Shanghai Immortal: A richly told romantic fantasy novel set in Jazz Age Shanghai

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The secondary characters are so complex and well-explored that I know the story wouldn't have been the same without them, their strengths and their unwavering love for Jing.

Lady Jing is a great character, dripping in snark but in some ways still child-like and seeing the awe in the world, and I loved watching her worldview develop through her adventures. I went into this expecting a sort of dark comedy, combined with a lot of things I like AKA mythology, vampires and badass heroines, and this book didn't disappoint.The romance: I have to preface this by saying that I'm generally not a romance person, but the biggest issue I had with it was mostly that it felt like a third of the book was mostly only romance, and the rest was the actual plot.

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. The slow burn romance between Jing and Mr Tony Lee, a human from Mortal Shanghai who was a balm to her fiery nature. Determined to get revenge on the hulijing immortals who constantly belittle her, Jing tries to foil their plan to steal a dragon pearl from her guardian, the King of Hell. It's fast-paced, easy to read, and the story and characters continue to be interesting and entertaining. She was traded by her mother to the King of Hell when she was young and is now living in immortal Shanghai, running menial errands for the king.

Full of humour, wonderful characters and a storyline that had me gripped and reading late into the night. The story isn’t all sunsets and cocktails though, and with the time period of 1930s Shanghai Jing does come across some unsettling situations in mortal Shanghai. Since her vampiric father is absent and her hulijing mother was killed, Lady Jing was sent to Yan Luo Wang for protection. Plus, all that talk of xiao long bao has made me extremely hungry, and I desperately need to go get some to satisfy my cravings.