She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
**3.5-stars**
She Is a Haunting is a YA-story following a girl named, Jade Nguyen, and her experiences at her father’s haunted house in a remote area of 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!