Silver and Smoke
Van Hoang
Paperback / eBook
ISBN: 9781662517853
47North, February 4th 2025, 383 pgs

Issa Bui and Olivia Nong are best friends and aspiring movie actresses. They’re also Vietnamese American in 1930s Hollywood, making fame an even bigger challenge than it ordinarily is. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on who you ask—Issa’s backed up by an estranged, but powerful family of shamans who speak with ghosts and the Chinatown gang empire they’ve built on the backs of that power. When Bà Ngoąi, the family matriarch, passes into the afterlife, Issa and Olivia call her up and strike up a deal to help them catch their big break. In exchange for an introduction to the spirit of Ava Lin Rang, a legendary Chinese American silent film actress, Issa will consider coming back to run the family empire. With Ava’s help, Olivia and Issa hope to get enough insider knowledge and craft tips to break into big studio films despite the racism and sexism of the time. But Hollywood is tricky, and so are the people—and beings—that work there. Nothing is quite as straightforward as it seems, and it takes all of the Bui family resources to keep the girls from disaster as they get closer to fame.

There’s a lot going on in this book, but it’s all remarkably balanced. Somehow it manages to be about Old Hollywood, ghosts, early Asian American history, friendship, betrayal, and family without any one element overriding the others too heavily. All of the ingredients complement each other nicely, and the result is some very satisfying worldbuilding. For all its complexity, the book is also a surprisingly light read, with quick pacing and the kind of dynamic, character-driven story that would make a good movie, fittingly enough. The supernatural element here is really interesting because it’s so focused. Ancestral and cultural ghosts are often used as broad stand-ins for various types of injustice and trauma, but these ghosts are very personal and very relationship oriented, which is what the book really revolves around. They also bring a good amount of spookiness and even humor when needed, although the biggest emotional arcs are reserved for the living humans.

I love when a book has big concepts and underrepresented cultural and historical settings, but also has the confidence to avoid overexplaining those things. There’s an Old Hollywood charm to this story, and Olivia and Issa’s fascination with movie magic and difficulties being cast due to their race are part of their broader inner worlds rather than the focal point of the whole story. Olivia and Issa are much more than what they’re perceived, and their relationship with Ava is a meeting of minds and dreams and talent as well as shared marginalization. I like that the story spends more time on the dreams and the lifestyle than the marginalization, without ignoring or sugar-coating anything.

That said, the ending of the book is a little unsettling in its deeper implications despite the heavy dollop of wish fulfillment on top. It’s a happy enough ending, but I couldn’t help but think that one character had been done doubly dirty by having their villainy ended in the way that it was. Despite that, this Hollywood ghost story is a worthwhile read.