The Girl with a Thousand Faces

Two words. Ghost. Cat. The Girl with a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean starts in 1970's Hong Kong and had two things going for it within the first pages: One - the aforementioned Ghost Cat which can go from a sweet little baby kitten to a powerful beast in a blink and Two: a protagonist who is my age (fully baked adult) - at least in the opening pages before it jumps back to a time I've coincidentally been reading about a lot lately - the WWII occupation of Hong Kong by the Japanese followed by the influx of refugees from the Chinese Civil war. It was a crazy time for Hong Kong.)

Mercy is also a ghost talker - kind of like an exorcist but more like J. Love Hewitt's The Ghost Whisperer - she talks the ghosts into leaving, helping them get sweet, sweet revenge before they go if need be. Yeah, she's kind of a badass. Unfortunately, she's a badass who doesn't remember her past, so besides helping spirits with their crossing, there's one spirit tied to her mysterious past that's not so easy to dismiss.

What I love about The Girl with a Thousand Faces, though, is it's not just a story about a cool middle aged ghostbuster with an awesome spectral feline sidekick, it's also a sad, haunting, and beautiful story about generational trauma, feminine rage, and the scars of war. It's a gorgeous balance of folklore and history, and the story structure was ideal to introduce all the ends that were woven in to give us the perfect finale to Mercy's story.

I listened to this on audiobook, and the narration by Natalie Naudus was perfect. Her voice was rich, and she modulated it just enough to make it easy to follow voice changes - no easy feat with this multi-facted story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the advance copy for my unbiased review. Pub. date: 5/5/2026