Reviews with content warning for Homophobia - She Is a Haunting

Reviews tagging 'Homophobia'

She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran

24 reviews

lunarexorcist's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

i thought this was a new adult book until like twenty pages in my bad. i was so let down jade was 17 and not... like... 22.

i cried at the last forty pages but then went "what. what? what???" until the end. unhinged. i cant decide if it was unhinged in a genius or stupid way, but i will say that

being horny for a ghost that is horny for you also in a toxic yuri way and also a "wow you are so repressed colonialism slash misogyny slash queerphobia is a hell of a thing huh"

is one of the more unique interpretations of "this house eats people" ive seen.

i think the fact everyone sucks so bad throws people off but that just made my chest ache with how real it felt. that was my dad. thats my eldest daughter trauma. im gonna lose it.

Content Warnings

clovetra's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

ok i had to pause to collect my thoughts on this.

i hate to say i did not have a good time.

look it feels illegal to give this a 1-star because;

a) the cover is too beautiful to rate it that low

b) i did enjoy the first 30% of this book!

it feels wrong to rate a book lower when i considered dnf’ing many times yet pushed through because i wanted to know how it ended & if it got any better. the fact i had that much interest is worth 2-stars to me. plus i really wanted to like this. REALLY wanted to like this. alas as u can see by my stars um…. i did not!

it was really hard to formulate my thoughts about this book simply because most of the time i had no fuckjng idea what was going on. like if you asked me for a summary i would probably skip a good 60% of the plot because i actually don’t know what was happening. i still don’t really know what happened by the end. like yeah i got what happened to ba but….. with cam & marion? lily? jade even? um. 😀

like even the chapter titles such as “heart”…. i assume it was the house? i cant even be sure.

i wouldn’t be surprised if it was a meta-commentary like “if you don’t understand this book it’s immersing you into being jade in this house” but…. cmon when i don’t even know what i don’t know i am not a happy camper.

that was honestly my main issue. i think if i knew what was going on i would’ve given this at the bare minimum an extra star. but like im gonna have to read other reviews to know what’s going on.

another gripe, which is a lot more minor mind you, is that this didn’t feel like a horror. it’s more like a thriller. but like nothing was really horrifying to me. bro i need more than just some bugs. the more horrific elements may have been lost on me because i had no idea what was going on!!!!!

my final gripe is that this was such a slow burn oh my god????? storygraph said this was medium-paced…… WHERE. i’m sorry this is not medium-burn this is a snail’s-pace-burn. not even saying that’s a bad thing! it’s just not my thing and if i knew it was a slow burn i wouldn’t have even read it!

idk man im really sad cuz i wanted to love this! otherwise i wouldn’t have pushed past like 30%!!!!!!!

i am hoping that trang thanh tran irons out these “kinks” in her newest book because it looks good. granted i did say that about this book and look where that got me but. IM HOLDING OUT FOR YOU TRANG THANH TRAN!!!!!!!!!!

Content Warnings

vanessamariebooks's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I wish I could say I loved this, but it just wasn't for me. Way too much description and the writing tries to be lyrical/poetic, but it just ends up making things more confusing (and the story was already pretty confusing to begin with). I do think that for the chapters that start with a body organ (kidney, liver, brain, etc.) the lyrical/poetic writing works well with these chapters, but I wish it would have been used for those chapters only and not Jade's chapters as well. I appreciate the topics/themes it tries to tackle (colonialism, intergenerational trauma, bisexuality), but it fell a little flat to me and didn't feel fully fleshed out. As for the characters, I honestly didn't care about any of them, even Jade, our MC. I didn't hate them, but I didn't love any of them either; I was really indifferent. This was also a really slow read, and I was bored throughout most of it. If it wasn't for the audiobook, I definitely would have DNF in the beginning. On the plus side, the cover of this book is gorgeous (and one of the reasons I wanted to pick this one up)!

Content Warnings

moxiereads's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

Content Warnings

uncreativeoops's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

The vibes were immaculate, which is pretty important for a gothic horror novel, and the author managed to create an eerie and tense atmosphere while also describing everything so aesthetically. The descriptions felt very... indirect? I sometimes had to reread parts because I wasn't sure what was actually happening but that is by no means a criticism; I adored the language. Plotwise however, I struggled a bit. Haunted houses only work if the characters have a good reason to be in them and not leave once, you know, they realize they might die. In this case, there were reasons for the main character not just going home, but they weren't strong enough for me. I got her motivations and I liked how her struggles with her family and her identity played out, but her behavior in the house was just ridiculous. And some of it seemed like it only happened to set up conflict between characters, the main thing that didn't work for me. Nearly every thing that characters got angry about was so obviously only there to create a shocking reveal and lead to an argument and some of the "dark secrets" I just straight up didn't consider as bad things. The romance also suffered from this.
My favorite thing however were the shorter horror chapters and how horror as a genre was used to discuss colonialism, racism, and sexism. Gothic horror has always been used to portray societal issues with supernatural metaphores and this was done so well here. I also have never read YA horror before and was pleasantly surprised how well these two can be mixed.

Content Warnings

shereadytoread's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I thought the atmosphere of the bed and breakfast affected by the unresolved traumas of the past. The author did a great job examining both past and present effects of colonialism in Vietnam and how members of a diaspora can feel about their homeland. The slow building relationship in the book was so well done and didn't take away from the horror of the story. The only thing that I didn't really like was the repetitive focus on the relationship with her father. While I think it was a great dynamic to include in the relationship, so much of the story had the same repetitive thoughts and lines in regards to their relationship and I think there was so much more that could have been said or explored there.

This was the October pick for Diversify Your Reading, a virtual book club aimed at reading BIPOC authors across genres and reading outside of your comfort zone. Join us here: https://bookclubs.com/diversify-your-reading-2/join

Content Warnings

khakipantsofsex's review

Go to review page

dark tense medium-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated

3.75

Content Warnings

kingcrookback's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

This book would probably fit into the niche of creeping Gothic horror with generational themes of the likes of Mexican Gothic and What Moves the Dead. When Tran's writing was effective, her imagery was genuinely and viscerally unsettling. Ordinarily, the themes of generational trauma, queerness, colonialism and diaspora, and father-daughter relationships should have kept me hooked from page one.

The problem is, I found that Tran's writing was often not effective. Much of the time the figurative language and syntactical choices lacked the necessary undergirding of substance, which resulted in a murkiness that did not seem intentional and consequently just felt confused or unfocused. I understand that sometimes the intention was slipperiness and disorientation, and while that sometimes came across, its success was inconsistent. In fact, what this book did well - the creepy-crawliness, the imagery, the way it taps into the experiences that many American-born Vietnamese people share - made it even more of a frustrating read in the face of its shortcomings, including the underdeveloped side characters and the (occasionally) less-than-natural dialogue.

Content Warnings

talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.75

SO much going on all at once, and not balanced very well. I think I would have liked the different narrative elements individually or if they had been melded more effectively (because a haunted house that is so both literally and as a deeper allegory for the lingering legacy of colonialism -- if that is the intention -- is conceptually great), but it just feels like it's trying to be several different things mashed haphazardly into one. Super overwritten as well, and yet at the same time basically everything that should be shown is told and vice versa.

Content Warnings

cutiemuffin23's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

More...