Black Water Sister Review: Is It Worth Reading?

Verdict: A funny, sharp ghost story set in present-day Penang, with the best bossy dead grandmother I’ve read in years, held back by a saggy middle and a girlfriend who barely makes it onto the page.

Best for: Readers who want urban fantasy rooted in a real city and a real family, with a lesbian lead whose queerness shapes the plot, and who don’t need the romance to be the main event.

Heat level: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5: no romance.io entry, and no reviewer reports sex on the page)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.7/5: a 3.82 Goodreads average across 11,625 ratings, strong trade reviews, and a romance that most readers call thin)

Tropes: Haunted by a family ghost, vengeful god, closeted heroine, long-distance girlfriend, diaspora homecoming, spirit mediums, family secrets, gangster developer, possession, coming out.

Black Water Sister is a standalone adult novel by Zen Cho, published in May 2021 by Ace in the US and Pan Macmillan in the UK, and it’s a piece of contemporary fantasy set in modern Penang, Malaysia, where a broke, closeted Harvard graduate named Jess Teoh discovers that the voice nagging her from inside her own head belongs to her dead grandmother, and that her grandmother has picked a fight with a god.

It sits at a 3.82 average across 11,625 Goodreads ratings, was shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award and the Locus Award, and drew warm reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and Library Journal. It is not a romance, though, and that matters on a site like this one. The girlfriend is real and the relationship is part of the plot, but it lives mostly on the phone. Both of those facts are worth knowing before you start.

What Is Black Water Sister About?

This is character-driven urban fantasy in the old sense of the phrase: magic inside a living city rather than a made-up world. The magic here is Chinese Malaysian folk religion, the mix of Taoist, Buddhist and local belief in which small neighborhood gods have temples, devotees and mediums who let those gods speak through them. Cho has said she wanted to write about the religion she grew up with, and that Penang is one of her favorite places. That’s why the gods feel like neighbors with grudges rather than set dressing.

Jess is the outsider. She was raised in the US, she speaks rusty Hokkien, she has a degree and no job, and her parents don’t know she’s gay. Her girlfriend, Sharanya, is headed to Singapore, and Jess wants to follow her. Ah Ma, her late grandmother, is the opposite: rooted, furious, a former spirit medium who knows exactly what she wants and assumes Jess will do it. The book stays close to Jess the whole way, so you get her panic, her sarcasm and her habit of lying to everyone she loves.

What Makes This Sapphic Urban Fantasy Ghost Story Work

Penang itself: The most praised element in the reader reviews I tallied, by a wide margin. The heat, the food, the shophouses, the temples and the aunties all come up again and again, and Kirkus singled out the sense of place too.
Ah Ma: The ghost is the character readers name first. Locus described her as a mix of meddling relative and something more dangerous, and that double edge is what makes the haunting work.
The humor: Reviewers keep saying it’s funny, and the jokes come from family life: relatives who meddle in everything and a dead grandmother who swears like a sailor.
The language: Dialogue is mostly Malaysian English with Hokkien and Malay mixed in, left unexplained. Most readers loved it. A few found it hard going.
Queerness with stakes: Jess’s secret isn’t decoration. Being closeted in Malaysia shapes her choices, and the coming-out thread pays off at the end.

Book Synopsis

Jess Teoh did everything right and still has nothing to show for it. After Harvard, she moves with her parents from the US to Penang, and she doesn’t fit there. She spends her days sending out job applications and her nights texting a girlfriend her parents have never heard of. The plan is to find work in Singapore, close to Sharanya, and figure out the rest later.

Then a voice starts talking to her. It’s rude, it’s old, and it speaks Hokkien. It belongs to Ah Ma, her late grandmother. In life Ah Ma served as a medium for a local god called the Black Water Sister. In death she has one piece of unfinished business. A rich, well-connected developer named Ng Chee Hin plans to tear down the god’s shrine, and Ah Ma wants him punished. She can’t do it herself. She needs a body, and Jess is family.

So Jess starts running errands for a ghost. She visits the temple, meets an uncle who serves as a medium at the temple, and learns that the Black Water Sister isn’t the kind of god who forgives a slight. Each favor she does for Ah Ma digs up another thing the family buried. The question pushing the book forward is whose side Jess is actually on, and whether she gets to keep her own body long enough to decide.

My Review

Ah Ma is the reason to read this book, and I’ll say that up front. She’s petty, crude, sharp and sad, and the push and pull between her and Jess is the best thing Cho does here. A grandmother who lives in your head and criticizes your posture is funny. A grandmother who lives in your head and wants to use your hands to hurt someone is frightening. The book moves between those two modes without a seam, and it worked on me.

The second strength is the setting. This is what urban fantasy should do with a city. Penang isn’t a backdrop, it’s the engine: the land deals, the heritage zone, the temples squeezed between new towers, the way class decides which gods you can afford. Strange Horizons, reviewing it from a Malaysian perspective, made exactly this point, that the poor go to small gods and the rich hire bigger ones. The dialogue carries a lot of that. Cho writes the way people in Penang talk, and she trusts you to keep up.

Where it struggles is pace, and this isn’t just me. Slow or meandering pacing is the most repeated complaint in the Goodreads reviews I read, and Audible listeners say the same thing about the first stretch. The middle loses steam while Jess runs around Penang keeping secrets, and at least one reader thought the gangster subplot ran too long. Next to that sits Jess herself. Several reviewers find her passive or blank, a narrator things happen to rather than someone who acts. I didn’t mind her as much, because her lying is the point, but the complaint recurs.

The expectation to reset is the romance. If you came here for a sapphic love story, this isn’t one. Sharanya is mostly a voice on the phone, and Jess spends much of the book hiding the haunting from her. Locus called Sharanya a character we could do to learn more about, and at least four Goodreads reviewers say the relationship is thin or goes nowhere. The book also turns darker than its cover suggests, with an attempted rape and real violence. If you wanted a cozy ghost romance, adjust. If you wanted queer urban fantasy with a lesbian at the center, you’re in the right place.

My honest note: A great ghost and a great city, carried by a heroine some readers find too passive and slowed by a long middle. If you need the romance up front, skip it. If you want a funny, angry family ghost story with a lesbian lead, it’s worth the trip.

Element	In Black Water Sister
Central relationship	Jess and her ghost grandmother Ah Ma. The sapphic relationship (Jess and Sharanya) is secondary and long-distance
Core tropes	Family ghost, vengeful god, spirit mediums, closeted heroine, family secrets, possession
Setting	Present-day Penang, Malaysia: temples, shophouses, new developments
Heat level	1/5: no romance.io entry, no on-page sex reported
Series	Standalone adult novel. Plot resolves, relationship ends hopeful (HFN)
Content notes	Attempted rape, violence and gang violence, murder, kidnapping, possession, homophobia, racism, a traumatic outing in a dream

How Spicy Is Black Water Sister?

A 1/5. I couldn’t find a romance.io entry for it, which tells you something on its own: the database tracks romance, and nobody files this book there. Readers back that up. One blogger who picked it up expecting a sapphic romance says there’s nothing explicit, and none of the reviews I read describe a sex scene. The relationship plays out in calls, texts and worry.

What you should know in advance isn’t heat, it’s darkness. Several reviewers flag an attempted sexual assault, and others mention kidnapping, gang violence and a murder in the god’s backstory. Locus noted that some readers may find those scenes disturbing. If you want other low-heat sapphic books with something uncanny in them, White Is for Witching and The Jasmine Throne both sit at 1/5 on our scale.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want urban fantasy rooted in a real place, you like ghosts with opinions, you enjoy family drama and dark humor, and you’re happy with a lesbian lead whose romance stays in the background.

You may want to skip it if: you need the romance to be central, a slow middle loses you, a reactive heroine frustrates you, or you want a light read without sexual violence on the page.

In short: a strong, funny, sometimes brutal family ghost story that happens to have a lesbian at its heart, not a love story with ghosts in it.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

This book didn’t find readers through a viral moment. It found them through prize lists. In its first year it was a finalist for the Kitschies, then for the Ignyte and Locus Awards, and it got a World Fantasy Award nomination. It made The Straits Times’ top ten books of 2021 and year-end lists at Polygon and Tor.com, and in February 2022 Book Riot put it on a list of the best standalone SFF books. That’s a slow, steady route, and it explains why its 11,625 Goodreads ratings lean toward SFF readers more than romance readers. A web search didn’t turn up a Reddit discussion I could point to, and StoryGraph’s ratings wouldn’t load for me, so there’s no did-not-finish figure here. Audio is the other way in. Recorded Books released the audiobook the same day as the print edition, read by Catherine Ho, and the library listing gives the runtime as 11 hours 37 minutes. Kirkus praised Ho’s accent work and her timing on the jokes, and Audible listeners call her narration “phenomenal” and say it kept them going through the slow start.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The Malaysian setting comes first and it isn’t close; in the 30 Goodreads reviews I tallied, 18 praise it. Then the humor, which 14 mention, and the ghosts, gods and folklore, which 11 call original. Ah Ma is the standout character for a lot of people, and the meddling relatives get almost as much love. Around ten reviewers say the book spoke to them as queer or diaspora readers, and Malaysian reviewers in particular praise how the dialogue sounds. The trade reviews line up with all of this. Publishers Weekly called it “must-read fantasy,” Kirkus called it “a charming romp,” and Library Journal called it immersive.

What readers argue about and complain about: Pacing comes first. Six of the 30 reviews call the middle slow or drawn out, and the Audible reviews repeat it. Second, Jess. Five reviewers find her passive or blank, and a couple of bloggers find her unlikable or tiring because she lies so much. Third, the romance: at least four Goodreads reviewers say Sharanya has no depth, and one blogger goes further and says Sharanya treats Jess badly. A smaller group, around six, flag the violence and wish they’d had content warnings, and three expected something lighter after Cho’s Regency books. The ending splits people. Strange Horizons found the resolution too neat for the social harm the book describes, and a few readers call it too easy. Others, like the Lesbrary reviewer, liked its optimism. The dialect splits people too: most love it, but one reader’s book club found the unexplained terms off-putting. Here’s what I noticed: the trade reviews were almost all raves, and only Locus touched on the thin girlfriend, in passing. Readers raise it again and again.

The standalone question worth asking first: It’s complete. The ghost plot resolves, the temple question is settled, and Jess’s story closes with a decision about her future and about coming out. The relationship ends on a hopeful note rather than a grand gesture, which I’d call a happy-for-now. There’s no sequel. If you want more Cho, there’s her Regency fantasy Sorcerer to the Crown, but readers coming from it warn that this book is darker and more personal.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Black Water Sister a romance?

No. It’s an adult urban fantasy and family ghost story with a lesbian lead. Her long-distance relationship with Sharanya is part of the plot, but it’s secondary and mostly happens over the phone.

Does Black Water Sister have a happy ending?

Mostly yes. The ghost and god plot resolves, Jess decides to come out to her parents, and things end hopefully with her girlfriend, which reads as a happy-for-now. Some readers, including Strange Horizons, found the resolution too neat.

How spicy is Black Water Sister?

A 1/5. There’s no romance.io entry, and no reviewer reports sex on the page. The content to watch for is violence, including an attempted sexual assault.

Is Black Water Sister part of a series?

No. It’s a standalone novel published in 2021, and the story is complete in one book. It has no connection to Zen Cho’s Sorcerer Royal books.

Is there an audiobook of Black Water Sister?

Yes. Catherine Ho narrates it for Recorded Books, and it runs about 11 and a half hours. Kirkus and Audible listeners both praise her narration.

If You Loved Black Water Sister, Read These Next

If the haunting is what got you, White Is for Witching is a stranger, more literary ghost story about a house, a family and a girl in love with another girl. If the family and the magic were the draw, The Once and Future Witches puts sisters and suppressed power at the center, with romance as a side thread. And for more Asian-rooted fantasy with women at its heart, The Jasmine Throne is the bigger, darker epic. You’ll find more diaspora picks in our guide to Asian sapphic books, and more beyond-romance titles on our best sapphic fantasy books list or across all our Book Reviews.

The Bottom Line

Black Water Sister wants to be a ghost story, a family drama and a coming-out story at once, and it mostly pulls that off. Ah Ma is unforgettable, Penang is vivid on every page, and the humor lands. The middle drags, Jess can feel like a passenger in her own story, and the girlfriend never gets enough room to matter much. If you want queer urban fantasy with a real city and a furious, funny ghost, it’s well worth your time. If you’re here for the love story, look elsewhere. Check Black Water Sister on Amazon

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Black Water Sister ranks as a strong adult urban fantasy with a lesbian lead and a romance in the background. It’s funny and rooted in a real place, held back by a slow middle and a passive heroine. Read it for the ghost and the city, not the love story.