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A review by cherylwav
She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran
2.5
I really wanted to love “She Is A Haunting” so badly.
This haunted house story could’ve been a great piece on colonisation, Vietnamese culture, diaspora and coming of age as a queer teenager juggling all these themes and problems, but I had such a hard time letting myself immerse into the story. The main character Jade is supposed to be a graduate about to enter college but some of her decisions seemed so immature to me that I couldn’t help thinking that maybe she resembles a 15 year old more. This is also why I had a hard time rooting for her. Don’t get me wrong protagonists, especially young ones, are supposed to make mistakes, it’s what makes these stories so attractive but at some point I just got so annoyed by everything. To not spoil anything I won’t be going further into the characters, just know that I really struggled to understand some dynamics and if the author wanted to redeem them or not.
Another thing that made me go from 3 stars to 2,5 stars is the pacing. especially the last third was so exhausting because everything happened too slowly, it drags on and on and on… I had to really push myself to not bring this book with me into the new year.
All in all I’m simply disappointed and that makes me so sad.
This haunted house story could’ve been a great piece on colonisation, Vietnamese culture, diaspora and coming of age as a queer teenager juggling all these themes and problems, but I had such a hard time letting myself immerse into the story. The main character Jade is supposed to be a graduate about to enter college but some of her decisions seemed so immature to me that I couldn’t help thinking that maybe she resembles a 15 year old more. This is also why I had a hard time rooting for her. Don’t get me wrong protagonists, especially young ones, are supposed to make mistakes, it’s what makes these stories so attractive but at some point I just got so annoyed by everything. To not spoil anything I won’t be going further into the characters, just know that I really struggled to understand some dynamics and if the author wanted to redeem them or not.
Another thing that made me go from 3 stars to 2,5 stars is the pacing. especially the last third was so exhausting because everything happened too slowly, it drags on and on and on… I had to really push myself to not bring this book with me into the new year.
All in all I’m simply disappointed and that makes me so sad.