Reviews with content warning for Fire/Fire injury - She Is a Haunting

Reviews tagging 'Fire/Fire injury'

She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran

70 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.

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beccaperson's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional reflective sad 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? No

4.5

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plumdustsuns's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

2.0

I had typed an entire review but my phone died SMHHH
Anyway. So:
- turned up being a page turner for me
- evocatively beautiful writing and language even with horrific content
- horror wasn’t too distasteful or so which is good for a coward like me

Plot wise:
- by the 200/250 page mark, the plot/incidents began to feel a bit repetitive. Jade goes to sleep, bad dreams, Jade wakes up, fights with dad. I remember I was sHOOK when her dad was digging out the skulls. I wish we had more of that/his hauntings and her seeing him do insane shit instead of just fixing the house and being a stubborn asshat
- lily’s sleepwalking and everything being utilized more would have been cool as well. Using them to go somewhere clue wise and story wise and her being a bit more conflicted about the haunting as she too was being seeped into would have made the stakes feel a lot higher
- I like Jade and Florence but I wish their adventures added more to the story/tightened the plot. Cam being jealous of Florence? Where’s more of that? Why only at the last moment? That would have been so fun and interesting. And seeing Cam’s queerness too in the flashbacks like come onnnn please would have added more to the bad marriage. Maybe her parents discovered her queerness and married her off which is why they don’t talk to her anymore. It could have paralleled Jade’s own fears about coming out and fleshed out their connection, made it more believable and even something to root for in ways

Yeah. There was a lot of interesting content but they all meandered a lot and/or weren’t used to their full potential. Alma being there by the end was blah, we already had a colonizer presence with Marion. Halle didn’t feel too much of a great addition either as we never quite see her or have her back in again.
I wish ‘what did she show you’ to Ba came way before and he showed Jade and we got more of his motivations and it added to his complexities and just the immigrant symbolisms the book was going for. He had so much potential than being just the ‘we’re never leaving’ bad guy and would have brought a lot of cultural weight and justified Jade’s empathy and forgiveness almost of his actions even more. ‘He never spoke about his family before’ WHAT IF HE DID NOW. I like that this was all triggered by his loss of his mother/homeland. We could have went into it more. Him and Jade and Lily could have all had shared psychosis/dreams from the insane food. Sigh. So much lost potential. And if the mom did come in earlier and hadn’t been allowed to leave for a bit? And the escape felt more necessary as pressing as it was all very ‘yeah alright she’s gonna burn down the house now’ without it feeling very consequential to me.
I thought this was a solid almost 3 star read but the more I wrote this review and realized how much more could have been done, the madder I got and realized this was a 2 star read for me at best. But I did enjoy it in ways still.

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clovetra's review against another edition

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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!!!!!!!!!!

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snd1101's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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torismazarine's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

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

2.75

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takarakei's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.25

This isn't really my genre of reads, but it also didn't totally keep my attention. On audio it was hard to tell but there were these kind of small passages sometimes at the beginning of the chapters(?) that seemed to be from the house's pov (kinda?) and those were the most interesting bits. I think it could've been even creepier overall. I did really like the concept of a house haunted by colonizers, but it didn't quite hit for me in the end *shrug*

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melodyseestrees's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.25

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itzbrianna's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.75

She is A Haunting is a bug horror novel set in modern day vietnam. The protagonist, Jade Nguyen, and her sister visits their father at their family’s ancestral home and the house is haunted.

This book contains a very detailed father daughter conflict dynamic that resonated with me. And throughout this book we learn of Jade’s family history and the colonial impact on their family by the french.

Throughout the novel there are poetic snippets revealing parts of the house and the haunting. And there are incredible scenes and descriptions detailing the different ways imperialism has impacted vietnam. The use of bugs and infestation in this book is pure genius.

Jade is a complicated character and her relationship with her father is no different. We get to learn a lot about Jade through interactions with her family, with the house, and other characters in the book.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and though it dragged on for a little too long I still think it’s worth a read if you love haunted horror. Thanh is very descriptive and has beautiful imagery throughout this book. Not to mention the cover is GORGEOUS. I highly recommend!

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moh_reads's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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