The Manor of Dreams has been on my TBR since before release and I’m so angry I didn’t read it till now. It’s everything I wanted and more! I loved this gothic horror about haunted houses and legacies. Keep reading this book review of The Manor of Dreams for my full thoughts.
Summary
Vivian Yin is dead. The first Chinese actress to win an Oscar, the trailblazing ingénue rose to fame in the eighties, only to disappear from the spotlight at the height of her career and live out the rest of her life as a recluse.
Now her remaining family members are gathered for the reading of her will and her daughters expect to inherit their childhood Vivian’s grand, sprawling Southern California garden estate. But due to a last-minute change to the will, the house is passed on to another family instead—one that has suddenly returned after decades of estrangement.
In hopes of staking their claim, both families move into the mansion. Amidst the grief and paranoia of the families’ unhappy reunion, Vivian’s daughters race to piece together what happened in the last weeks of their mother’s life, only to realize they are being haunted by something much more sinister and vengeful than their regrets. After so many years of silence, will the families finally confront the painful truth about the last fateful summer they spent in the house, or will they cling to their secrets until it’s too late?
Review
The Manor of Dreams is a story immersed in unspoken family history and stories. Of secrets, skeletons in closets, and blood soaked rugs. Li asks us how thoroughly we inherit the family legacies, histories, and secrets. And once we find out, fighting tooth and nail, how do we escape – if we can at all. This book swims in questions about how we protect someone which feels like punishment and punishment in the guise of protection. There’s an immediate eerieness, a sense of the things we cannot explain, and our perceptions pushed to the brink. All the things we try to talk ourselves out of.
Overall,
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With dual timeline, this historical fiction setting not only cements the Gothic feeling, but also tells a story of discrimination and images of representation you so desperately need and the fight to embody it on the screen. Immigrants crushed for the American dream. The Manor of Dreams is a book devoted to characters, to cyclical natures of resentment and love, legacies built on blood and sacrifices. The way love turns sour, into sharp pulls and even sharper words. It’s multi-layered as it explores parental sacrifices, secrets unanswered from the grave, and wondering if we can ever break the cycle.
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