Name: Banyan Moon
Rating: 4.214285714285714 (7 reviews)
ISBN: 9780063267107

Thao Thai

A Novel

Banyan Moon

karina

A compelling read about family and how one’s decisions can affect the next generation! It’s a great and explains the complexity of love thoroughly. 😊 I do feel tho that towards the end, things could have been expounded on more, maybe we should have had more details about Phuoc, but that aside, it was a good read. 

POLAINE ELISE PAULINO

A sweeping, evocative debut novel following three generations of Vietnamese American women reeling from the death of their matriarch, revealing the family’s inherited burdens, buried secrets, and unlikely love stories. When Ann Tran gets the call that her fiercely beloved grandmother, Minh, has passed away, her life is already at a crossroads. In the years since she’s last seen Minh, Ann has built a seemingly perfect life—a beautiful lake house, a charming professor boyfriend, and invites to elegant parties that bubble over with champagne and good taste—but it all crumbles with one positive pregnancy test. With both her relationship and carefully planned future now in question, Ann returns home to Florida to face her estranged mother, Huơng. Back in Florida, Huơng is simultaneously mourning her mother and resenting her for having the relationship with Ann that she never did. Then Ann and Huơng learn that Minh has left them both the Banyan House, the crumbling old manor that was Ann’s childhood home, in all its strange, Gothic glory. Under the same roof for the first time in years, mother and daughter must face the simmering questions of their past and their uncertain futures, while trying to rebuild their relationship without the one person who’s always held them together. Running parallel to this is Minh’s story, as she goes from a lovestruck teenager living in the shadow of the Vietnam War to a determined young mother immigrating to America in search of a better life for her children. And when Ann makes a shocking discovery in the Banyan House’s attic, long-buried secrets come to light as it becomes clear how decisions Minh made in her youth affected the rest of her life—and beyond. Spanning decades and continents, from 1960s Vietnam to the wild swamplands of the Florida coast, Banyan Moon is a stunning and deeply moving story of mothers and daughters, the things we inherit, and the lives we choose to make out of that inheritance.

Sonia Grgas

Loved this generational story about 3 Vietnamese American women. Will resonate with anyone who is a mother.

I'm a complete sucker for a book about families and intergenerational drama. What I especially liked about Banyan Moon was the language and writing the author used. It was almost dream-like. I appreciated all the foreshadowing the author included from page one and how it slowly and in almost a romantic way, revealed itself to me the reader. 

My one critique is (and this is coming from someone that honestly doesn't mind clichés as long as they are done well) is the accidental pregnancy. It did serve it's purpose in a way in the story to bring together mother and daughter (sort of - it's arguable), but it's one of my least favorite clichés.  

However, it doesn't take away from the beauty and tragedy of the story. 

Gisela Ayala 

I'm a complete sucker for a book about families and intergenerational drama. What I especially liked about Banyan Moon was the language and writing the author used. It was almost dream-like. I appreciated all the foreshadowing the author included from page one and how it slowly and in almost a romantic way, revealed itself to me the reader. 

My one critique is (and this is coming from someone that honestly doesn't mind clichés as long as they are done well) is the accidental pregnancy. It did serve it's purpose in a way in the story to bring together mother and daughter (sort of - it's arguable), but it's one of my least favorite clichés.  

However, it doesn't take away from the beauty and tragedy of the story. 

In 1960s Vietnam, a young girl named Minh falls in love and has a child. That one event sets in motion years of family and secrets that end at Banyan House in Florida.

Now, Minh has died, and her daughter, Huong, and her granddaughter, Ann, must grapple with a complicated relationship and the fallout of the secrets that Minh kept.

I love these big family stories, but this one won't stay with me. It was well-written; the last 15% helped me bump the story up half a star. But much of the book was super slow without much of a plot. I wanted to see more, not be in the women's heads just hearing what happened.

Cheri McElroy

In 1960s Vietnam, a young girl named Minh falls in love and has a child. That one event sets in motion years of family and secrets that end at Banyan House in Florida.

Now, Minh has died, and her daughter, Huong, and her granddaughter, Ann, must grapple with a complicated relationship and the fallout of the secrets that Minh kept.

I love these big family stories, but this one won't stay with me. It was well-written; the last 15% helped me bump the story up half a star. But much of the book was super slow without much of a plot. I wanted to see more, not be in the women's heads just hearing what happened.

Banyan Moon A Novel

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