Dark Magic in Chinatown

There is magic in this book. I can attest to this because I started reading The Dark Becomes Her one morning, thinking I would preview a couple of chapters, and by the time I looked up, it was evening and I had finished the book. I never read that fast.

Along the way, I encountered so many wonderful lines that I had actually stopped to take notes. Reader, I never take notes. Strange magic indeed that Judy I. Lin has conjured.

What is her secret—? A phoenix-feather wand? An eldritch book of spells? Nope. Turns out the author is just really good at creating believable characters within a terrifying story. And when I tell you this novel falls into the category of horror, I’m not just talking about the supernatural. Sure, there are nightmarish creatures lurking in the shadows. There are ghosts, demons, and mysteries that will chill your blood. But the greatest horrors Judy I. Lin conveys are the ways humans treat one another in their everyday lives, captured in this brilliant tale of second-generation Taiwanese immigrants in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Our hero, Ruby Chen, is haunted by visions. She sees strange shapes moving in the darkness, but she has learned not to talk about them. She has enough to worry about without her family thinking she is losing her mind. As the eldest daughter, Ruby is expecting to set a perfect example. She must excel at school, do all her extracurriculars, apply to the best colleges, and keep an eye on her younger sister, Tina, who increasingly resents Ruby’s attempts to keep her on track. Her parents’ expectations keep Ruby in an impossible situation—a pressure cooker of stress that many young readers will relate to. As Ruby puts it: “I feel like I’m breaking myself into pieces, again and again, none of the edges quite fitting right into the portrait of what they want me to be.” The horrors of this story start long before we find out the truth about Ruby’s visions. They are the horrors of disappointing your family, of being unable to follow your dreams, of leaving your friends behind and losing the friendship of a cherished sibling, or of something as simple and creepy as walking alone through a half-abandoned shopping mall at night.

And when the specters arise, taking our story to a whole new sinister level…well, I love the way Lin blends the quotidian horrors of being a modern teenager with ancient supernatural horrors drawn from Chinese folklore. Ruby finds herself racing to save her sister from a terrible fate, but it’s only a magical extension of what any teenager fears: failing herself, failing her family, and losing her identity in the great unknown of the future. Our worst monsters don’t look like monsters. As Ruby says after one chilling encounter: “The man who grabbed me looked like he could be my dad, an uncle, a teacher at my school, one of the security guards talking to my parents now. He could be any one of them. That was the most frightening part of all.” In Ruby’s world, there is no boundary between the supernatural and the natural. It is all part of the same dark tapestry.

But don’t think that this story is all shadow and fright. It is also a tale of young love, heroism, and the resilience of community. You will be rooting for Ruby from the very first chapter, as she attempts to find her own path through the spirit realm and the gloomy streets of Vancouver’s Chinatown. There is music, tasty food, camaraderie, dancing, and laughter. You will want to stay in Ruby’s world long after the book ends, even if it means facing those strange monsters you sometimes see out of the corner of your eye. As usual, Ruby says it best: “We’re all phantoms, flitting in and out of each other’s lives.” I’m so glad I got to be a phantom, drifting through this wonderful story with the Chen family. I think you will be too!