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Synopsis

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.

Synopsis from Kobo Canada.

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What I Think

Jade Nguyen, unfortunately for me, is an energy-sapping teen protagonist that even the taste of bitter gourd (oh this is actually my favorite vegetable) pales in comparison. I’m sorry that was passive-aggressive but family drama is just too much for me. Her father left their family for triple question mark reasons and so her mother had to play both roles to sustain the family. There’s undeniable pain and reasonable distress given how she was forced to grow up at a young age without a father figure. Nonetheless, the bitterness in her every statement, every fleeting thought, oh my dear heaven. It crept up and triggered my anxiety that I had to stop reading and watch some Family Guy episodes in between a couple of chapters. I’m not sure if that is a good comment or not. But I honestly would not recommend this book for people dealing with terrible anxiety. The wafting resentment grips the throat with serious intentions to choke the life out of me.

Jade made a deal with his father who walked out of the family four years ago. She will stay with him for the summer break at his recent project, a bed and breakfast revival of a French rest-house built in the colonial period. In return, he will provide her the amount she needs for her tuition fee. It was a difficult pill to swallow. But Jade didn’t want to burden her mother anymore, as she already works more than 70 hours every week in a nail salon. And while working all summer flipping burgers (or ice creams!) will render her some cash, Jade’s expected total amount by the end of it is still a far cry from what the university needs, so a trip to Vietnam it is.

She is a Haunting resembles to me of a time lapse of something decaying. It is like watching an overripe fruit holding on to something, anything while slowly being eaten away by crawlers, their tiny plump bodies inching and wriggling, as the flesh of the fruit is peeled and chewed away bit by bit. Macabre.

As the story progresses, Jade starts shedding some layers of her deep-seated resentment, replacing them with resistance. Her father has been cooking for Jade and Lily (she brought her sister along although Lily is now a vegetarian). He also introduced her to Florence who Jade noticed becomes more and more appealing every time they spend time together, and finally, her dad keeps handing out tiny gestures that makes her second-think why she has been holding on her anger for so long. He even mentions a possibility of family reconciliation but Jade knows better. Some cracks remain broken no matter how much sealant is used.

Despite everything, her current complicated family status only highlighted the past. Fond memories with her father keeps resurfacing and creates an internal tug-of-war. Jade wants to mend things but she also isn’t keen on simply wrapping up the pain her father caused the whole family and be done with it just like that. She wants to open up but it would mean destroying the thick wall she has built around her to keep her safe. If you ask her, there’s no telling if trust can rebuild anything, or if trust itself can be revived at all.

But that is not all. Coating the family drama, we have the sleep paralysis that’s been wearing her down. Night after night, a pressure of unknown force would drag her to a nightmare. Curiously, although she is but an observant, she can freely move in the made-up world. And in these moments of limbo, Jade is visited by a bride wearing a traditional Vietnamese wedding dress. Each time they meet, she warns her. Đừng ăn. Do not eat.

For all the skepticism Jade has brought with her being an Americanized Vietnamese from Philadelphia, the ghost bride took them all.

Five stars. No, actually scratch that. Six stars, like my birthday.

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Nhà Hoa, the house where it’s unclear who is feeding who, and questionably who is eating what. If there’s one thing I know about hauntings, the more subtle they are, the more it drives you crazy, contrary to Western movie depictions. And it’s this subtleness that drives even more fear. Did I see it, or did I not? Did I feel it or am I going insane?

The second half of the book gave me a different Jade Nguyen. Here, she is not whiny, she is not the victim anymore. She is determined to fight back. Be it her father’s suspicious motives of reconciliation, her confusion in her own identity because girls liking girls is a taboo in Vietnam’s culture, or be it dealing with the house Nhà Hoa, which appears to be an entity itself. She has held back long enough. With the help of Florence, she will investigate what exactly is Nhà Hoa, and why does she find insect parts stuck in between her teeth. She will find ways to uncover the truth and dig all the horrors their ancestors, who served as servants in the house went through when the French ruled the land. Even if this means exposing her own secrets, lust and all.

Beautifully foreboding. She is a Haunting is a mixture of screaming anguish, indecisive regrets, and pleading what-ifs, all painted in a canvass of family rootedness and desperate need to belong somewhere.

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