it took me a while to finish this but i loved the writing style, it was both beautifully written and haunting at the same time.

i think my long time with this revolved around the subject matter, while it was beautiful and emotional it was hard to read due to the difficult topics covered and i did need to put it down to take breaks.

overall i think this is a stunning debut and it made me ugly cry multiple times! i'm very excited to read more of this author's works.

thank you so much to netgalley, the publisher and the author for the arc 🫶🏻

I read the first 200 or so pages of this book and whilst the descriptive words are beautiful, i felt this book moved very slowly and as a result, I do not reach for it as much as I would like and often opt for other boos. I did not finish this book.

I loved the gothic atmosphere of Banyan House, the mysterious house bought in Florida by Vietnamese refugee Minh, where she lives with her daughter Huong and granddaughter Ann, and following these three women through times. I found it well written and moving, although by the end I felt some elements, that Thao Thai hinted at throughout the book, had been forgotten - for example the previous owner of the house who is mentioned several times. Overall I still enjoyed it, it has a cinematographic quality to it.

"Banyan Moon" by Thao Thai is a beautifully crafted multigenerational saga that delves deep into the intricacies of family dynamics, cultural heritage, and the powerful bonds between mothers and daughters. Set in both America and Vietnam, the novel offers a compelling narrative that seamlessly weaves together the past and the present.

The story follows three generations of women from the Tran family: Minh, the resilient grandmother; Huong, her determined daughter; and Ann, the introspective granddaughter. The author shows the multifaceted nature of each character and explores their struggles, dreams, and the unspoken tensions that define their relationships. The characters are deeply relatable, their flaws and strengths painting a realistic picture of familial love and conflict.

I loved how this book is written. The writing is lyrical. I also love the motif of the Banyan Tree and how it's used as an anchor through the story.

If you love family sagas, you should give this a read!

Must admit it took me a while to finish this one, perhaps because of the heavy subject matter but it felt quite slow too- however an amazing debut novel, it was gripping and kept me interested throughout.
Following the stories of these women was heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time

A beautiful, haunting, and emotional debut novel. It is quite a slug to get through as it is very heavy and I found myself not wanting to read it a lot of the time because of the subject matter but overall it is definitely worth the read! I would just say to tackle it in small chunks!

it took me like a month to read this book but wow… what a stunning debut! it was such a delight getting to know these vietnamese women from three generations, each one of them having their own unique story & unique struggles. i was feeling empathetic towards all of them, although i may not agree with all their actions. this book just showcases how intricate and complicated life can be. sometimes we can‘t all have our happily ever after, but perhaps something close to it.

This is an amazing debut novel about three women and their secrets. We follow Me and her story from Vietnam to US, Huong and her story of marriage and Ann and her story of entering motherhood. I would definitely be looking out for everything Thao Thai will publish in the future.

A debut novel!! A phenomenal, character driven story that bought me to tears more than once :’)

Ann, her mother Huơng, and her grandmother Minh each play equally important roles in this book. The reader gains access to the stories and secrets of these three women through multiple perspectives per chapter, with shifting timelines that reveal each woman's history, thoughts, and emotions. The narrative also switches locations, from the grandmother's upbringing in Vietnam to the three generations living in Florida.

This book delves into the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, presented from an unfiltered viewpoint in the most genuine way. I loved reading snippets about Vietnamese culture as well.

I have seen some other reviews stating that the characters aren’t ‘likeable’, but I personally prefer to read about characters who are unique & different rather than predictably likeable or have extremely forgiving flaws .

Cannot wait to get my hands on the physical copy so I can annotate all of my favourite quotes, there are some incredible lines in this book.

Thank you NetGalley & Quercus Books for this advanced readers copy 🤗

A beautiful atmospheric story that captured my interest from the first chapter. I would recommend this book.

This is a beautifully written debut from Thao Thai, providing the perspectives of 3 generations of Vietnamese women, their complicated relationships, the culture, global movement, and different lives. Ann Tran has carved out a seemingly perfect American life, but all is not well below the surface, her academic boyfried, Noah, has cheated on her, questions arise when it comes to just how much she has really been accepted, and then there is her pregnancy. She learns that her beloved grandmother, who she has not seen for so long, has died, and she returns to Florida, her estranged mother, Huong, and their distinct, dilapidated, large manor home, Banyon House, that Minh has left them in her will, so critically important to both of them.

In a narrative that shifts from the past to the present, Ann and Huong are grieving over their loss, but their feelings are a emotional quagmire, with Huong resenting her mother for her closeness to Ann that had eluded her. Their home is integral to the story, the memories it holds, what it has meant to each of them, and now the ghost of Minh resides within it. We learn there are secrets from the past, and of each woman and their relationships with each other in a way that really resonated with me, there are many universal commonalities when it comes to mother-daughter relationships, and the wide range of emotions that are encapsulated within them, including love, guilt, rage, and more.

Thai takes us through many decades, from Vietnam, building new lives in America, adapting to new environments and culture, of resilience, need for security, identity, and of how relationships shift and change through time, and slowly being redeveloped and rebuilt. She carefully details the pieces being put back together with her rich descriptions, the drama, the fears and the misunderstandings. This was an astutely observed read, captivating in how skilfully and authentically the 3 women characters, a family, are drawn and developed, with their challenges and struggles. Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

Estranged from her mother, devastated by the recent loss of her beloved grandmother, and reeling from setbacks in her personal life, Ann Tran returns to Florida with faint hope, in a final attempt to salvage her relationship with her mother, now that her grandmother has passed.

In this book, Ann's story is told alongside, and parallel to, her grandmother Minh's life experiences as a young woman in Vietnam in a remarkable moment in time.

The result is a touching, relatable and intense family tale about distance, love, loss, and the kind of communication challenges many people face in their intergenerational kinship networks - especially in immigrant families. Worth a read, it gets 3.5 stars.

There isn’t much in the way of joy in this book. If you take pleasure in reading about other families’ misery then you’ll probably enjoy it. If you persevere, you will learn about the earlier lives of the three women, the events and paths they took that shaped their characters. Some of the writing is quite beautiful but I found many of the analogies quite pithy and irritating. Ultimately the content, the structure, and the writing style just aren’t for me

In a debut of dazzling imagery and unexpected juxtapositions, Thao Thai's Banyan Moon deftly weaves the stories of three generations of women into a profound tapestry.

Although I am mostly unfamiliar with Vietnamese culture, enough rings true for me to recognise the difficult divisions between the generations of a transplanted family, but this is not a refugee or an expatriate story. It's a tale of families, of mothers and daughters and granddaughters, and of the men they love and by whom they are betrayed or, at the very least, disappointed.

Narrated by each of the women in turn—Minh, the steely grandmother who got her little family out of Vietnam when the going was good; Huơng, the mother who never seemed to get into her own mother's good graces, and then never into her own daughter's; and Ann, daughter and granddaughter, reeling from a betrayal and an unplanned pregnancy, and then comes Minh's death—the book circles around and around, exploring the themes of motherhood, wifehood, personhood. Thai never takes the easy path as the three women's lives intertwine and almost repeat, like strange attractors that retread the moments that divide their states, making different choices, aching for different things.

A fourth character that looms in the novel is the Banyan House, a mystery to the end, that is a container and a witness to all the meaningful moments in the lives (and deaths) of the three generations, the ghosts that lurk in the background and the futures that could be at any moment.

I loved this book: five stars.