“She may have lost everything else, but she had managed to save something that mattered.” - Overseas Filipino Worker (O.F.W.), MARINA

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That line really hit home for me. At some point, we all have to make a choice: stay stuck in the same toxic cycle, let go of the things holding us back, or just walk away and start fresh. For me, I chose the latter. And with that choice, came grief… the kind that comes with leaving behind the familiar and refusing to settle for what’s always been. But grief isn’t permanent. It’s followed by learning to live with the void, acceptance, and growth. And that’s exactly what I felt reading “Hue City” by Claire Betita De Guzman. It’s an honest look at the messiness of life, identity, survival, and it really makes you reflect on the things we do just to make it through. You long for something better but can't seem to find the way out. And that realization can be crushing at times.

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I’ve had the chance to meet and have lunch with the lovely Claire during the Anvil Author Workshop, and I admire her both as a person and a storyteller. Writing this novel has clearly been a significant part of her life, and when you think about how she had five manuscripts that went through editing, proofreading, beta reads, and countless revisions, it’s no surprise that the end result is such a gripping and powerful novel. You can easily lose yourself in her storytelling, and the characters feel so real you might forget they’re fictional like how every character carries their own form of pain. Claire shows how these pains draw people to each other, almost like a magnet, (I, myself, was in a dark place before, and I was a magnet for bad people) and how sometimes we have to face the darkest parts of ourselves to move forward, to end the cycle, to anti-attract the negative.

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And can we talk about the setting? Aside from the familiar hustle of Manila and the polished cosmopolitan Singapore, Hue is a whole mood on its own. Vietnam’s one of my favorite travel spots, and Claire really captured it in her writing. The different settings give the book a global vibe and like she advised to writers during her talk, "Write but think, global."

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“Hue City” is about finding yourself after running from who you really are, and the hope that comes with letting go. It’s about transformation, the tough price of chasing dreams, and the endless search for redemption. We all have imperfect journeys, much like the risky paths people take in search of a better life. But it's our honesty and vulnerability that help us grow, move forward, and even evolve.