I enjoyed the writing and the mystery was starting to get interested, but something about this novel was difficult for me to fully get invested in. Perhaps it was the fact that I made it 40% into this book and still felt like I knew nothing about the main character. If you like slow-burn plots with hidden clues and a rich history, I would recommend this one! It just wasn't for me.

Truly an incredible debut! So beautifully layered and almost hypnotic in its maze-like structure. Haunting and disturbing yet rich and moving and funny too. It perfectly combines elements from different genres (epic, horror, mystery, magical realism, folklore, historical fiction) to marvellously and masterfully weave together an exceptionally suspenseful and exciting story, one that will stay with me for a long time.

This huge, sweeping, dizzying debut defies categorisation and will leave your head spinning in the best possible way. A young American woman, Winnie, has gone missing in Vietnam, and her sort-of-boyfriend Long begins increasingly frantic attempts to find her, gradually realising the seriousness of the situation – but we’re then immediately whisked up to the country’s Highlands, eighteen years earlier, to watch a funeral procession in a rural town. The time-travelling continues in beautifully-crafted vignettes like interlocking rooms, each one leading to another in an unexpected way, haunted by ghosts which become increasingly familiar as the connections between characters unfold. It is a sensorial fever dream of a book that’ll frequently make you stop, blink, reread sentences and remain profoundly unsettled – not just by the terrifying magical realism that Kupersmith deftly uses when you least expect it – but by the country’s violent colonial history and decades of cruel wrongdoing that leaves her ghosts bloodthirsty for revenge, lying silently in wait for her characters, hidden just beneath the surface of the story.