Reviews with content warning for Cursing - She Is a Haunting

4 ⭐ CW: body horror, sleep paralysis, death of a parent, immolation, racism, cursing

She is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran is a YA horror about a Vietnamese-American girl struggling with identity and family reconciliation amid a haunted house.

We follow Jade, who is visiting her father with her younger sister in Vietnam, as he fixes up an old French Colonial house. Jade's father has been estranged from the family for a long time, but has made a deal that if she stays the summer, then he will give her the money she needs to go to college at UPenn. Then Jade realizes that the house is haunted by a racist, French colonizer who is tormenting her as she did another Vietnamese girl who lived there.

Jade is a bit of an angsty teen girl, angry at her father and making not great decisions. But we soon realized that her father put too much on her when she was young instead of taking responsibility. Jade carries the weight of being the oldest daughter, as well as trying to navigate her Vietnamese-American identity. Throughout the book we see her struggle with not feeling Vietnamese enough. Jade is also coming to terms with being bisexual.

I liked Jade's relationship with Florence and the juxtaposition of their two very different personalities. The hauntings are really visceral and creepy! The interplay between dreams and real hauntings makes reality hard to parse out. A lot of disturbing descriptions. We get themes of how colonialism is a rot upon a country. The racist ghost, Marion, rotted from the inside when she died in the house, so get plenty of imagery of rotting food, parasites and dead bugs. It's ironic that Marion always referred to the Vietnamese people as parasites, when she herself became a parasite of the house after death.

This was a super creepy read and perfect for spooky season. I'm really enjoying all this diverse horror! This would make for a great horror movie.

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nutmegandpumpkin's review

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

The author did a fantastic job with the actual horror aspects & overall creepiness. The characters were OK but not entirely likable apart from the younger sister IMO. The writing was also just okay with the exception of a couple of great lines sprinkled here and there. The story felt VERY slow yet some of the aspects felt rushed at the end.

I’m honestly having a hard time pinpointing how I feel about this book. I found it somewhat enjoyable but not extremely memorable. I think the potential is there but it didn’t quite reach it.

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sarah984's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This is a pretty solid YA haunted house story. There are some really effective scares in here and I loved the Vietnamese setting, but sometimes feelings and character motivations got a bit lost in the flowery writing and the romance didn't really work for me.

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