Miss Cassidy vs The Mythical

From the summary of the plot, I wasn't too sure about Meihan Boey's 'The Formidable Miss Cassidy' (2021), but I decided to give it a shot. I was pleasantly surprised! I shall keep the hard copy of this book.

In 1895, governess Miss Leda Cassidy traveled from Scotland and arrived in Singapore as a paid companion to sixteen-year-old Sarah Jane Bendemeer, the last surviving child in the family. Everyone else had died of 'tropical fever' — five children and the lady of the house. Only Sarah Jane and her father Captain James Bendemeer were alive. The Bendemeers' family home was not one that people wanted to visit because it was rumored to be haunted by a pontianak who lived in one of the many banana trees on the grounds.

Miss Cassidy seemed amazingly calm in knowing and seeing a pontianak in the grounds. She was also comfortable with all the folklore and stories about ghosts and monsters and the in-between world. She set her mind to 'cleansing' the house. She soon revealed herself to be a steely and optimistic woman of many talents.

Indeed, she was not afraid now, but she was troubled. Bendemeer House was echoingly empty, yet its stark and scrupulously cleaned rooms, with their abandoned children’s cribs and trunks filled with toys and camphor, clamoured noisily with the weight of angry memory. Death still clung to every corner; not the sad, gentle death of recently lost loved ones, but something far older, darker and more dangerous.

[*SPOILER ALERT]

⚠️ If you haven't read the book, STOP READING. NOW. 

The subduing of the pontianak and protecting the Bendemeers took up the first third of the book. I thought she was a practicing witch, or a Celtic shaman or something. A quarter way through, I blinked at this scene and the lines so casually thrown at the readers. What. Say what?! Miss Cassidy is hundreds of years old and has taken on various forms? WHAT?!!! The next few scenes finally saw a close-up of the pontianak and a face-off between Miss Cassidy and it, and I read "Sluagh" and cackled. Wow. I wasn't expecting that. So Miss Cassidy is fae and she was summoned by Maria Bendeemer!?! Wow! 

“Good gracious,” said Miss Cassidy blankly, “have you...summoned me?”

The old man regarded her out of shrewd, beady black eyes, and spat betel juice out of the corner of his mouth.

“Nobody has had the power to summon me for hundreds of years. Certainly not as I am now,” she said with asperity. “Whatever do you want? Oh,” she exclaimed at last, “are you Pak Labah?”

“Pak Labah,” agreed the old man in a hoarse, gruff voice. He stood up and regarded her calmly, his hands behind his back. “Eh,” he added non-committally, unimpressed.

“Do you know about the pontianak at Bendemeer House?”

“Pontianak,” said Pak Labah, nodding, moving towards his hut. “Nanti, nanti.” 

Miss Cassidy obediently waited. She could not move far anyway; the bomoh had cast a very small summoning circle.

Once Bendemeer House was cleansed of the pontianak, the family left Singapore and sailed off. Miss Cassidy chose to stay to find new work. We move on to the middle chapter in which Miss Cassidy worked for a wealthy Chinese businessman Mr Kay Wing Tong, and finally the last chapter where Miss Cassidy moved back to England, and a delightful little romance was thrown in at the end. Quite fun! 

Miss Cassidy had met Mr Kay at the wedding of his eldest son, and became an English tutor for his fourteen-year-old twin daughters. And now, without the Bendemeers, she found employment as a tutor to his family. And of course she subdued a toyol Mr Kay's sprawling Pandan Villa, and also saved the family's twin daughters from the grasp of sea monster Scylla who was the real owner of the toyol. And then she left to protect the family from Scylla should she ever escape her binds. Miss Cassidy is indeed formidable.

“Anna, this is not working.”

“You must be patient, my dear. A summoning is a complicated thing, and you forget that he is mortal and substantial.”

“I never forget he is mortal and substantial. It was you who said this could be done. I never entertained any such thought.”

“But you hoped, when you asked me, that it could be done somehow. And I assure you it can. But you cannot get frustrated. Remember, when the old priestesses summoned your folk, they were willing to wait many hours in salt circles, in damp mouldy forests full of insects.”

“We are not going to sit at this table for many hours. I haven’t the time. I promised Sarah Jane I would help her with the cheese today.”

“The cheese be damned, Leda! Something is missing. What do you think of, when you bring Mr Kay to mind?” 

The writer had casually weaved in all magical and fantastical elements into late eighteenth / early nineteenth century Singapore, and made it work. A 'Lady of Sidhe' in Singapore, summoned by another practitioner of the arts, and stayed on to protect. Miss Cassidy was believable, and it felt like she easily adapted into life in the tropics, and understood the cultural nuances. The plot's refreshing and unique, and it's pretty good writing. 

Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed this story. I kinda hope that the author does a sequel! Or turn this into a series! Well, not a 10-book series, but do a three-book. I can't call it a trilogy because it isn't. So fun!