I ended up not liking this one as much as I'd hoped. I loved Minh's story the best I think, especially when she remained in the story after her death. I loved her relationship with the Banyan House, and the writing overall was absolutely gorgeous. But I found Huong and Ann to be ridiculously annoying and unlikeable, making weird choices throughout. I think they were written as unlikeable on purpose, to an extent, but I think the actual effect was a bit too heavy-handed.

Not the sweeping multi-generational tale I was expecting, but I did still like the Vietnamese folklore included throughout, the beautiful writing, and the overall feminist themes.

Banyan Moon is a touching novel about motherhood, love, grief, and the long-lasting impact of the decisions we make and the secrets we keep. The novel follows three generations of Vietnamese American women in the aftermath of the death of the matriarch, Minh. Secrets emerge when Ann and her mother, Huơng, jointly inherit the Banyan House, Ann’s childhood home. Thao Thai’s writing is stunning, and she weaves a beautiful, multiple-POV immersive story that slowly and satisfyingly peels back the layers of history and its decades of buried truths.

"The past reminds me of a fun house full of mirrors. If I turn the right way, I can see the reflection of a younger version of me, one who believed in the wholeness of love, with her sweetly tied aprons, her modest shopping bags. One standing unknowingly on the precipice of her future. The things I could tell her. The warnings I would give." Thao Thai's debut novel Banyan Moon is appearing on many summer reading guides and for good reason. This novel follows the Tran woman, three generations of Vietnamese- Americans and we see how complicated love, life and death can be and how it is not always easy to freely share all that life has handed you. After the matriarch of the family, Minh, immigrates to the US from Vietnam she lives in the Banyan House, located in Florida, this is home to her daughter, Huong, and her granddaughter Ann. Banyan House is a character of its own in the novel. This is a novel about family, strength, shame, forgiveness, and grief. All hard topics but I flew through this novel, always ready to get back to this family. Thank you to Cindy Barnett at Thoughts from a Page podcast and Netgalley for the early reads net galley. Five Stars.

Banyan Moon is a fantastic debut novel about a generational Vietnamese family told by multiple POVs. This book was beautifully written, full of wisdom, history, family drama, mother/daughter relationships, grief, buried secrets and more.

Amazon book description: 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.

Author Thao Thai weaves a beautiful mother/daughter story…that made me reflect on my own relationships with my late grandmother, mother and three daughters. I also enjoyed learning about the intricacies of the Banyan Tree conducting my own research wanting to learn more. The cover is absolutely amazing and I love how Thao Thai says the branches represent the tangled lives of the family. I look forward to reading future books by Thao.

I received an advanced electronic (eARC) copy from @thoughtsfromapage Patreon Community Early Reads Program. Thank you to Cindy Burnett and publisher Mariner Books. I appreciated the opportunity to preview this book.

I love Banyan trees. They are my absolute favorite tree. They live for hundreds of years and they grow aerial roots that grow downward strengthening the tree as they merge into the primary trunk. They are a wonder to behold!

Banyan Moon by Thao Thai is a wonderful book about three generations of Vietnamese women who also put down roots strengthening their family and their bond. Minh, the grandmother, has just died but her spirit is still very much present. Through her recollection, she tells her story of living through the Vietnam war and immigrating to the US where she raises her children.

Huong, born in Vietnam but raised in the US, balances tradition with American customs. And Ann, her daughter, discovers that her grandmother hid secrets that may complicate her and Huong’s already complicated relationship.

I am learning that I love a Vietnamese immigrant story. I love how these mothers love their children, and I’m fascinated by the struggles each generation has as they try to honor their heritage while living more as an American in a culture where they seemingly don’t fully fit in.

I truly enjoyed Banyan Moon and I look forward to more by Thao Thai. Thank you to Cindy Burnett at @thoughtsfromapage podcast and @marinerbooks for the advanced e-copy of #banyanmoon. I’m looking forward to hearing @thao_writes discuss her beautiful book later this week!

This book is available everywhere on June 27, 2023. Be sure to look for it wherever you get books!

Banyon Moon is ultimately the story of three generations of women who have complicated relationships with each other and who have disclosed only partial versions of themselves to each other. At one point, one of them states "Truth is like an onion." Isn't this the experience of families? Truth can be one person's perspective or can be a version of what we tell the world, but there can be so many layers underneath. The book is told from three perspectives - of the grandmother who is a ghost remembering her life in Vietnam, her daughter now in her 50's remembers her life with her husband when they first married, and Ann the granddaughter dealing with being back at home in the Banyon House missing her grandmother and thinking about choices she must make about the future. Banyon House is the center of it all with the dust and layers of history to unpack. I enjoyed the book, despite there being some loose ends, but ultimately I will be thinking about these women for a long time.

Thanks to the publisher for an early ARC of the book.

Heart-wrenching book about three generations of women just trying to do their best, and oftening failing in the eyes of their family. Lover the complexity of the characters and the tension in their relationships.

Thank you Mariner Books and NetGalley for this advance copy. I enjoyed the author’s gorgeous prose and I was invested in the complexities of the mother daughter relationship dynamic, but the pacing felt a bit drawn out. I liked the alternating chapter perspectives, but Ann came across a little flat in comparison to Huong and Minh. A promising debut with an absolutely stunning cover!

In the shade of a Florida Banyan tree lies a home that has seen the sacrifices and shortcomings of three generations of Vietnamese American women. This own voices debut is told in alternating perspectives from Min, the matriarch from Vietnam, her daughter Huong, and adult granddaughter Ann.

After Mihn passes away, Huang and Ann are left to reckon with their strained relationship for the first time. This is a story about regret and forgiveness, navigating grief, and finding the strength and soft heart needed to begin again. I love the way Thao Tai captured the fortitude of women, ties that bind, and the beauty and nuances of imperfect relationships.

The house and Banyan tree was a living, breathing, character in itself. This character-driven story brims with lyrical writing and symbolism and would make for a compelling book club discussion.

RATING: 4/5
PUB DATE: June 27, 2023

I like this incredibly immersive story of three vitamese women . It was a good multi generational story much like Pachinko and felt it had engaging characters . It also had a good sense of place
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me review this book

Banyan Moon tells the story of three generations of Vietnamese American women, their challenges and the secrets that they’ve kept from each other. This novel by Thao Thai has a strong sense of place and well developed characters. I really enjoyed it!

Ann’s life is upended upon learning of her longtime boyfriend’s unfaithfulness, her unexpected pregnancy, and her beloved grandmother’s death in short succession. Returning to her childhood home for the funeral, can Ann heal her strained relationship with her mother in order to rebuild her life and provide her child with a nurturing environment? With “Banyan Moon,” Thao Thai crafts a character study that plumbs the meaning of selfhood and motherhood.

“Banyan Moon” left me underwhelmed for several reasons. (1) While the central female characters exhibit nuance, the supporting characters often felt flat, straining the novel’s credibility. (2) Some of the backstory is not fleshed out so that readers are not completely sure of characters’ motivations. (3) The book didn’t have enough narrative tension. Despite these reservations, I’m sure readers who have more connections with the protagonists (immigrant experiences, single motherhood) may connect more closely with the narrative and overlook some of my concerns. The novel has moments of lyricism and insight, but not enough to keep me rapt or to make this novel memorable.

First, I must say that I had the most wonderful reading experience each time I picked up Banyan Moon by Thao Thai. I wanted to savor it while also eagerly pushing forward to find out what happened next in the lives of Thai’s characters. Her writing is beautiful - descriptive, heartfelt and piercing. The three women at the heart of the novel are complex, occasionally unlikeable, and very real. And the relationships they have with each other and the various men in their lives (husbands, fathers, brothers) are equally complex. I truly enjoyed reading this book.

So, why not 5 stars? There were a few nagging holes, choices the author made, and inconsistencies that I just couldn’t reconcile or get behind. Most of these were near the end, which brought my rating down. But I still recommend this book and think anyone who likes complex family stories will really enjoy this one.

Exquisite writing and storytelling. My comments of this beautiful novel will not do it justice. The story was just so immersive. The novel follows three generations of women: Minh, Ann, and Huong. I enjoyed each character equally and did not feel like the POVs were too much despite having three of them. All three women were such strong characters, and despite their issues, had redeeming qualities. They wanted a better life for their children, and endured ample heartbreak and hardships along the way (some trigger warnings: domestic violence, death, child abuse). I teared up through this novel, which is rare for me. This was such an amazing debut novel. Highly recommend, especially if you love:
-strong characters
-some historical fiction elements
-huge sense of place; I felt like their family home was a character itself
-beautiful writing
-unputdownable novel
I give this novel a 5/5.
Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for providing me an advanced reader's copy.

Banyan Moon by Thao Thai is the story of three generations of Vietnamese American women. Their secret-filled lives take them on a journey leading them to the Banyan House. The Banyan House - it saves lives, and it takes them away.

Ann Tran learns that her grandmother has passed away. She's in the midst of a crisis of her own.

Huơng is devastated about losing her mother and excited about gaining a daughter. Ann and Huơng have a past.

It's all tied to Minh. The origin story. A story of love and hardship.

The women must face the past to move forward.

Sometimes it's better to secrets die.

I enjoyed this story about complicated decisions. Life is hard. People have the best intentions. What we'll do to survive is what this story is about.

Thank you to NetGalley and Mariner Books for my eArc in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

"Banyan Moon" by Thao Thai is a wonderful little punch of a book. We follow Ann, Huong, and Minh in this novel and although Minh dies very early on in the book, she is ever present as her daughter, Huong, and granddaughter, Ann, deal with her death and Ann's unplanned pregnancy. I very rarely see any literature from other SEA writers, so to see this pop up on NetGalley, I knew that I needed to apply for a copy. Thai did not disappoint. As somone who has never and likely will never have a close relationship with my mother, I related to Ann and her estrangement from Huong. Although the story is very much character driven, which can easily be boring in a less adept writer's hands, the story is beautifully written and crafted. Thai does a great job at not letting the narrative get too emotional and saccharine which I really appreciated. Thai gives space to Ann and Huong with their grief about Minh's death.

That said, there are some issues; Thai reveals big pieces of information pretty late in the story and so we don't really get a lot of time to actually sit with the information and neither does the novel. There are also some bits of Minh's narration that bothered me just because Thai wrote her so perfectly; the almost condescending and patronizing way that her narration was written in reminded me a lot of my grandma and I say that with love. I think for other people, it may present a challenge. I also wish we got a full story about how the Banyan House actually came into the family. We get a lot of tidbits that felt like we'd get the full story later in the story but we never did and man, it is killing me that we never did...although from the tidbits, you can kind of infer the origin.

All in all, I loved this book. It is so obvious that Thai is a gifted writer and one that I will be paying attention to. As a fellow SEA, it was really inspiring and encouraging to see a book by a SEA be so well-received by non-AAPI readers.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher of Harper Collins, and the author Thao Thai for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. Starting a debut novel can be a challenge, especially a family saga, and while typical in Asian American literature, the challenge of the family saga is its near epicness of it. In other words, there has to be a reason there's a family saga. The family members and the family have to be compelling enough, and it's a lot to tackle as a debut author. Writing a novel is a difficult task, and writing a family saga is another, but I didn't see the family as compelling least of all, Ann. I wish I could be rooting for Ann as a character, but she's rather bland compared to the rest of her family members. I hope to see what Thai writes next.

Moving family saga based on 3 generations of women experiencing life's difficulties. Her grandmother's funeral brings Ann home for the first time in years. Grieving, she starts the slow process of forgiveness, reconnecting with lost friends and discovering her next chapter. Wonderful story for all patrons and a solid book club choice.

Thanks to Harper Collins and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy of Banyan Moon. It was a story of three generations of strong women and their journeys toward motherhood. The men seemed incidental to the story. The women each wrestled with their relationships to men and to their children. The house was almost its own character but I was left wanting more of its story. Good read for those looking for a women's story. #BanyanMoon #NetGalley

Banyan Moon is a sweeping epic family drama that spans three generations. Grandmother, mother, and daughter (who is in the process of becoming a mother herself) tell their stories through three different POVs. One of them is a ghost. Although the story stretches back to the grandmother's childhood in Vietnam, the true setting of this book is a decrepit, sprawling mansion in Florida next to a Banyan tree. Full of someone else's keepsakes and the women's own secrets, the house is a character itself, but whether a benevolent embrace or an eerie prison is up to how the women choose to live. This story breathes with memories, trauma and a dreamlike sense of fairy tale. Although broken promises and domestic violence play a role, the story centers around these three women and their relationships, mostly with each other. It is about mothers- the mothers we have, the mothers we wish we had, and the mothers we hope to be. It is a tale of becoming-who we become to each other but more importantly who we become to ourselves. Banyan Moon is full of rich, poignant phrases that I had to stop and reread more than once. Thao Thai is a masterful writer with a grasp of language that sheds light on the human condition with poetic insight. I look forward to reading more from this remarkable debut author.