She Is a Haunting

by Trang Thanh Tran, Emi Ray (Narrator)

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 her 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 her family has 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.

Genres: Horror, Young Adult, LGBT, Queer, Gothic, Fiction, Fantasy

10 pages, Audiobook

First published February 28, 2023

About the author

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.

Reviews

[emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

covercovercovercovercovercovercovercovercovercovercovercovercovercovercovercovercovercovercovercovercover.

and we can talk about the book too i guess.

this was scary and gross (good) and not much else (not good). it had that kind of debut-y underedited overwritten style that eventually kills me, and i found the characters and their friendships and dynamics pretty unrealistic and annoying...but i f*cking love vietnamese food and scariness and this had both, so we can generally call this a win.

bottom line: i am both hungry and disturbed. rare combo!

[megs_bookrack · Rating 3 out of 5]

**3.5-stars**

She Is a Haunting is a YA-story following a girl named, Jade Nguyen, and her experiences at her father's historic, and of course, haunted, house in Vietnam.



Jade, who lives with her Mom and siblings in the United States, is getting ready to start college and is concerned about money. School is expensive and she can't ask her Mom, who has sacrificed so much for them and works so hard, to contribute any more.

Thus, Jade is in a bit of a pickle. Her estranged father, who abandoned them and moved back to Vietnam, has the money. He offers it to her on the condition that she and her little sister, Lily, go and live with him for the summer.



The thing is, Jade is really angry at her Dad, like really, really angry. After he walked out on them, they never dealt with that trauma. They don't even talk about. It's sort of pushed under the rug, the reality of it all.

Unfortunately, Jade feels like she has no other option. She can make this work. It's like 5-weeks. She can suffer through anything for that amount of time, or can she?



Along for the journey with Jade and Lily are their Mom and younger brother. Their Mom and younger brother are going to be staying with their Mom's family in a different city though, so it will just be Jade and Lily forced to stay at their Dad's place.

His home is actually a French-style villa left over from the colonial era that he is currently converting into a B&B. The renovation is going strong when they arrive and their Dad actually expects their help.

Jade's assigned task is to get a sleek and modern website up and running for info and reservations. As you can imagine, she's thrilled to be doing her father's bidding.



Helping her with the site, is the daughter of one of her Dad's business partners, a local girl named, Florence, who Jade is immediately intrigued by. Maybe this won't be so bad.

Then the weirdness kicks in. Strange happenings at the house, visions, dreams, sounds, sleep paralysis; Jade is convinced the house is haunted, but no one believes her. Perhaps with a little help from Florence, they can make them believe.



This is an intriguing story and I did enjoy Trang Thanh Tran's writing style. Jade was an interesting character. She is very angry, so being in her head isn't always a comfy, relaxing place to be, but she's certainly allowed her feelings.

I respected the author allowing her to sort of live in the negative spaces in her mind, without trying to cure her of anything. She's been through things, she's allowed to hold that grudge, particularly against her estranged father.



I enjoyed the set-up, the reason for Jade traveling to Vietnam and the reason she needed to stay there. Additionally, some of the imagery, including descriptions of body horror, bug scenes and sleep paralysis were really well done, quite creepy.

However, I did grow a little bored with it. It was just so slow. I don't mind a slow burn, and I would definitely classify this as one, however the payoff needs to be worth it.



Personally, I felt the ending of this got a little too chaotic and slightly confusing for me to necessarily consider the slow burn worth it.

I did enjoy and appreciate a lot of the topics examined here, including the different relationships Jade had with her family members, the impact and repercussions of colonialism, Jade's family history and sexuality.

The brightest lights for me was the love and respect that Jade had for her Mom, as well as the investigation Jade started into the history of the house.



Overall, I do think this is a compelling, though slow paced, haunted house story. I did enjoy my time with it, even though it tended to drag in certain places. I appreciate the author's attention to detail, creativity and spooky imagery.

Thank you to the publisher, Bloomsbury YA, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I would absolutely be interested in picking up future work from Trang Thanh Tran!

[Nilufer Ozmekik · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such a unique, bone chilling, gothic, haunting house story! The creepy sense, slow burning tension at each chapter hook you up to its claustrophobic, spine tingling atmosphere!

Jade and Lily are sisters, flying to Vietnam to spend their summer with their Ba( dad) in a French colonial house he’s restoring. Jade has been harboring long time resentment for his dad. The reasons are obvious: he didn’t take care good care of his family, abandoning them, ruining her childhood. Jade stuck between two cultures she couldn’t embrace completely. She’s not American or Vietnamese enough. Her father didn’t let her embrace her own sexuality. Being gay is still a taboo for his traditional sense of thinking.

Jade is forced to spend her summer in this house in exchange getting extra money for her college application and she will also help to create a website for the house with Florence: daughter of her father’s business partner.
Spending 5 weeks as a prisoner in this house will be her ticket to her future freedom.

But as she spends more time in the place, she realizes they’re under the threat of angry spirits haunting the house and she’s the key to bring her family together to fight back. In the meantime she has to deal with a ghost of beautiful bride lurking around the house, leaving disturbing notes as “Don’t eat!”

I liked the blending of French colonialism criticism with gothic thriller elements. The writing style was a little compelling for me to focus with lots of different pronoun usage and quick transitions. It affected my consideration.
But I still find the concept unusual, unique, intelligent!

Special thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA Children’s Books, Bloomsbury YA for sharing this brilliant digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.

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[Kitty | MyCuriousReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

quizzically dark ~
supernaturally ominous ~
historically grounded ~
sapphically nuanced -

The poetic quality of Trang Tranh Tran’s writing is juxtaposed by macabre themes, which just like eating dark chocolate, I found uniquely satisfying.

She Is A Haunting, is a gloriously unsettling novel about family, history, race and identity.

It is one hell of a ghost story!!!

[Katie T · Rating 1 out of 5]

I will be haunted by how boring this book was.

[nark · Rating 2 out of 5]

that pretty cover deserved better

[may ➹]

this is about a Vietnamese American bisexual girl, a haunted house, colonialism, and complicated sister relationships (which sounds amazing already) so does this mean we get some gaysian ghosts….. some sapphics…….

[Alexis Hall]

Source of book: NetGalley (thank you)
Relevant disclaimers: None
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

And remember: I am not here to judge your drag, I mean your book. Books are art and art is subjective. These are just my personal thoughts. They are not meant to be taken as broader commentary on the general quality of the work. Believe me, I have not enjoyed many an excellent book, and my individual lack of enjoyment has not made any of those books less excellent or (more relevantly) less successful.

Further disclaimer: Readers, please stop accusing me of trying to take down “my competition” because I wrote a review you didn’t like. This is complete nonsense. Firstly, writing isn’t a competitive sport. Secondly, I only publish reviews of books in the subgenre where I’m best known (queer romcom) if they’re glowing. And finally: taking time out of my life to read an entire book, then write a detailed review about it that some people on GR will look at would be a profoundly inefficient and ineffective way to damage the careers of other authors. If you can’t credit me with simply being a person who loves books and likes talking about them, at least credit me with enough common sense to be a better villain.

*******************************************

Ye Gods, this YA horror does not pull any punches.

I can sort of see, by the way, why it’s getting compared to Mexican Gothic—I mean, there’s a house and it’s about colonialism—but while that works for back cover copy (the point of back cover copy is to sell the book to the most disinterested possible reader and the quickest way to do that is to say “hey, you know that popular thing successful you love? this is like that!” Even if it isn’t really or is only in the surface-level way) I also hesitate to over-emphasise that connection. Because they’re actually very different texts, in tone, approach, and focus. And there’s something kind of … err … weirdly colonialist (culturally colonialist) in treating any text that wants to interrogate colonialism as the same as any other.

The premise here is that its heroine, Jade Nguyen—a young Vietnamese woman born of immigrant parents—has returned to Vietnam for the summer before university. Her mother (who works long hours as a nail technician in the US) and younger brother will be staying with family; she and her younger sister will stay with her father, who left them four years ago to return to Vietnam. His latest project has been the renovation of a French colonialist house—Nhà Hoa—into what he hopes will be a successful B&B and re-connect him with his Vietnamese roots. Jades family is full of fractures—the loss of their history beneath French colonial rule, the severing of their roots and family connections due to immigration, the semi-recent separation of her parents—as is Jade herself in multiple intersecting ways. She’s bisexual but afraid of her family’s disapproval, lying to both parents in different ways, desperate to attend university for the freedom it will afford her, estranged from her best friend, and constantly trying to reconcile all the ways her identity feels split and fragile.

Her father has promised to pay her university tuition if she (and her sister Lily) spend a month with him at Nhà Hoa. Except it becomes apparent to Jade (who starts experiencing sleep paralysis not long after she arrives) that the house is haunted: it is plagued by insects, strange noises, and ghosts, one of whom—a beautiful Vietnamese bride—keeps warning Jade “do not eat.”

Needless to say, this is all creepy as hell. But it’s also a lot. Like, there are two ghosts, a parasitical infection, that may or may not be connected to the insects that fill the house, and the house itself, which is a living presence in the book (it is not just haunted, it his haunting, do you see) with its own hungers, and even its own subsections where we get to experience its incredibly disturbing point of view for ourselves. Because the horror elements function as allegories of colonialism, the sheer oppressive weight and scope of is effective in these terms (I mean, most gothic novels that I’ve read stop at one ghost OR a living house OR a deadly parasite: this has all of them) but I did sometimes think they diminished each other’s impact. And then on top of this we have a subplot in the first 50% of the book where—frustrated at not being believed by her family—Jade is staging her own haunting on top of the actual haunting she’s aware is happening: a baller move, we can surely agree, but this is plot on top of plot on top of plot. All of which said, (not that you should take my word for it because I am really not a big horror reader and am scared by things like having my feet hanging over the edge of the bed when I go to sleep) I felt the horror writing, the way the smothering atmosphere is established then the built upon, was absolutely stunning.

Honestly, the writing across the board is stunning. It’s capacity to spin from beauty to horror, and also capture the sharpness, the vulnerability, of a teenager is incredibly impressive. I’ve been a few reviews note that they found Jade unpleasant or whiny or difficult to connect with. Obviously everyone gets to respond to books as feels right to them, but I personally find this an unfair take. There’s a passage in the book which I foolishly forgot to mark where she says how much she loves her own name—because it sounds strong and hard and cold—and I will say that Jade puts up a good front of being all of those things. Not to compare a Vietnamese teenager to a sad white lady but … I think a good reference point for Jade as a character might be the heroine of Fleabag. Someone whose damage causes damage, who responds to pain with anger, who is so terrified of the vulnerability of love that she pretends she doesn’t even want to be liked. Are these necessarily “likeable” traits? No. But they’re incredibly relatable ones. And it is not the job of characters to always show us reflections of ourselves or the world we live in that we find flattering or otherwise pleasing to behold. More to the point though, unlike Fleabag, Jade is bearing the weight of a cultural dislocation so profound—a generational trauma that runs so deep—I am kind of … quite boggled that anyone could not, in practice, be on her side. Even if she’s not always on her own.

When I don’t know what I want her to say to me in return? Is there a word in Vietnamese for someone like me? Stubbornoverachiever. A stereotype. There’s one in English, but it catches on my tongue. Bisexual. Needy. Neither of us has the language or time to figure it out yet, and there’s a power in never being known because no one can use you against you.

There’s also a tender, tentative, nearly-romance here for Jade with the Vietnam-born, American-educated Florence, left by her parents in the care of her by uncle and his male partner, another victim of divided family. It’s hard not to love Florence and it’s the burgeoning connection between her and Jade—alongside Jade’s imperfect but still loving and protective relationship with her younger sister—that stops the book plunging into irredeemable darkness. Because there is no escaping that this is an incredibly emotionally complicated story and the family dynamics can be pretty damn painful. Especially because part of Jade’s journey as regards her parents, their past, and her own relationship to the history of Vietnam, is learning to live with that pain for better of worse. Some hauntings are, after all, inescapable.

I don’t look at Đà Lạt, at Vietnam, and think Europe. What I see is a version of the place Mom and Ba left behind, and also where I could’ve grown up, with a language that I would know fluently, paternal family to possibly love me, and a history that would finally be known. All these things were taken from me, before I was even born.

For my queer readers, though, and at risk of spoiler for the sake of emotional comfort, I will note that—despite missteps in Jade’s past—both her parents are ultimately loving and supportive of her bisexuality. Of course, this is a super subjective area but for me, at least, I really appreciated the way Jade’s bisexuality and her anxieties around it were handled. The pain of invisibility, and self-enforced passing, is just a difficult thing to articulate. And while coming out is always hard, there’s a specificity to Jade’s fears surrounding it—the way even this is embedded is handed-down trauma of being good, of fitting in, of hiding yourself—that felt very real to me, and spoke to me very deeply. The fact that Jade’s parents, for all their flaws, are able to move beyond some of this damage to accept their daughter for who she is does speak softly but firmly of future hope.

As noted above, there is a lot happening here, emotionally and literally. Almost, if I’m honest too much. I think the book did run a little long and I think it didn’t always perfectly balance, or keep track of, its various threads. Intrusive thoughts, for example, play heavily into Jade’s narration in the first 20% of the book but are never mentioned again. Or maybe it’s just you stop worrying about your intrusive thoughts when you’re in the middle of a literal haunting, I don’t know. I also occasionally found the book a little heavy-handed in some of its devices (for example it makes a crack about Alma—one in the white investors in the house, who is obsessed with its ‘romantic’ past—having a PhD in colonialism about three times, which is twice more than it needed to make the point). Which is not to say I had any issue about how it portrayed racism, colonialism and the atrocities committed in Vietnam and upon Vietnamese people: just the prose is scalpel sharp most of the time, it didn’t need to also being wielding a hammer.

Finally, I wish the ending had managed to address its supernatural and non-supernatural elements a little more coherently. One of the major themes is, of course, the way that when your history has been stripped from you, and forced into invisibility, you all become ghosts anyway: but there are *real* ghosts in that house as well as *real* colonialism, and also perhaps *real* parasites, in the past and the present, and also a *real* white woman Jade gets into a physical fight with. But it was hard to tease out where the book wanted us to lines and where it wanted it us to make connections between generational trauma, colonialist atrocity, poor parenting, poor parenting caused by brain parasites, brain parasites in general, and actual ghosts. And, y’know, maybe that was part of the point. But it did feel a bit like the book was lurching slightly under the weight of its plot and themes, much like a French colonialist house being consumed by its own hydrangea.

Let me, however, make it very clear that these are the minorest of minor quibbles. This is an extraordinary debut from a wildly talented author: uncompromising, messy, ambitious and deeply, wonderfully queer.

[Melanie (meltotheany) · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I'm lost for words over the million little ways we can hurt for family we hardly know.”

I really did love so much about this book, story, the characters. An eldest daughter, seeing all the sacrifices that her family who immigrated to the us are still making for her, while she feels not enough in all the different ways. Seeing colonization seep into everything, from generation after generation, and being unable to look away once you have opened your eyes to it. Feeling different enough in both words already, and being queer on top of it all. This is a very powerful read, with themes that really meant a lot to me. I loved the writing too. I just didn’t love this story, even if i still recommend completely because of the themes. And i will for sure pick up everything else this author does in the future.

author's cw/tw: internalized biphobia, body horror, bugs, systemic/interpersonal racism, colonialism, death of a parent, blood, bones, depiction of a hanging, murder, mention of domestic abuse. (Food is a significant, thematic thread throughout She Is a Haunting. While the book doesn’t discuss eating disorders, some of the conversations and depiction of food may be difficult for some readers.)

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[Sarah ♡ (let’s interact!) · Rating 5 out of 5]

She Is A Haunting is exactly the type of book that I love. It was one of my most anticipated reads of the year, I was fully intrigued by that hauntingly beautiful cover art alone.
I loved this so much that I read it slower than I have been lately, trying to savour every moment, every word.

Ghostly. Gothic. Sapphic. Bisexual frustration. - these are the words I’d use to sum up She Is A Haunting. Trang Thanh Tran is such a breath of fresh air, they’re so talented! They really know how to build up a sense of foreboding mystery and horror involving bugs always makes my skin crawl.
An old, dilapidated, house is always the best setting for a horror story. Always makes for a perfection location to build atmosphere.
Jade and Florence’s blossoming relationship is one of my favourite parts of the whole book.

I think thoughts will be divided on this book, all dependant on whether you like this writing style or not. I liked the fact most of the chapters are broken up by prose/poetry. I think this one is for those of us who enjoyed books like Mexican Gothic.
I’m seeing this division in all the early reviews.. There honestly were times I was worried I was going to waver on giving it the 5 stars I so desperately wanted to. I’ve given it some thought, and honestly, I’m even going to add it to my favourites shelf.


”Don’t eat.”

[Elizabeth (Plant Based Bride) · Rating 4 out of 5]

She Is a Haunting uses the horror classic trope of a haunted house as a metaphor for colonialism, a parasite worming its way in, uninvited, taking the reins and raining destruction.

I knew very little about the French colonial period in Vietnam's history prior to reading this book, and I must say the way Trang Thanh Tran portrayed the various players in the house's history was incredibly effective at conveying the many layers of colonial oppression and its lasting scars.

This was not a perfect book by any means, often feeling rushed and sometimes confusing, but overall, I found it engaging, eerie, and intensely thought-provoking. This is such a unique take on YA horror and is only enhanced by the added layers of parental abandonment, parentification, alienation, racism, and queer self-discovery.


Representation: most characters are Vietnamese, MC is bisexual, there is a budding sapphic romance

Trigger/Content Warnings: homophobia, purity culture, racism, colonization, murder, domestic violence, parasitic infection, insects, blood, fire death, fatal car crash, parental abandonment, animal death


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[Bon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmm! I think I kind of half-enjoyed this and half-didn't, so it gets some middle ground stars. This was certainly a book with vivid descriptions, and I'm itching at myself hours after finishing the audiobook, convinced creepy-crawlies are places they shouldn't be.

I enjoy body horror, but generally more mycological and botanical - I dislike bugs and the gnarly kind of parasitic horror presented here had me needing a hot shower. I enjoy mind games with a ghost, and a haunted unreliable narrator, but not when presented via writing that renders the story too cerebral and confusing, to the point I can't really tell you what's happening on-page. I love a "fear of the unseen" style of haunting that insidiously creeps out the reader or viewer, whereas here it's less a ghost in the house than...the house in Jade? I like a rich setting like Vietnam, with a tragic colonial and war-torn past, but not when it didn't feel like a lot of that setting's features were well-used. There isn't a lot of Vietnamese lore in this really, though the cuisine is used to color in some scenes very well, and the Hungry Ghost concept rears its head a bit.

A quick listen, and the narrator doing the bits in Vietnamese was great. I liked the few bits of queerness on-page, as well as relating to Jade's daddy issues, but I don't think this was otherwise memorable for me.

[Dona's Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to the author, Trang Thanh Tran, publisher Bloomsbury USA Children's Books, and NetGalley as always, for an advance digital copy of SHE IS A HAUNTING.

Jade agrees, as a favor to her long-suffering mother, to stomach a five-week visit to Vietnam, to her father's ramshackle estate that he's trying perpetually to fix up. But the house is full of shifting things and soon Jade's feelings start to shift-- feelings about her time with her father and other family, her time in his house, her time in Vietnam, who's Vietnam she inhabits and which inhabits her.

This YA book builds a sophisticated narrative with an interesting form. It's a story about imperialism and violence against an entire people, as much as it is about skittering insects and spoiled food on the dinner plate. Though, I'm not sure I caught all the symbolism.

Unfortunately, I didn't favor the writing style. Also, I got lost more than once, and was forced to backtrack to gain my bearings, and the ending felt abrupt. I still recommend SHE IS A HAUNTING because the concept is so original.

Rating: 🦗🦗🦗 / 5 bugs in the kitchen
Recommend? Yes
Finished: February 25 2023
Read this if you like:
🌏 Stories about Vietnam
👩🏻 Diverse voices and stories
🏚 Haunted houses
👻 Possession
☠️ Horror stories

[Sasa · Rating 5 out of 5]

6 stars

" The invaders emerging from the mist like pale ghosts, taking and building, and taking. Latching on and draining you dry. Then calling you a savage. "


how i imagined cam looking in the bride scene; from lac troi

this book was equal parts wonderful and frustrating. i understand why some people wouldn't enjoy the book, whether it's the pacing or the ending not having a concrete resolution—none of it matters because she is a haunting was written specifically for me, specifically for vietnamese-american girls. i've never felt so seen in american media. jade is a flawed character in all of her annoying teenage rebelliousness and curiosity which makes her the perfect protagonist. i felt gutted by jade's identity crisis about being a vietnamese-american girl in vietnam, being in a country rebuilding from multiple wars that white people forced themselves to be a part of yet your home doesn't accept you. it sees you as closer to the colonizers than as their equal and that's incredibly painful.

there was a lot that didn't work for me but they're mostly personal pet peeves. i generally don't like phrase and word repetition: rapid-fire, bloom, and others were repeated quite a bit. flowery prose is also usually not something i enjoy. it's too much like the author is filling pages rather than saying what they mean. however this time, it was hit or miss and i was okay with it. i understand i'm no longer the target audience for YA and that's perfectly okay. there were a lot of moments of, "NOOOO, DON'T DO THAT YOU IGNORANT CHILD!!" but i reminded myself that they're kids and their choices were realistic to how reactive children are. the ending wasn't my favorite thing but it did what it set out to do and i enjoyed the bonus chapter.

everything else worked for me: the creepy atmosphere, hiding being sapphic and bi, the bugs, the ghosts, the food, the family dynamics, the politics, the possessions, the misdirection—it was great. when colonizer marion dumont was introduced, the neck thing she did reminded me of the teacher from little nightmares 2 (gif tw body horror). MY GOD it was sooo creepy. there were a lot of references that only people who grew up in vietnamese-american homes would understand like there's no way the "Paris At Night" room wasn't a reference to "Paris By Night." there's a lot of meat to she is a haunting and it was an all-you-can-eat buffet. the horror was visceral and emotional, the family pain and burdens were too real, and on top of all the worries teenagers already have to deal with. i like that her brother brendan never actively took part in anything that happened in the book, yet he still played a huge role in that he's "the golden boy" of the family. he's the only boy of all of the siblings, he's the youngest, he can do no wrong, and he will never be traumatized by his parents the way his sisters are. in an east/southeast asian family, that's just facts. and it's not his fault, but i also know he does not and will never use that privilege to help his sisters. he avoids his father because he's allowed to—his sisters didn't have that choice. lily arguably so, but i'd also say that she has rose-tinted lenses on when looking at their dad so she doesn't see his red flags which negatively impacts her relationship with her sister. she was robbed of that choice because of her ideal family vs what it actually is. everyone was an antagonist at one point and it was really great having to play guessing games with who jade could and couldn't trust (including herself), living or otherwise. it was all too relatable; like this is MY family.

there is another degree of self-flagellation that needs to be addressed regarding jade's dad. he's always surrounded by love and care and he shows a propensity for it, but he actively pushes it away to chase after validation and financial opportunities from people he sees as his betters. he's doing all of the hard work of renovating, recovering, and restoring—even enlisting his children to do hard work for the low price of ~*~trauma~*~—yet he's getting none of the credit, none of the accolades, and not nearly as much of the money as the white people who don't lift a single finger. something that's very hard to watch regarding vietnamese-american people is how backwards our ideologies are. in vietnamese and american history, we went through so much shit only to turn our backs on people going through the same things. i've seen vietnamese people saying and doing the same things that our colonizers used to say to us. how did this even happen? how did we forget that pain? seeing moderate, middle class vietnamese people saying the shit they do about poor people, immigrants, refugees, working class laborers—bitch, we were those people!!! and many of us still are!! hell, i hear working class vietnamese people regurgitate colonizer ideologies. wealthy white people have brainwashing during the assimilation process down to a science. jade's dad is constantly seeking approval from white people and when he doesn't get it, he uses jade as a scapegoat. even when he does receive it, it's the bare minimum because the hard work and attention is ignored for profits. what's even sadder is he never gets anything he was looking for in the end and i interpreted him as realizing that and choosing his family, even though it's too late. they're still financially hurting, she won't get to go to college, and he added SO MUCH more trauma onto the women in his life that they will most likely never fully recover from. not to mention, the white people still win. they're still rich, they're still bigoted, and they're unaffected. the indictment against capitalism and how it leaves destruction in its wake only for the wealthy elite to still come out on top. the whole "chase your dreams, hustle hustle" glorification of overworking yourself into medical bills to finally get a sliver of the comfort/fortune that multi-billion dollar companies sell to you via influencers and disney movies—it's all bullshit. most people will never get that and they'll die burnt out and exploited. the parallels to our reality and our ideologies can't even be put into words yet trang thanh tran managed to do just that. it's genius!



now that i'm off of my soapbox, i can say that she is a haunting was a very necessary and deeply personal read for me. i'm also chinese but i always felt closer to my vietnamese culture and i've never felt so seen before this. i can't believe how much i'm like jade: unreasonable absent father, keeping secrets from mom to help her, having to fill dad's role as the eldest, getting in trouble constantly as the eldest, having a golden boy brother oblivious to the traumas the girls in the family face, having sisters who revered our dad, the beautiful ambience of vietnam and living in a place that doesn't love you...i'm gonna cry 😭 one of my favorite things about this is that none of it was palatable to a white audience. the vietnamese wasn't translated, the references weren't overexplained, and a lot of the setting is more of a "you have to be there to get the vibes" kind of thing and that was my favorite part. again, this book was made for me. is vietnamese-american pain universal across all vietnamese girls? 😂 who knows but i can't even begin to express how important this book was in validating me and my existence/experiences as well as girls like me. i wish i had it growing up but i'm glad it's here now 💖

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cover artist: elena masci

[Ele]

Gaysian ghosts vs colonialism?????? me likey

[Sarah (berriesandbooks) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Jade is forced to make a deal with her dad. He will pay her college tuition if she stays with him for five weeks over the summer. Jade reluctantly agrees, still harboring anger towards him for leaving her family. While staying at her dad's fixer-upper bed-and-breakfast, she sees ghosts and hears things. Determined to prove to herself and her father that something is haunting them, she enlists the help of the girl next door to get physical evidence, Only, things don't go quite as she planned...

If you are going to write a book based around a haunted house, you need to sell that it is haunted. The atmosphere is so important in horror novels; the way to build that is with the writing. The descriptions in this book were lacking. It felt plain and like the house was just in disrepair. At no point did I get chills or feel even slightly unnerved. It is all described at face value, so much so that I was laughing at how unscary it was. If you cannot make your setting for a horror novel scary, it just sets you up for failure.

Unfortunately, the basic writing style translated into every aspect of the book. There were important discussions around colonialism, finding yourself, and broken family relationships. Jade's anxiety about not wanting to disappoint her mom is something that a lot of girls relate to. The author did a good job of weaving these topics into the book, but the conversation around them was stale and bland. There is no passion behind the writing.

This book had the potential to be a great discussion starter, all while being a thrilling horror. Unfortunately, I think Tran's writing style did not lend itself to this specific genre.

A big thanks to Net Galley for the arc. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[Toya (thereadingchemist)]

DNF @60%.

I hate DNFing this far along in the book, but I just don’t care enough to keep going.

I initially loved Jade’s story with her agreeing to stay in Vietnam for five weeks with her estranged father in order to get the tuition money she desperately needs to attend UPenn in the fall.

I loved the chilling atmosphere and eventual ghost sightings that made Jade question reality from the supernatural. I was also interested in the haunting history of her family that her dad refuses to talk about.

Unfortunately, by about the 50% mark, the story becomes unnecessarily repetitive. We know that the two main ghosts continue to haunt Jade in such a gruesome manner, but we are no closer to answers.

Also, at 60% in, we still don’t know why Jade and her ex best friend Halle are ex best friends, even with her new friend/potential love interest, Florence, in the picture.

Maybe this is just me being impatient, but with it being compared to Mexican Gothic (which I loved), I wanted more haunts and answers without the meandering.

[destiny ♡ howling libraries]

Look, I'm sorry, I just... I think I've reached the age where I can't deal with whiny YA protagonists anymore.

Don't get me wrong: I'm 30, it's not like I'm the target demographic anymore, so it's fine - it just bums me out!

[Amanda at Bookish Brews · Rating 5 out of 5]

She Is a Haunting is one of the best books I've ever read. It's a haunted house story with the deep knowledge that haunted houses aren't always simply haunted houses for us. Haunted house stories rely so heavily on a some sort of past that continues to haunt the house, but our world so often has this idea that history only began once the ruling class arrived. Trang Thanh Tran reminds us that the history of colonialism is recent and that our houses would be haunted by complex and hateful relationships, not simply a ghost for ghosts sake.

This story is hauntingly beautiful and grotesquely powerful. Its a reminder that sometimes to unravel our own histories, and even that of our parents, we have to go much further back than simply who they are today. We all live long lives that are shaped by those that came before us. Our desires, our dreams, our hopes are all haunted by the past of our families and sometimes that means the house wants to eat them all up.

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pre-reading:
im about to start this and ive been following trang and this book for SO LONG and i cant believe its real and in my hands.

more! viet! rep! im giving it 5 stars already because its mere existence is so so important to me. thank you, trang, for helping make my dreams come true by writing 🤍

[Gabrielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Content warnings: Colonization, Racism, Insects, Death, Death of a Parent

—————


2.5 stars

I think the saddest thing about this is that right up until the last 70-80 percent or so, I was going to give this a solid (generous) 3/3.5 stars. That conclusion really dampened things for me, though, so here we are instead.

I went into this book really hoping to love it. It had the potential to be great; to sit alongside works like Mexican Gothic in the Horror Centered Around Race hall of fame. But alas, this fell really short.

She Is a Haunting opens up with Jade and her sister arriving in Đà Lạt, her father's birthplace. Her sister, Lily, thinks they're here for a normal reconciliatory vacation with their absent father but Jade is really there because she needs money for college, without which she'd have to defer a year because she doesn't want to burden her Mom, who's had to work extra hard to support three kids by herself.

So her dad cuts her a deal: if Jade spends a few weeks in Đà Lạt with him, and helps him set up a website for the old house he’s trying to fix up and convert into a little Bed and Breakfast, he’ll give her the money she needs. It’s money from an absent father and a chance to get a little freedom, and Jade isn’t about to say no. But when she and Lily get to the house their Dad is painstakingly trying to fix up, it’s very clear, to Jade at least, that something is very wrong with the house.

The set up for this book was incredibly promising. The narrative was clearly playing with themes of colonization, race, and Jade’s personal dilemma of whether or not she should come out to her family. Jade was also very relatable right off the bat, with her struggles with the feelings of disconnect from her culture. There was so much in her to love.

But the story was disjointed; none of these issues that the book wanted to tackle ever fleshed themselves out in a meaningful way, or gelled with each other quite well. Sometimes the topics the author wanted to discuss felt very compartmentalized - Jade would hyperfocus on her bisexuality for two chapters, and then suddenly drop the topic and focus on her not feeling Vietnamese enough. They would have worked beautifully if the author had figured out how to layer the themes in a cohesive way, but they never really seemed able to do that.

The writing was a big miss for me as well. It was … trying to be poetic, but the flow was off, and it just made everything feel really clunky and awkward. The narrative was also very Telling, and less Showing. Which, it was fine I guess, but the emotional beats the author wanted to hit just didn’t impact me quite the same way because Jade kept telling us how she felt immediately as she felt it. I didn’t get a chance to feel things alongside her, and with the themes this book was dealing with? That’s a damn shame.

Ultimately I think this book would have been a lot better if it had been able to figure out what it wanted to be. It wanted to achieve so many things at once - doable, if done right, but this failed to deliver on every count.

[Sadie Hartmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

She is a Haunting follows a closeted bisexual young woman summoned to Vietnam to help her father with his new business venture. He is opening a hotel in a French Colonial estate called, Nhà Hoa.
The house is haunted because of course it is. Jade is inundated with vivid nightmares and visions, and an alarming number of encounters with insects.
Read this book if you enjoy...
-A strong POV from a complex, angry, flawed, queer, young woman
-Horror with heart, centered around family
-Blossoming queer romance and unrequited love
-GHOSTS
-Gothic storytelling with a moody, rich atmosphere
-Celebrating AAPI representation and storytelling
-Family history, buried secrets, and amateur sleuthing
-Rich historical and cultural elements
-BUGS
See my notes & highlights for a sample of the lush writing and some eerie moments

[siera 🪷! (haru’s!! vers.)]

QUEER HORROR WRITTEN BY A VIETNAMESE AUTHOR AHHH OMG (author and my mom have the same name 😭)

[Erin Talamantes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m so disappointed that I didn’t love this one more, it was one of my most anticipated reads for 2023.
Unfortunately, the story is so incredibly confusing. I was lost the entire time and finishing it didn’t help.

[Nicole Murphy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I very rarely rate books 1 star but I genuinely haven’t been this bored whilst reading in a very long time.

I do appreciate that the author is bringing important conversations to a younger audience with having characters who are POC and queer, which means it’s a great shame the story was just lacking in every aspect.

It is supposed to be a story of a haunting but there was NO creepy atmosphere at all. The author told the reader everything straight up, rather than taking time to build a little bit of fear and unease.

I felt the characters were very flat and I wasn’t rooting for any of them.

[Kurryreads (Kerry) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3-3.5 stars

Enjoyed the queer rep and approach this book took on classism, racism, and familial struggles

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZThMcV11t/

[Wen-yi Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one dug into my skin, crawled into my lungs, and then set me on fire. Compulsive, heartwrenching and beautifully creepy. I'm holding Jade Nguyen and all her prickly, haunted, desperately soft pieces close to me forever.

PS I wrote an entire essay about this book about the motifs of food and hunger, and how it resonates with Asian family, colonialism and diaspora

[Hala · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Rather than an exorcism in this house, there will be a haunting."

She Is a Haunting is as impressive as it is unconventional, as beautiful as it is brooding, and as hypnotic as it is haunting.

The book follows the story of Jade Nguyen, a girl who comes from the US to Vietnam to visit her estranged father. She doesn't love him and their relationship is not the best since he left his family behind and didn't ever come back but she really needs the college money he promised her if she stayed with him for five weeks and made a website for the French colonial house her father is restoring.

But the house has other plans...

"What is it like to open your eyes and see your world completely gone wrong? The invaders emerging from the mist like pale ghosts, taking and building, and taking. Latching on and draining you dry. Then calling you a savage."

As the days pass, Jade starts suspecting that the house is haunted. She keeps getting sleep paralysis, gets plagued by bugs' legs and feelers everywhere around the house and a bride ghost who leaves her enigmatic messages: Don't eat. All the while Jade is inspecting the situation she discovers traces she didn't know about her ancestors who used to live in this house. But nobody believes her - except for a single delinquent girl: Florence.

Florence is the girl who was assigned to help Jade in the making of the website. Together they make plans to haunt the house with their supposedly paranormal activity to prove that house is really haunted and will never leave until it destroys them all.

"Anger is a fire. Anger is adrenaline. It’s kept me going for so long, burning for so long, with ambition, with pettiness. I’ll show you had become a mantra throughout high school. Bullies, racists, useless guidance counselors: I’ll show you."

This is a really solid horror book. Not only did I like the represantation and the writing style but its allure is also gorgeous and its concepts are oddly engrossing. It isn't terrifying, but it is unsettling and it has the ability to provoke real retrospection. It's an entertaining affair from start to finish.

This book is filled with absolute nightmare fuel. Something about it made me feel this absolutely gut wrenching and almost heart wrenching feeling that I don't think I can explain. It's a rather sad tale but above everything it's an exasperating one. Its atmosphere is very eerie.

Overall, if you are into disturbing books, this is a must read. Those who can appreciate surrealism, I bet you won't be disappointed by this book. it's a well-crafted and bizarre piece of work. It is nothing short of one of the creepiest things I've read.

[Cortney - Bookworm & Vine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a cool and creepy premise for a book!

I was sucked in from the first page... really enjoyed the writing style at the beginning. It did start to drag a little about halfway through though and the writing started to feel more basic. There was a lot of Vietnamese references and language that bogged down the story.

Overall I really, really liked it! Impressive debut

[johnny ♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

with a strong tradition of “haunted house” film and cinema, artists are pushed to do something new. something different. jade, a bisexual vietnamese-american girl goes to vietnam with her mother and sister to visit her extended family. however beautiful the house may be, there are secrets within, and the house is out for blood and flesh.

this is wonderful for a younger reader who loves horror. for me, it was lacking in visual detail and gore. the relationships between jade and her family are far more interesting than the actual ghosts.

[luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus)]

the mc is such an annoying brat that i can't put up with her. if you are interested in reading this novel i recommend you check out some more positive and/or detailed reviews out.