3.5 stars! I was so excited to read BANYAN MOON, and even more so after I it became a Read With Jenna Bookclub pick!

The writing was so lush and descriptive, as it explores the complicated relationships between Mothers and Daughters. It was a slow moving book, and unfortunately, I lost interest in the story, even as the secrets were revealed.

🎧I listened to the audiobook and paired it with the print book. The narration was great, and really brought each POV to life.

WHAT TO EXPECT
-multigenerational story
-3 POVs
-slow burn

*many thanks to Mariner books, Harper Audio and Netgalley for the gifted copy for review

I thought this was beautifully written, lush and descriptive. However I had difficulty connecting with the characters and found myself losing interest in the story since it was mostly character-driven. I would be interested in reading this author's next work because I can tell they are talented.

It's an interest thing for me. I just had no interest in the characters or setting of this book. The family dynamic was ok, and of course the age-old mother-daughter relationship. But I lost interest about half way through. Maybe it's just that I couldn't relate, but I gave it 3 stars.

I loved this audiobook! I loved the three POV's of these generational Vietnamese women. It was a solid read, from beginning to end. I will definitely keep my eye out for this author and her future novels. Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins Publisher for the audio ARC, in exchange for my honest review.

Banyan Moon by Thao Thai was an amazing read. I love this book so much and could relate to the story line. GREAT book! Great read!

This is a multi generational story of three women bound together by blood, but very different in terms of upbringing and lifestyle. We get three different perspectives and follow dual timelines. I listened to the audiobook and found it a bit challenging to get into the book. The story seems to start so slowly and I found it difficult to care for the characters. The words are written beautifully, but just didn't work for me.

Banyan Moon was a beautiful story of a Vietnamese American family and the strength of its women.

Ann Tran left home years ago and hasn't been back. She is in a relationship with a professor who runs in elite crowds and she thought they were building a life together until a pregnancy test coincides with news of betrayal.

Then her grandmother, Minh, passes away and Ann decides to go home to the Banyan House and to her grieving mom, Huơng. Their relationship is complicated because Minh was always in between them. But now she is gone and they have to find a way forward together.

The story is told from all three women's point of views. Minh is watching over them and tells of her life in Vietnam during the war and of setting down roots in America as an immigrant. She leads Ann to find secrets hidden in the Banyan House attic.

The story unfolds into a beautiful story of family and the things you do for those you love. It also shows the strength of these women and looking to the future instead of the past.

I gave it ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. I loved Minh looking over them and telling her story. It added a special dynamic to the book. These women faced sorrow and abuse and secrets that were never told and they survived.

I listened to the audio and enjoyed it! Thank you to @netgalley and @harperaudio for an advanced audio copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I love multi-generational family dramas. This is the story of three generations of Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American women and their relationships with men, with each other, and their home. When the matriarch dies, an estranged mother and daughter are reunited, we learn of the secrets each woman has held, and watch them try to reconcile years of misunderstandings and hurt.
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I cannot believe this is a debut author. My advice to you if you plan to pick this up, take your time with it. There is so much packed in these pages, I wish I would have slowed my reading down to not only really immerse myself and appreciate all of the detail but also to just enjoy the beauty of the writing.
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It is clear to me why 𝗕𝗮𝗻𝘆𝗮𝗻 𝗠𝗼𝗼𝗻 was selected as a @readwithjenna pick for July and was included as a @bookofthemonth option for June. This is a beautiful, lyrical and literary novel but also completely accessible to all readers.

An incredibly moving story about three generations of Vietnamese-American women, their complicated mother-daughter relationships and the family secrets that bring them back together.

Told in alternating POVs, we get to know beloved matriarch, Minh and her life in 1960s Vietnam, and later America, as she tries to raise her children to have a better life than hers. We also get to know her daughter Huong and granddaughter Ann as they are reunited after Minh's death when they jointly inherit "The Banyan House" - Minh's rundown Florida home.

Spanning decades and continents, this was sweeping in scope and recommended for fans of Dust child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai or Daughters of the New Year by E. M. Tran. Great on audio too with narrators for each of the women's voices, including Cindy Kay - one of my favs. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early audio copy of this Read with Jenna July book club pick!

Banyan Moon is a moving generational story exploring the lives of three Vietnamese women,. the impact their life experiences have had on caring for and about each other. The focus is on the adult grand daughter Ann and the many challenges she is facing amidst the news of the passing of her beloved grandmother. Regretfully she returns home to her mother to help with all the loose ends left by her grandmother. Through the voice of the grandmother we learn of her plight and her concerns for her daughter and granddaughter. It is wonderfully narrated by three different women which really delineates the characters. Thank you to Net Galley and Harper Audio for this ARC Audio book

From my blog: Always With a Book

I was thrilled when Cindy from the Thoughts of a Page Podcast selected this book for her Patreon group to read early as I had already had my eye on it. I love multigenerational family sagas and knew this was something I would love to read, plus I am always on the lookout for debut authors and that cover just drew me in…isn’t it stunning? I might have to get a hardcopy just to display!

This book follows three generations of women and really looks into just how complicated the relationships between mothers and daughters can be. It moves back and forth from Vietnam to Florida, and not having read many books set in Vietnam, nor set during the Vietnam War, I really appreciated this aspect of the book. I loved how we slowly get to know each of the women, how their histories and secrets slowly unravel so that you come to understand the choices they have made and why things have happened as they did. There is tremendous character growth throughout the novel and I loved seeing this as the book progresses. I didn’t care much for Ann in the beginning of the book, but she definitely grew on me as we learned more about her.

I loved the structure of the book. The story alternates between the three women, however we are hearing from Minh, the matriarch of the family, in the afterlife because she has just passed away as the story has started. This was a bit jarring at first and definitely took some getting used to, but really didn’t seem too crazy when put together with the overall story.

I was completely engrossed with this story and am in awe that this is a debut novel. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for what comes next from this talented author!


Audio thoughts: The audiobook for this was phenomenal. I loved that there were three narrators, for each of the three women, and they all did such a fantastic job bringing this story to life. The narrators, Cindy Kay, Catherine Ho, Elyse Dinh, really were able to bring their A-game to their performances. Their pacing and intonation was spot on and I felt that they each infused just the right amount of tension and emotion into their voices as needed.

Summary: Banyan Moon follows three generations of Vietnamese women —Minh (grandmother), Huơng (mother), and Ann (daughter) — in the wake of their matriarch’s (Minh) death. The story follows each woman, from their own point of view, on a journey of discovering themselves, and revealing truths about each other, and the complex relationships between them. Ann has built a new life for herself far away from the banyan house in Florida, where Huơng takes care of Minh until her death. Ann returns home with a positive pregnancy test, and no idea how her future will play out, while dealing with the death of her closest relationship, and the onset of being around her estranged mother. We travel back through time to see how three of these women ended up on the same path, with such contention between them

My Thoughts: What a debut novel! This story took my breath away with its beautiful prose and complexity of characters and relationships. Familial relationships, especially mother-daughter, can be taxing when so many secrets, and true feelings are kept from one another. As we follow Minh, Huơng, and Ann, they reveal their own truths, through their sides of the same stories. Minh’s passing forces Huơng and Ann to see each other in a different light, and reveal new truths about Minh along the way. As I read, I felt for each Tran woman as they unveiled their experiences, and the complicated situations they endured in their relationships, motherhood, and their day-to-day lives. I found myself thinking, why didn’t they just tell each other the truth! I understand that it’s just not easy, when it’s been so long, or you want to forget. There were some slower-paced parts of the novel where I felt myself not fully engaged with the story, but this is still a 5- star book! Excellent narration performances from Cindy Kay, Catherine Ho, Elyse Dinh. Thank you NetGalley and Harper Audio for the ALC. All opinions are my own.

Thank you NetGalley and HarperAudio for the audiobook ARC! Bayan Moon tells the story of three generations of Vietnamese American women: their lives, their loves and motherhood. Ann Tran has just discovered that her partner has cheated on her, she is pregnant, and her grandmother has just died. Reeling from the suddenness and emotional impact of all of these revelations, Ann returns to her family home, Banyan House. Beyond Ann's perspective, we also follow her mother, Huong, and Huong's mother, Minh. All three women have hidden secrets and sorrows that are beautifully revealed through alternating narrations from each as Huong and Ann sort through all that Minh left behind in Banyan House. Cindy Kay, Catherine Ho, and Elyse Dinh offer thoroughly engaging narrative performances to the audiobook.

I loved how this novel explored the complex and intergenerational relationships between mothers and daughters. I listened to this months ago, and I’m still thinking about how beautifully written this novel is. This novel is about the choices that each character makes and how coming to terms with those choices. The characters felt so real and authentic.

Thai’s debut work is an epic novel of three generations of the Tran family. Spanning the globe from Vietnam to Florida, the clan’s story is told through the alternating voices of its women. There is Minh, the matriarch; Huong, her daughter; and Ann, her granddaughter.

The novel begins when Ann is devastated to hear of her grandmother’s death. She makes her way home to Florida and to her estranged mother. Soon they learn Minh willed them her decrepit home, the Banyan House, where Ann also spent her formative years.

Each woman reflects on and examines her life and in doing so, common threads emerge, tying one generation to the next. The one constant is the Banyan House, located in the lush, overgrown, heavy heat of Florida.

This is a beautifully written (and narrated!) story – the first of, I hope, many more to come..

What a beautiful story of mothers, daughters granmothers and women in general.
Stunning story of generations of vietnamese women and their heartaches and struggles.
The narrator of the audio book made the story come alive.
Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for the audio arc in exchange for my review.

This started off slowly. The novel explores the complicated mother daughter relationship through three generations. There are secrets and sacrifices but most of all is the protective love of a mother.

It is hard to fathom that a debut author, Thai Thai, has written such a masterful book as Banyan Moon. There are too many aspects to this complex and accessible novel to do them justice in this short review. Although Banyan Moon tells epic story of three generations of women of Vietnamese ethnicity, it is, in many ways, a universal story of strong women whose love for one another abides despite their often deep differences and rifts. Author Thao Thai develops each character thoroughly and realistically, revealing all of their flaws as well as their positive attributes that become an integral component of their complicated relationships. American-born Ann, the youngest of the three, returns to her to her ethnic background after she sought to free herself of it, most recently in a serious relationship with a stereotypical wealthy WASP family in Michigan . Her grandmother's death brings her back home to Florida and to the Banyan House, a crumbling large mansion that is the family's home. The house, situated next to an old Banyan tree, is an important and well-developed character, and as the once broken relationship between Ann and her mother is strengthened, their need to cling to the house is lessened gradually. There are few men who are portrayed as being worthy of any of these women and the ways in which the women deal with the men closest to them includes choices that are predictable yet are somewhat surprising. In addition to giving us a book with a compelling plot and rich fully-developed characters, author Thao Thai offers us settings - especially the house and the ocean - that provide metaphors for the forces operating on these women's lives: disorder, danger, renewal, strength, love, and more. Banyan Moon is a wonderful novel that readers will devour.

The moment I heard this line, I knew I would love this book...

"Sometimes...when its quiet like this and the light filters through the trees in planked, yellow streaks in the grass, I think I could like it here...back at the Banyan House. I could like it very much, if it didn't hold the weight of so many years, so much cruelty"

I realized as I was devouring this book that I am a sucker for a book about family connection. What I forget is that not all families have healthy, happy connections. Some families have trauma, secrets, pain, loss and abuse woven into their stories. This book follows three generations of a Vietnamese family as they are all working through and navigating life, until one day the matriarch passes away. In dealing with the loss, well settled secrets are stirred up and begin to float to the surface. Throughout the story, you get multiple POVs, multiple timelines and memories come crashing together; making sense of each characters strengths, flaws and pain. While there is trauma and pain in much of this book, it's also full of forgiveness, love, reconciliation, self discovery and healing.

We all live life, make decisions, hide things, do things, love the way we love, cope the way we cope.... because of the events and circumstances that we have experienced. The good and the bad all wrapped up, make us who we become. This book reminded me to have more grace for others and myself because I may not know what someone else is carrying or what they have lived through.

There are so many themes in this book, but the one that stands out to me is...FAMILY. Family can be chosen, but if you're blessed and lucky, the one you're born into can become the rooted source of strength that you will need as you walk through life. I will be re-reading this for sure!

by I just reviewed Banyan Moon by Thao Thai was an Audibook Arc provided by NetGalley and Harper Audo. #BanyanMoon #NetGalley