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Book Summary and Reviews of She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran

She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran

She Is a Haunting

by Trang Thanh Tran

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  • Feb 2023, 352 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

This house eats and is eaten...

A House with a terrifying appetite haunts a broken family in this atmospheric horror, perfect for fans of Mexican Gothic.

When Jade Nguyen arrives in Vietnam for a visit with her estranged father, she has one goal: survive five weeks pretending to be a happy family in the French colonial house Ba is restoring. She's always lied to fit in, so if she's straight enough, Vietnamese enough, American enough, she can get out with the college money he promised.

But the house has other plans. Night after night, Jade wakes up paralyzed. The walls exude a thrumming sound while bugs leave their legs and feelers in places they don't belong. She finds curious traces of her ancestors in the gardens they once tended. And at night Jade can't ignore the ghost of the beautiful bride who leaves cryptic warnings: Don't eat.

Neither Ba nor her sweet sister Lily believe that there is anything strange happening. With help from a delinquent girl, Jade will prove this house--the home they have always wanted--will not rest until it destroys them. Maybe, this time, she can keep her family together. As she roots out the house's rot, she must also face the truth of who she is and who she must become to save them all.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"A satisfying blend of traditional horror with modern themes and concerns. Both the ghosts and the humans in this richly layered work are alluring and deadly." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Tran smartly weaves Vietnamese culture and real horrors of French imperialism to deliver an eerie tale overflowing with deeply unsettling atmosphere." - Publishers Weekly

"She Is a Haunting is a satisfying Gothic coming-of-age novel in which a house, a heritage, and the uncertain future threaten to consume a college-bound woman." - Foreword Reviews

"A riveting debut from a remarkable new voice! Trang Thanh Tran weaves an impressive gothic mystery in which Jade's father is determined to restore a decrepit home to its former glory and Jade is the only person who feels the soul-crushing devastation of colonialism lingering within its walls." - Angeline Boulley, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Firekeeper's Daughter

"This exquisitely disturbing tale of identity and colonialism and intergenerational trauma will eat its way under your skin and live there forever. Read this one with the lights on. I'm ready to be haunted by whatever Trang Thanh Tran writes next." - Emily X.R. Pan, New York Times bestselling author

This information about She Is a Haunting was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Melissa Grace

Great horror scenes, commentary on colonialism, but ordinary characters and lacks descriptive settings
For fans of Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-GarcĂ­a, she is a Haunting is a tale of a house with a long history of colonialism, and the girl who is determined to right the wrongs of the past. In order to earn her college tuition, Jade has reluctantly agreed to travel to Vietnam with her sister to help her dad, who abandoned her family not too long ago, restore an old family home so that they might begin to rent it out to wealthy vacationers. However, Jade experiences many restless nights, suffering from a sudden onset of sleep paralysis, where she begins to see former inhabitants of the home interfering with their day-to-day life. She's not sure which ghosts are benevolent, and which ones are seeking vengeance on her and her family.

This book works on many levels but failed to live up to my expectations. I've been reading more horror recently, and "She is a Haunting" delivers on graphic, visceral depictions of creepy ghosts as well as body horror involving insects and bugs of all manners. The worm and maggot stuff really got me writhing with discomfort (in a way that I was hoping for). The connection to the French colonization of Vietnam as well as Jade's struggle to "go public" with her bisexuality added a layer of depth I appreciated. Who really owns this house: the ones who paid for the house and whose name it has been in for years or the ones who have tirelessly toiled to maintain the grounds for little pay and harsh work conditions?

Unfortunately, I did not love the often-two-dimensional characters. I found it unbelievable that two teenagers were responsible for putting together the entire website with little to no supervision for those in charge of the house and future business. It seems like the only plant growing on this estate was hydrangeas. For a book about a haunted house, "She is a Haunting" failed to create descriptions of the house that might help me feel transported. I had an unclear idea as to what this house actually looked like. I also think there could have been more ghosts, like perhaps a gardener tending to the hydrangeas and Vietnamese cook forces to cook the food of her oppressors.

Overall, there were a lot of elements on which I believe this book delivers, but lacked vital components that one might expect and even look forward to in a horror book. Perhaps this could do well on the screen?

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Author Information

Trang Thanh Tran

Trang Thanh Tran writes speculative stories with big emotions about food, belonging and the Vietnamese diaspora. They grew up in a big family in Philadelphia, then abandoned degrees in sociology and public health to tell stories in Georgia. When not writing, they can be found over-caffeinating on iced coffee and watching zombie movies. She Is a Haunting is their debut novel.

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