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Reviews tagging 'War'

She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran

7 reviews

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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moh_reads's review

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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

4.75

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raynbowkitty's review

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challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This book made me feel physically ill several times. Tough, but intriguing story. 
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talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

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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.
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anna_23's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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sarah984's review against another edition

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

3.5

This is a pretty solid YA haunted house story. There are some really effective scares in here and I loved the Vietnamese setting, but sometimes feelings and character motivations got a bit lost in the flowery writing and the romance didn't really work for me.
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ceallaighsbooks's review

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dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“I know this is a dream because I am not afraid of my father. In his hands, the ax catches sun.”

TITLE—She Is A Haunting
AUTHOR—Trang Thanh Tran (they/them)
PUBLISHED—2023
PUBLISHER—Bloomsbury

GENRE—YA horror
SETTING—Đà Lạt, Vietnam
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—complicated family relationships, (semi-closeted) bisexual, Vietnamese-American MC, haunted house, inherited trauma, ecology, botany, entomology, & mycology, father-daughter relationship, interior design & hotelier, tourism & colonialism, bugs like so so many bugs, *fantastic* & gruesome horror imagery

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
CHARACTERS—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
STORY/PLOT—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

BONUS ELEMENT/S—The bonus element for this book is simply a) that I was clever enough to preorder it 😂 and b) that it arrived at my doorstop right as I was in the middle of reading and rereading a bunch of incredible haunted house trope  books. 👀

PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
PREMISE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
EXECUTION—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“Understanding someone’s core, or guessing at it, is a thrill. Getting it right brings you too close, and that’s fucking scary. It’s like cupping the only water you have in your hands in the middle of a desert. Drop it and you’re done. Wait too long and it’s gone.”

My thoughts:
Oh wow. Wow wow wow wow. This book was kind of a masterpiece. I’m not overly familiar with YA books so I feel like my early struggles with the writing style and characterization was fully a product of that because by the end of the book pretty much every choice by the author made perfect sense and wrapped up into just a fantastic overall read.

The setting of the macabrely haunted French colonial mansion in the Đà Lạt forest was 👀incredible—and so stunningly and perfectly gothic. Every time one of the characters started to set off into the woods I immediately sat up straighter. The motorbike rides into the town, the facetime phone calls and wifi lightbulbs all acted as the perfect modern contrast that gave the story a profoundly unsettling dynamic. And the themes and deeper philosophy… 😚👌🏻

Pro tip: By page 310 you need to be ready to sit down and finish the book in a place you’re comfortable ugly crying in so also please just be aware of that. 👀

“Why is Đà Lạt not raining? Why does it not pour, as Ba says it does in July? Does the sky not know we are hurting? How can it not hear the tenor of my scream?”

This book is best read after eating because this book will a) make you hungry with all the incredible food descriptions but it will also b) make you lose your appetite because ***bugs*** 🤣

Final note: I am really going to need publishers & blurbers to stop comparing every book to REBECCA. It is absolutely getting out of hand. thx. 🙏🏻💕 (Especially when MEXICAN GOTHIC and WHITE IS FOR WITCHING are *right there*. 👀)

“In this house of dreams, I can have anything I want.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

CW // body horror!!, racism, colonialism, Vietnam war brutality, and if you have entomophobia: don’t even *think* about picking up this book 👀 (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—
  • Lee, Wen-yi. “The Resonance of Hunger: Food, Family, and Colonialism in Trang Thanh Tran's She Is a Haunting.” Tor.com, 15 Mar. 2023, https://www.tor.com/2023/03/15/the-resonance-of-hunger-food-family-and-colonialism-in-trang-thanh-trans-she-is-a-haunting/
  • MEXICAN GOTHIC, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia—a must read if you especially loved this book
  • WHAT MOVES THE DEAD, by T Kingfisher 👀
  • WHITE IS FOR WITCHING, by Helen Oyeyemi (themes & sentient haunted house)
  • TELL ME I’M WORTHLESS, by Alison Rumfitt (sentient haunted house)
  • THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, by Shirley Jackson (sentient haunted house)
  • BABEL, by RF Kuang (themes)
  • THE CRAFT (1995 movie)—I pictured the house in the book looking like the house in this movie 👀
  • BEETLEJUICE (1988 movie)
  • A LESSON IN VENGEANCE, by Victoria Lee (vibes)
  • HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS AND UNFAIRLY CUTE, by Talia Hibbert (themes)
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