She is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran

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.

How I heard about it

This is another book I was bookstagram-influenced to read lol.

The Story

Jade has to live with her estranged father in Vietnam for five weeks in exchange for money for university. She doesn't want to burden or disappoint her mother, who has been working hard as a single parent, so Jade lied to her that she got a full scholarship. For her mother's sake, Jade agrees to her dad's terms and helps him restore a French colonial house into a B&B, along with her younger sister, Lily. She's not happy about it and has no desire to get back into her father's good graces after he abandoned their family, but Lily is eager to please.

While Lily and Ba don't believe anything is wrong with the house, Jade keeps experiencing strange phenomenon, including seeing ghostly women, insects that keep dying, hydrangeas that look like they're bleeding, and walls that don't shut up.

Meanwhile, the history of the house is revealed through the ghostly visitations some of what Ba tells her. Jade learns that her ancestors were servants to the white family that owned the home during the French occupation, which is partly why Ba is so set on owning and restoring the house.

To convince her dad that the house is, indeed, haunted, Jade recruits the help of his business partner's daughter, to stir up some "hauntings" of their own. There is some flirting involved via website coding.

But secrets have a knack for not staying secret forever, and Jade isn't the only one who has them, as she gradually learns more about the house, her family history, and her own father.

What I liked

There are themes of colonialism, reclaiming of homeland, trying to restore broken family relationships, and intergenerational family trauma, as well as the tension between immigrant parents and their first-generation Asian children. Nguyen does a fine job weaving these themes into the story.

I also enjoyed reading about Vietnam's history, which I don't know much about.

Always a sucker for complicated mother-daughter relationships, I appreciated reading about Jade's efforts to protect her mother. The part where her mom comes in at the end and embraces Jade for who she is was well done.

What I didn't like

Honestly, what I did like is also what I didn't like. While the themes written about are important, Nguyen is too on-the-nose with them. Every white person was blatantly racist and ignorant. Every problem Jade faced was related to race and the immigrant experience (or rather, the immigrant-parent-child experience). These tropes have snaked their way through so many books by authors from the Asian dysphoria that they're repetitive and tired.

The writing style didn't lend itself to a creepy atmosphere at all, which, in a horror book, is everything. I found myself bored and drudging through this, despite its brevity and simplicity. It should have been a quick binge-read, but I didn't feel any sense of urgency.

Overall

This book sounded promising, and it had a lot of potential. It's one I wish I'd liked more, but it ultimately fell short. The writing didn't work for me. Although I knew I was supposed to feel something during the emotional moments, I felt nothing. For a horror story, it wasn't scary at all. I hate to say it, but I was bored.

While this wasn't for me, it can be for the right reader. It was an intriguing premise that just wasn't executed quite as well as it could have been. I'd still be interested in trying another book by this author in the future.

Who would like this: fans of body horror, haunted houses, complicated parent-child or immigrant parent-child relationships; those who want to read about Vietnamese history