I am a bit late on this review but only because it took me so long to finish this... literally MONTHS. It just couldn't really hold my attention. I got this book originally as an audiobook arc but ran out of time to download it so I found it as an audiobook through my local library instead. I had to renew my borrow at least 5 times (lol).
Though I did enjoy the content of the story, there was just something missing for me the whole time. I'm not sure exactly what it is but it couldn't grip me.

Choo's writing in this is so beautiful though so I will try again with future books!

thank you to netgalley for the advanced reading copy. I really enjoyed this and will be getting copies for my shop.

What a beautiful surprise. This is the first Yangsze Choo I've picked up so I had little frame of reference going in. I am familiar with Chinese folklore about foxes and thought I knew exactly what to expect, I was wrong to assume. This is an incredibly crafted historical fiction that introduced me to a time period I know little about in China, the early 1900s. It is also a revenge story with several interwoven mysteries and magical realism is mixed into the entire narrative. Narration by the author was excellent and added a nuance that might be missed in print. I am eager to pick up Yangsze Choo's debut after reading this one.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an audio ARC in return for a fair and honest review.

This is set in 1908 Manchuria. This has to do with the Chinese folklore of fox spirits that have the ability to transform themselves into humans. There's one point of view from Snow who is a mother seeking revenge for her sons death. The next point of view is of a detective who is investigating the death of a women who is found dead outside a restaurant on a cold winter night. This detective has a really cool skill that he can determine if a person is lying. This story is so moving, I loved it.

I believe this is a case of it’s not you it’s me. The writing was beautiful, the premise unique but I say couldn’t connect with the story. The narration was enjoyable.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for a copy of this audiobook in exchange for and honest review.

The Fox Wife was so much more than I ever could have imagined. This book pulls from the magic of Chinese folklore and the predictability of human behavior to create a beautiful story about foxes.

The Fox Wife is told from a dual POV. One point of view is from Snow- well she has many names- but we will call her Snow. Snow is on a mission to avenge her daughter, a fox cub that was murdered for the greed of man. In her journey Snow meets the matriarch of a medicine shop who Snow attaches herself to as a servant to use this position to further her revenge but soon finds that her and the matriarch are connected by more than just coincidence. They have interconnected fates. Which Foxes take very seriously.

The Second POV is a detective called Bao. Bao was blessed by a fox as a child and is now able to hear lies. After being hired to find the identity of a girl who died in a shop’s door, Bao is put on the trail of the foxes.


The Fox Wife isn’t even all that long but because of the pace, action, and interconnected characters it feels long. But in a good way. The story, while technically taking place in a brief amount of time is so action packed that you feel the weight of the story. It really helps you understand how tired Snow must be. The author was also able to personify foxes in this really beautiful and subtle way. When I heard it was a book about a women who turns into a fox, I was thinking like animorphs or something but this was beautifully executed.

There is also a subtle romance plot that you don’t see coming but end up so heartily rooting for by the end that I was certain my heart would break if they didn’t find their way to one another.

I just can’t recommend this book enough.

I was genuinely shocked when I discovered that this audiobook is read by the author. The voice is clear, the cadence makes sense. There are no weird voices or accents attempted- I thought it was a professional audiobook reader until literally 90% into the book. This is one of very few occasions that it being narrated by the author is a good thing. I also loved getting to hear the pronunciation of names and places. I was co reading this physical book while listening to the audio version and seeing how things were spelled and how I would assume they were said vs how they are actually said scratched an itch in my brain I didn’t know I had.

Yangsze Choo does a wonderful job telling the story of a woman who struggles with a world designed and built for men using the lense of a fox woman. Her narration is also wonderful and I look forward to reading and listening to more from her.

the Fox Wife was such an interesting read. I love reimaginings of folktales. Choo writes so beautifully.

This was an interesting read but felt a bit long...however, I am not sad that I spent my time reading it. This was my 1t book by Yangsze Choo but I will definitely read another book she writes.

This is a delightful and interesting book. The story takes place in 1908, mostly in northern China and Japan. In alternating chapters, it concerns Snow, who is alternately a woman and a fox, who seeks to avenge the death of her daughter, and Bao, a detective who is seeking the cause of death of a young woman found frozen outside a restaurant. There is much more to the story, however, as the same characters haunt both plot tracks until they merge at the end. It is in some ways a fantasy, but the characters are very real. I thought it was a lovely but somewhat sad story. It takes a while to read, but it is still a page turner.

The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo is a book that is many things at the same time - historical novel, fantasy, mystery, even romance. Ah San is a young fox wife who leaves her home in the grasslands to avenge the death of her cub by a thoughtless and cruel man. In human form, she becomes the servant of an old lady, Tagtaa, whose family owns a successful apothecary. Tagtaa was rescued by a fox, and she loved a boy who had the gift of telling when someone lied. Bao, is an old man now and a detective. He is tasked with finding the identity of a dead woman frozen in an alley, which leads him to the grasslands where he learns of a mysterious fox lady. Slowly, the backstories of Ah San, Tagtaa, and Bao start weaving together. The writing is slow, but beautiful and full of lore and magic. The cultural qualities of the read add a layer of timelessness to the book.

✨ Review ✨ The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo; Narrated by Yangsze Choo

Thanks to Macmillan Audio, Henry Holt and Co, and #netgalley for the gifted advanced copy/ies of this book!

As soon as I read the description of this, I was hooked! A historical fiction / magical realism book based in Chinese folklore around foxes - sold!

The book alternates between POVs of Snow, a fox/woman, and Bao, a private detective who can detect lies, in 1908 Manchuria. Bao's investigating a girl who died in the door of a restaurant and Snow is on the hunt for revenge against a photographer who has done her harm. Increasingly these stories converge across the book creating a really lovely narrative.

I loved the historical setting in Manchuria and shortly in Japan in a time of great modernization and change. This sense of change mixed with folklore and the foxes' efforts at survival and how they choose to live made this such an enjoyable read. Admittedly it's long and slow in places, but this made me love it all the more.

I listened to approx 20% of this book and love that it's the author herself narrating it. I think there's a lot going on which made me prefer the text version, but the audio version is great if you can handle dual POVs.

What a gorgeous book that I'm so glad I read!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: historical fiction plus magical realism & folklore
Setting: 1908 Manchuria and Japan
Reminds me of: Yangsze Choo's The Night Tiger and Janie Chang's The Library of Legends
Pub Date: Feb 2024
Length: 14 hours 36 minutes

Read this if you like:
⭕️ folklore-inspired magical realism
⭕️ Chinese/Japanese historical fiction
⭕️ interaction between foxes - full of curiosity and trouble
⭕️ the merging of modernizing forces and traditional ways

A really cool and interesting story, loved how the traditional story elements were woven into the whole narrative. The narrator was enjoyable and added to the overall pleasantness of the experience of reading the book.

I absolutely LOVED this audiobook reading by the author!

Author Yangsze Choo created a riveting mystery novel with a hint of fantasy surrounding the lives of mystical foxes. Following the two perspectives of the fox wife Snow and private detective Bao, author Choo interweaved each other's adventures in search for an act of revenge and purpose that would eventually collide under unfortunate circumstances. As the grief-stricken fox Snow ventures outside her home to search for the murderer of her child, she encounters a series of challenges, including meeting more of her own kind, in an industrial Chinese settings on the brink of revolution. While she focuses on blending in under the radar with the purpose of getting her hands on a Manchurian photographer, she will learn that her act of revenge could not only cost her life but could possible harm others around her. Former scholarly teacher turned private investigator Bao has long since forgotten his childhood and the sorrows that came with it, but his past memories about his fascination about foxes are sparked upon investigating the death of a frozen courtesan. Following a trail of pleasure houses to the rich homes of men, it is his job to find out how foxes like Snow are connected, leaving a series of unfortunate events in their wake.

I had my eye on this title for a while because the synopsis made it sound like an interesting about the mythical Chinese foxes and modernizing China. I will admit that I had a hard time getting through the audiobook because the plot worked at a slower pace than I was used to. I did, however, enjoy the author's use of detail describing the implications of foxes for different places and plot twists, especially when it came to how both parties would be connected. I had suspected the worse outcome for Snow and Bao, feeling like they would never be able to have some kind of happy ending or anything good happen for them, but the author did not leave us hanging by a thread. Both perspectives had a chance to face their destiny head on despite their stubbornness to keep going when things were getting too out of hand. Overall, I thought the book was very well written and kept me on the edge of my seat, dying to know what would happen to everyone in the end. I will say though, I was disappointed to not know what would happen with Bao, Boarhi or the Chin family towards the end when everything exploded like it did. I will have to reread the physical book later for the correct names, but overall, I loved this audiobook read by the author herself.

The Fox Wife is an interesting mix of mythology and criminal investigation, which is a unique enough combination that I think it’s going to be a struggle to mix this cohesively no matter the author. I don’t think either element particularly carried the narrative here, which overall left me feeling like the story got a little too long winded with the ground it’s trying to cover.

I really thrive off of character interactions in fantasy because the worldbuilding in these types of books tends to be dense. Yangsze Choo is exceptional at establishing a beautiful, fantastical world on the fringes of what appears to be the everyday realm. I love how she pulls in different elements of Chinese mythology that she previously hadn’t explored in her other works. But the characters in the world itself fell a bit flat for me.

The main character was exactly the right narrator choice. I think she had an interesting enough background to establish her as her own person, but she failed to interact with the cast of characters around her in a way that drove any kind of emotional response from me. Some of this was demanded by a major plot twist related to one of the other characters in the main cast. Which I understand, and acknowledge. But it did make me feel like everyone was just… there. Snow didn’t want to emotionally connect, and even if that closed-offness was part of her character it just didn’t make for an interesting dynamic with anyone else.

I think Yangzse Choo’s writing shines in stories like The Ghost Bride - which is a story I still think about sometimes, randomly even after reading it years ago. She’s excellent at toeing the line between fantasy and horror. Fantasy and crime… maybe a little less successfully.

Thank you to the publisher Macmillan Audio for providing an audiobook ARC via NetGalley for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this story and the narrator was perfect for the story! The only thing I might have liked was the narrator giving each character a more unique voice.
The story itself pulls from so much fox lore that I learned more stories than I had heard before. The tale was emotional and down to earth even though it was a fantasy tale. I like that touch stone as it made the fantasy seem real.

The female protagonist, Snow, is one of my favourite recent protagonists. Without spoiling the novel, she is a bold and smart character and her story pulled me in like few do. Bao, our male narrator, would make a fantastic detective on screen. It did take me a while to warm up to him but when I did, I was also hooked. I also have to say- the alternating chapters between the two narrators worked incredibly well to build the story.

You do not need to have any indepth knowledge of Asian folklore to follow the thread of the fox throughout. Choo does a wonderful job of sharing needed information without making it feel like she is “teaching” us. Having both a mythological and a human narrator was helpful to relay a lot of information seamlessly.

I will say, the novel does start out slowly but it does pick up! I would say that it felt somewhat slow for the first 10% but after that it moved along at a fantastic pace.

The author, Yangsze Choo, also narrated the audiobook, and she did a spectacular job. While there were some difficult things to hear in the story, I think she may have one of the most soothing voices that I’ve heard in years.

This was incredible. Yangsze Choo has really cemented herself as a favorite author for me. I love how she weaves folklore into real world settings; she does it so seamlessly. The fox folklore was so interesting to me and I was enthralled from the first page. The reveals in the story were really beautifully done and I really grew to love each and every character that we got to know. I hope to reread this soon. This is also one of my favorite covers of the year.

This book was really well done on audio too. I think the narrator was fantastic and think this is a great story to consume either via audio or reading physically.

Thank you NetGalley for an early-release copy of this audiobook!

Unfortunately, I was not able to get into this book even though I tried. The plot was not making sense to me and I wasn’t grabbed enough to keep going so it’s a DNF for me.

3 stars for the cover art, narrator, and possibility for the story.

What an incredible book!

Following Snow, a fox woman, this book is a deep dive into folklore of ancient China and Japan, specifically, the legends surrounding fox gods. It’s part mystery (two of them running simultaneously), part historical fiction, and part romance.

The story itself was so well-written. It was a much more lyrical and roundabout story than I usually prefer, but it was beautiful. Every piece along the way was there for a reason. And once the two mysteries converged, things wrapped up nicely.

The narration by the author was an absolute delight. Hearing stories told in their author’s voices gives such an air of authenticity—the author’s narration with this book made me feel like I was sitting in a room with her, listening to this wonderful tale.

All in, this was a delightful book that I will treasure having read.