Review by rradujko - She Is a Haunting

rradujko 's review for:

She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran

3.5

challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I really liked this. Tran's story reads like a fungal bloom, or the acent of smoke. The MC, Jade, is staying with her estranged father in Vietnam for the summer, at a house he's renovating. In exchange, he'll pay for her first year of college. But the house has a darker legacy than she knows, one that reaches back to her family's predecessors and impacts Jade, her father, and sister now.

I liked this premise a lot. Tran's intentional and raw engagement with colonialism, exploitation, and violence was one of the best parts of the book for me. There were lots of small details that put Jade's experience with her own Vietnamese-American identity at the forefront. The horror aspect was nice, and really permeated the entirety of the book. The thing that brought down my rating was the progression of the story. There are a lot of surrealist moments in the last third of the book. Part of this is intentional, to make the reader question the narrator's reliability, but in places this made reading it confusing and muddled.

I'll definitely keep turning it over in my mind, I just wish the end had been a little more coherent.

Content Warnings