personality and her life before and now. We learn more as she confides in certain characters and as the story develops, obviously. Lady Jing grows and becomes who she wants to be, not who everyone else in her life wants her to be. She discovers more about her past and realizes so much about the people around her.

Though my initial thought of Lady Jing’s character was that she was annoying. I quickly became keen of her. I wanted to know more about her. Which pushed me to continue. You begin peeling back the layers and uncover who she really is. She is stubborn and does as she pleases, she is loyal and kind. She has a desire to help and can do more than the ones who surround her, believe she is capable of. She let others get under her skin. Such as Lady Soo, who I must say is the most annoying person in this story! She is written to be the villain, and might I add, was written as a great one! I can really feel my own hate for her grow. You can definitely get a great sense of Lady Jing’s hate for her too.

The plot is less action-packed than I assumed it would be. It’s still very much interesting, it’s just not the book you want to pick up if that's what you’re looking for. There is some action, but it’s closer to the end of the book. It’s more of a calm yet amusing plot. It makes you feel many emotions, such as anger, love, laughter, and sadness.

Okay, when I first got into this book, I somehow did not realize it had romance in it. How? Idk… But omg it’s just perfect. Now the romance is only REALLY apparent in the last 150 pages, give or take. It was just so perfect and sweet.
Now, because I didn't know there was any romance in this novel before reading it, it was not apparent that he was the love interest. But now that I know and I think back to the moment he was introduced, I can definitely see it.

The plot at first is a little slow, in my opinion. It definitely made me question if I was going to finish it. I couldn’t stay attached and wasn’t too sure where the story was going to go. But after a little, it picked up and became more clear. I was more and more intrigued. I really wanted to see her succeed and prove she was right about the villain. The last 100 or so pages were my favourite. I’m really glad I didn't stop reading it.

I wish we would have seen more of Lady Soo and Lady Jing interact. I think we see them interact about two times before the main character goes somewhere to figure things out and shine a light on the truth. Then once after that, in a flashback, and once at the end. So maybe one more interaction between the two would have been nice. So, four times (not counting the flashback) in total would have been a decent amount.

This was written for an adult audience. But solely for the reason that Lady Jing's character is very childish, I feel like it would really depend on what you like to read and not really the age. But I am personally not sure that an adult of forty or more years would read this. I think the age range for this book is sixteen to mid-thirties. So obviously it’s best to place it in the adult genre. Whether you will read or like this book depends a lot on personal preferences.

Overall, this was a great read that I would for sure recommend it to others who I know would love it too. Lady Jing is the main reason I enjoyed it. Her character’s personality is the best. She is powerful, and I loved how determined she is. I think we readers all love a woman with power and who put others in their place! So read this when it comes out, you won’t regret it.

4 out of 5 stars