She Is a Haunting

According to my records, I started this on January 17th and it's now February 3rd. This is wild to me because it feels I've been struggling with this book for at least a month. 

I was excited to read this for various reasons. I DO judge a book by it's cover, and this is a gorgeous cover. (Even now, I have to say the cover matches the book well.) I love haunted houses and a gothic vibe. I like interesting family dynamics. I was stoked to see those elements in a story set in Vietnam. 

And I loved a short story from this author in the “Night of the Living Queers” anthology! I still think it's a great story, but I wonder if the short nature made me okay with mysterious elements and unanswered questions. 

“Haunting” delivered on a lot of parasitic creepiness, and I loved reading about Jade's relationship with her sister, Lily. Jade had a complicated relationship with her father, and carries anger toward him but also guilt at something she told him, and I liked the idea of that. Jade is also exploring her same sex attraction, and that's an appreciated element. The book had terrific ongoing reminders of the costs and oppressiveness of colonization. These are things I want to read.

But the writing just didn't get me to where I expected to be. I just didn't love the execution. I wanted more scenes with the sister and father. More clarity on what was going on. Jade seemed to make leaps in understanding that didn't make sense to me based on what she would/should know. I pushed through on this one a little bit because I want to prioritize diverse horror this year and I felt I needed to read this one in particular. 

I recommend this to fans of gothic stories/haunted houses, that are creeped out by bugs and parasites, that want a setting that is a little less common in combination with these tropes and who want what that element lends, and certainly to people who like these things and read diversely. 

I'm glad I read it. It brought enough that I know will stick with me. I think it might be influential for what it does. Because the pages didn't turn themselves/my interest wasn't fully engaged, I think I'll play it by ear on future titles by Trang Thanh Tran. I really did like the story (Nine Stops) in Night of the Living Queers. 

oh, i just don't know about this one. this was a book club read for spooky month, it didn't keep my interest enough for me to finish it before the meeting, and then book club meeting came and went, and i still took forever to finish it afterward. this was disjointed (at first i thought it was the audiobook narration and swapped to hard copy, but no, it was the choppy and overly convoluted writing), and weird shit would happen without giving me a reason to care why. so there's a racist old white lady haunting the house, and all the food is rotting on purpose, and colonialism is bad, and the MC is bi and closeted, cool. i guess we're supposed to root for the MC to make it out of there intact? was that it? if we were supposed to have takeaways about rekindling family connections among the various threads in the novel, that was not executed well.

I love stories about hauntings - houses, people, nature - if it's haunted, I will read it. She Is A Haunting is a beautifully written story about colonialism, self-discovery, and trauma and how it manifests in a physical structure, but also in the people that occupy it. The author does a great job of meshing past and present together to create a vivid and moving novel. I really, really enjoyed this and found the supernatural elements to be just right. After reading Piñata and being disappointed, I needed something good and I'm so glad that I picked up She Is A Haunting! If you like haunted place stories, this is for you.