The Hunger We Pass Down by Jen Sookfong Lee is a compelling blend of domestic suspense, horror, and generational drama. Drawing comparisons to Jordan Peele’s Us and Jessamine Chan’s The School For Good Mothers, the novel explores the haunting legacy of intergenerational trauma through the Chow family. It’s a bold story in which supernatural elements tangibly reflect very real cycles of violence, secrecy, and pain passed from mother to daughter. Alice Chow, a single mother juggling a thriving business and the demands of two children, suddenly finds her burdens mysteriously lifted—her chores done, her life unexpectedly in order. As unexplained help arrives in the night, Alice’s investigation into her family’s haunted history—spanning from her great-grandmother’s ordeal as a comfort woman in WWII to the loneliness of modern motherhood—uncovers echoes of violence that refuse to stay buried.

Strengths
Pacing & Structure: Short, snappy chapters alternate between past and present, keeping the narrative gripping and accessible while weaving complex timelines together without confusion.

Atmosphere: The horror isn’t just supernatural; it is rooted in real-life atrocities. The tension is ever-present, making for a genuinely frightening read.

Themes: Intergenerational trauma is explored with nuance, capturing how pain and survival can reverberate through generations—sometimes manifesting as haunting, literal or otherwise.

Characters: The portrayal of Alice and her family is relatable and raw. Their flaws and frustrations make them especially authentic.

Limitations
Ending: The conclusion feels a bit abrupt and ambiguous, potentially leaving readers wishing for more resolution or clarity. This lack of closure, however, may be intentional—themes of trauma rarely offer neat endings or clear answers in real life.

Final Thoughts
The Hunger We Pass Down is dark, unsettling, and filled with twists. It lingers long after the last page, asking important questions about the cycles families inherit—and what it costs to break them. I wouldn’t normally gravitate toward this kind of horror-tinged family saga, but I found it gripping and thought-provoking. If you’re drawn to unsettling stories with real psychological depth, this is a novel worth recommending (and maybe staring at the wall afterward, just to process).

Recommended for:Readers interested in generational stories, literary horror, or anyone looking to explore the lingering effects of family secrets and trauma.

Note: For those sensitive to themes of violence and abuse, approach with awareness, as the book delves deeply into these difficult subjects.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Publishing.

The Hunger We Pass Down by Jen Sookfong Lee is not a book I would normally pick up, but I’m so glad I did. The short chapters, flipping between past and present, kept me hooked without ever feeling confusing. Dark, unsettling, and full of twists I didn’t see coming, this story of inherited trauma and haunting will stick with me for some time to come. It's haunting in a can happen to anyone type of way.

The only part that didn’t totally land for me was the ending. It felt a bit rushed and left me wanting more clarity. But maybe that was the point, trauma doesn’t just end neatly, and maybe we’re not supposed to get all the answers.

It comes out September 30th so go grab a copy!

intense, ominous, and dark horror-tinged familial saga about the trauma passed down from generation to generation. the climax is quite impressive, too. 5 stars. tysm for the arc.https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7917706844

Was not able to connect with the characters at all. The storyline writing didn’t work for me. Not sure if I would read more by this author in the future.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC!

Generational trauma is something that many people can unfortunately relate to, and I felt that this book captured that perfectly. The characters felt very real and were so very frustrating at times. Definitely one to recommend to anyone who wants to stare at the wall for 20 minutes after finishing.

The Hunger We Pass Down is horror built out of history and silence. It follows the trauma carried through generations of women, beginning with a great-grandmother forced into being a comfort woman during the war and moving through her descendants, each marked in different ways.

What struck me most was how the supernatural and the real are tied together. The ghosts are not fantasy. They are the violence already in the family: domestic abuse, sexual assault, addiction, secrets no one wanted to name. The book shows how rage and grief are inherited alongside survival.

It is heavy and unrelenting, but important. I was angry, sad, and shaken while reading, and it left me thinking about what women are asked to endure and how that weight never disappears.

✨ Initial Vibes

This is a sharp, unsettling, and deeply layered psychological horror novel about the inheritance of trauma, silence, rage, and hunger. The Hunger We Pass Down explores what happens when women are asked to bear the weight of history without the power to shape it, and what happens when they finally refuse.

📖 What It’s About

Alice is a single mom trying to hold it together. Her small business is floundering, her kids need her, and she’s stretched impossibly thin. Then one day, she wakes up to find her home sparkling clean, the chores magically done. But nothing in Alice’s life comes without cost. As the novel unfolds, we learn that the women in her family have all made trade-offs for survival, and the price they paid has been passed down, generation after generation.

This isn’t a ghost story. It’s a haunting meditation on gender, power, violence, and what we inherit.

❤️ What I Loved

The atmosphere. Domestic, familiar, and then, wrong. The creeping dread is expertly done.

The themes. This book doesn’t flinch from exploring how personal and political violence across Asia and the U.S. has impacted women, even when they held little formal power. The horrors may be supernatural, but they’re rooted in deeply real histories.

Alice. She’s exhausted, angry, and still trying. Her voice felt honest and raw in a way that made the horror all the more intimate.

The structure. Generational echoes ripple through the narrative, making the reader question where trauma ends and inheritance begins.

The ending. Some readers found it ambiguous or unsatisfying—but I found it both horrifying and exactly right. It’s the kind of ending that refuses to let you off the hook, and I admire that.

👻 Vibe Check

This is not jump-scare horror. It’s psychological, generational, and feminist, perfect for fans of The Need by Helen Phillips or Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth. It’s a book that simmers until everything burns.

💭 Final Thoughts

The Hunger We Pass Down is a chilling and deeply felt examination of what it means to be a woman holding it all together while the weight of history tries to pull you under. It’s twisty, tragic, and quietly enraged. If you’re drawn to character-driven horror that confronts systems of power and the violence they breed, this one is for you.

🧠 Rating

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
(4 stars for generational grief, and domestic dread.)

Intergenerational trauma haunts Alice whose great grandmother Gigi was abused years before. This is a family of women which must deal with the consequences of acts they did not control and can not wipe away. It's an eerie and at times challenging read. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

4.5 Stars

Dark, chilling, unsettling, and devastating. I really enjoyed this, even though I am fairly sure it will haunt me.

I tore through it pretty quickly, and found it incredibly immersive, unsettling, and dark, but also brilliant and full of heart. It was a quieter, slower, creeping kind of horror, and I couldn't stop thinking about it.

This book truly unsettled me. At first, I didn’t realise that Nam Koo Terrace was a real place. Once I looked it up, the horrifying history hit me hard. Reading about comfort women, especially knowing my own country shares similar wounds, was painful and heavy. That storyline alone was chilling enough, but then came the ghosts, layered in with intergenerational trauma and family curses. This novel is horror in every sense of the word.

If you’re looking for a story about bloodlines haunted by both history and the supernatural, this one will deliver. However, I did feel that the narrative got a little messy toward the end, and some threads could have been tighter. Still, the atmosphere and themes stuck with me long after finishing.

It’s not a book for everyone — the subject matter requires courage to face — but I do recommend it for readers who want horror that cuts deep and refuses to let go.

A single mother must confront her twisted doppelgänger as her family secret comes crashing from generation to generation.

This one was sooo creepy. I loved that it has so much history to it. The story showed how generational trauma can be passed down, and at times even more horror than that. It’s truly a family saga and shows how curses can affect us all.

“Sometimes I think we are the ghosts… one day outside of this place, we will be nothing more than a scary story.”

“The house eats up all the women,
all the girls. And then we are trapped here forever.”

The Hunger We Pass Down comes out 9/30.

I really, really tried to get into this book, but ended up DNF'ing. Sometimes it's just better to admit defeat than make reading a slog.

With its two timelines -- 1938 Hong Kong and 2024 Vancouver -- Sookfong Lee addresses the issues of multigenerational trauma, identity and motherhood in a seriously creepy and yet relatable story. I was initially intrigued by the horror aspect of the book which Sookfong Lee nailed. However, as I became invested in the characters, her writing drew me even further into the story, flipping the pages quickly right to the very end.

In addition to the supernatural elements, Sookfong Lee represents a period of Hong Kong history during WW2 of which i did not know. She showed the horror of history itself, no supernatural elements required.

Highly recommend!

+ All the female rage, the hunger for survival, the trauma and the abuse that women carry and pass down to the next generations were written so well
+ We get to see multiple characters’ povs and all of them were well fleshed out and really believable, even the ones we get to see only for a chapter or two
+ The horror elements were creepy and well done

- but most of their “female rage” being directed towards their own daughters and granddaughters is giving jealousy… and that was an unsatisfactory reading experience

(overall, would recommend)

he Hunger We Pass Down by Jen Sookfong Lee was my first experience with her writing, and it left a lasting impression. Set in contemporary Vancouver, the novel follows Alice Chow, a single mother juggling a booming online business, a resentful teenage daughter, a screen-addicted son, and a secret boyfriend. Her life is chaotic until one morning she wakes to find her home mysteriously cleaned and her work completed without any memory of doing it herself. What begins as a surreal convenience slowly morphs into something more sinister, as Alice realizes that an unknown force is intervening in her life. This eerie premise sets the stage for a haunting exploration of motherhood, identity, and the legacy of trauma.

The central conflict revolves around the intergenerational pain carried by the women in Alice’s family. As her hard-edged mother begins to share stories of their ancestors including a great-grandmother imprisoned as a comfort woman during WWII Alice is forced to confront the emotional and psychological inheritance that shapes her present. The twist comes when the supernatural presence in her home begins to reflect not just her exhaustion, but the buried horrors of her lineage. Lee deftly blends horror with realism, using the uncanny to illuminate the very real burdens passed down through generations. The novel’s tension lies not in jump scares, but in the slow unraveling of secrets and the emotional reckoning they demand.

Alice is a compelling protagonist flawed, overwhelmed, and deeply human. Her relationships with her children and mother are fraught but tender, and Lee’s portrayal of these dynamics is both sharp and empathetic. The conclusion doesn’t offer easy catharsis, but rather a quiet, powerful shift: Alice begins to understand that healing may require confronting the monstrous parts of her past head-on. The Hunger We Pass Down is a lyrical, unsettling debut into Lee’s fiction for me, and it’s a masterclass in how horror can be used to tell stories of survival, memory, and maternal resilience.

Trauma when written isn't always effective without the characters being involved in it. In this novel, trauma is treated like its character.

I wanted to love this more than I actually did. I ended up DNFing because I wasn't as invested as I wanted to be. I think it may just be a "not for me" situation.

This book managed to strike the perfect balance of emotionally jarring and genuine horror. I really loved the concept of using a haunted house as a metaphor for generational trauma, and using horror elements to personify generational trauma in general. The writing was flowing and beautiful and leaned literary, in my opinion, which made the darker elements of the story all the more impactful and emotional.

A compelling story that centers a familial curse/haunted house as an allegory for the generational trauma women of four generations experience. A slow burn plot in the beginning but stick it out because the story really picks up once we get to jump back and forth in time to dive deeper into the characters. The story was weaved together so well with the perfect dose of mystery to spike my curiosity and found myself eager to read more. It hit a little close to my own mother wound. In examining these women we realize that sometimes we may never truly understand the hurt our ancestors carried and how that pain can manifest and replicate even when life circumstances are different. Loved the big fight at the end, was on edge and it felt so cinematic!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced digital copy of The Hunger We Pass Down by Jen Sookfong Lee in exchange of an honest review.

I had a really fun (?) time reading this one. I really love generational stories, and specifically with a twist on magical realism. Family trauma with horror? Chef's kiss. Jokes aside, the story of comfort women is one that hasn't been told enough, and although heartbreaking, it's important to tell. I really enjoyed the cycle. I cried.