Mexican Gothic - Review

Mexican Gothic: 3/5 Rating

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I had an extreme love/ hate relationship with this book. I had been wanting to read this book for quite some time, but every time I went to the bookstore I would get side tracked and buy a new book I would find. Finally, I decided in October to ask for it as a birthday gift. My brother's girlfriend got it for me, so now I had no excuse to not read it. Before I get into what my thoughts are on the book, I would like to give a brief description of the book.

Summary:

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is set in a derelict mansion on a hill called High Place. It follows a woman name Noemi Taboada, who has been sent there to check on her cousin, Catalina, who has been ill and sent a troubling letter claiming her husband is trying to poison her and there are ghosts in the walls. Upon her arrival, she recieves cold welcomes from her cousins husband, Virgil, and the very limited staff. She is greeted with fierce opposition from the other's living in the house with Noemi spending alone time with her cousin. The only Ally she seems to gain is the family's youngest son, Francis, who seems to be hiding dark knowledge of his families past. As Noemi gets accustomed to the house she starts to unearth dark stories of violence and madness. The deeper Noemi digs, the harder she finds it to ever leave this house behind.

My Thoughts:

In the beginning of this book, I found myself sitting and only being able to read two to three chapters in a sitting. Only reading 20-30 pages of a book in a sitting is rare for me, so I could tell from the start that this book was going to be dragged out a little and then rushed toward the end. I found that a lot of the horror and scary aspects of this book that I was expecting did not come into play until more than halfway through, which I wish it was more evenly distributed throughout the whole thing. Another thing I noticed is that while the characters are very well written, I was confused by all the names getting thrown at me without explaining in other pages who they were and how they fit into the story. I do not want the beginning of this review to steer people away from reading this book because the writing is very well done and the development of the story once the horror starts to take place is very very unique. The twists and turns this book takes are some I have never seen or read in any other type of story that falls in this genre. Overall I think the story line was very creative, I just wish it did not take so long to get to the scary aspect of it.

Happy Reading x

Denali Fox