Mexican Gothic meets Everything I Never Told You in Christina Li’s haunting novel about the secrets that lie in wait in the crumbling mansion of a former Hollywood starlet, and the intertwined fates of the two Chinese American families fighting to inherit it.

They say what you don’t know can’t hurt you. But silence can be deadly.

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?

Told in dual timelines, spanning three generations, and brimming with romance, betrayal, ambition and sacrifice, The Manor of Dreams is a thrilling family gothic that examines the true cost of the American dream—and what happens when the roots we set down in this country turn to rot.

Review:

Gothic, mysterious, and unsettling!

The Manor of Dreams transports you to Southern California between 1975 and 2024, and immerses you into the ongoing, complex, multi-generational relationships between the wealthy, successful Yin-Lowell family and the loyal, hardworking Deng family complete with all the powerful emotions, broken hearts, long-buried secrets, and unimaginable tragedy that has tied them together for more than twenty five years.

The prose is eloquent and expressive. The characters are distressed, vulnerable, and conflicted. And the plot is an enthralling, sinister tale filled with life, loss, familial drama, betrayal, abuse, tragedy, manipulation, revenge, guilt, and heartbreak, all interwoven with a sliver of the supernatural.

Overall, The Manor of Dreams is a heart-tugging, absorbing, haunting tale by Li that reminds us that the choices we make often have far-reaching consequences, and skeletons usually find their way to the surface no matter how well they’re buried.

This novel is available now.

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