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About the Book

The Girl with No Reflection by Keshe Chow

Genre: YA Fantasy, Romantasy

Publication Date: August 6, 2024

Synopsis:

A young woman chosen as the crown prince’s bride must travel to the royal palace to meet her new husband—but her world is shaken when she discovers the dark truth the royal family has been hiding for centuries—in this lush fantasy debut perfect for fans of Song of Silver, Flame Like Night and Violet Made of Thorns.

Princess Ying Yue believed in love…once upon a time.

Yet when she’s chosen to wed the crown prince, Ying’s dreams of a fairy tale marriage quickly fall apart. Her husband-to-be is cold and indifferent, confining Ying to her room for reasons he won’t explain. Worse still are the rumors that swirl around the imperial whispers of seven other royal brides who, after their own weddings, mysteriously disappeared.

Left alone with only her own reflection for company, Ying begins to see things. Strange things. Movements in the corners of her mirror. Colorful lights upon its surface. And when, on the eve of her wedding, she unwittingly tears open a gateway, she is pulled into a mirror world.

This realm is full of sentient reflections, including the enigmatic Mirror Prince. Unlike his real-world counterpart, the Mirror Prince is kind and compassionate, and before long Ying falls in love—the kind of love she always dreamed of.

But there is darkness in this new world, too.

It turns out the two worlds have a long and blood-soaked history, and Ying has a part to play in the future of them both. And the brides who came before Ying? By the time they discovered what their role was, it was already too late.

Book Review

“It was our love that saved the world.”

What if your reflection in the mirror was trying to kill you? That’s the premise behind this delightful new fantasy.

Ying has been sent to marry a crown prince who shuts her away in a wing of the house with a private garden before the wedding. In addition to her loneliness, Ying begins to see strange things in the reflections of mirrors and the pond. Flashes of movement become hands reaching towards her, until it all culminates in a disaster the day of her wedding, when Ying is kidnapped into the mirror world.

Within the mirror world, Ying meets her own reflection and finds a mirror counterpart to her cold husband. This prince delights in her and wants her, capturing her lonely heart. But as the barrier between worlds continues to weaken, allowing monsters to slip into our world, Ying holds the key to decide the fate of both worlds.

I loved the love triangle – if you can call it that – between Ying and both versions of the prince. It’s fun to watch Ying have moments with both of them as she tries to assess which one she can really trust.

The author did a good job with the details of the mirror world as well, from the mundane to the horrifying. The mirror people have limitations compared to their human counterparts, such as they can only wear clothes that their human counterparts put on. The deeper Ying gets into the mirror world, the more the reader learns about the curse that shaped it.

A dazzling debut that balances love and high-stakes action.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Keshe was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and migrated to Australia when she was two. She currently lives in Naarm (Melbourne) with her partner, two kids, and two cats.

She has won multiple awards for short fiction, as well as the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript.

Her debut novel THE GIRL WITH NO REFLECTION will be out in 2024 with Delacorte Press.