Set in 1950s Mexico, this story follows debutante Noemí as she travels to a house in the Mexican countryside after receiving a mysterious and somewhat cryptic letter from her cousin who had recently married. When she arrives, she meets the English family her cousin has married into who try to convince Noemí that her cousin is sick but getting better with the help of the family doctor from town. However, Noemí is not one to let a matter remain unsettled and the more time she spends in this house, the more she uncovers about the family, their history, and the dark secrets the walls are hiding. **CW/TW for the book are at the end of the review**
I absolutely loved this book and it is pretty much my perfect gothic horror book. I took a Gothic Literature class in college and this book would be perfectly at home in the syllabus for that class. I loved that it was set in the 1950s in a rural area which really heightened the isolation elements of the story. The majority of the story is a very atmospheric build-up as Noemí tries to help her cousin and at the same time is doing her best to abide by the strange rules in this home. Everyone at the house feels off and the rules, such as no talking at the dining table, add to the mysterious vibe of the whole situation. Noemí, to her credit is not one to shy away from the situation and she tries her best to take control and advocate for her cousin (and herself). As the story progresses, Noemí learns more and more about the family's history and the horror elements ramp up as she learns more details. There are spots of more pronounced horror in Noemí's nightmares that she has while staying at the house but the book goes full-tilt at about the 25% mark when we find out all the information and the book doesn't hold back. I've seen some reviews that say this book felt more like a suspense rather than a horror and I could see how if they were expecting a more intense or visceral sort of horror experience that this isn't the book they were expecting. However, I went in expecting a gothic horror and I got exactly what I wanted (plus a little extra I wasn't expecting).
The character work in this book was really fantastic. I found all the main players to be really well developed and complex - especially our protagonist, Noemí. The summary from Goodreads describes her as "a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid". She's wonderfully complex and I love that the book starts out with her in her element in Mexico City's social scene. We see the glamorous side of her but almost immediately after, we see her drive to follow her own path in life when she tries to explain to her father why she wants to go to university. Many of her interactions with other characters have them not exactly underestimating her, but they obviously expect her to act in a certain way and she does act that way until there's a reason for her not to. Our other significant characters are just as nuanced. I really liked how the characters all have their main facade they use for most interactions and slowly those fronts crumble as the story progresses. I really like complicated and nuanced characters and I found these characters fascinating even during the quieter build up of the story.
The one part of the book I was a bit irked by was one specific part of the ending. I obviously don't want to go into too much detail but, in general, there were a few too many situations where one character would sort of out-maneuver another character. They they would say "you thought you would do X without me knowing? I knew all along and I laid this trap for you to fall right into!". Once is a good twist, but it happened two or three times at varying degrees of significance and by the end I was just waiting for someone else to pop up from behind a couch or something to surprise the other characters. I've heard some people express that the ending dragged on a bit too long for them after the big reveal and I'm wondering if this type of repetition of plot twists could have been a factor for those readers.
I really enjoyed the amount of agency Noemí has in the book. I was expecting, based on the time period and general gothic horror tropes, that she would be much more of a passive character bordering on victim. However, she shows pretty much from the beginning that she is not going to let other people decide what she is going to do. And we see this part of her personality come through in multiple facets of her life including her university studies, romantic relationships, trying to help her cousin, and ultimately discovering the truth behind what has been happening in the village. There's a plot point that comes up as part of the big reveal that very easily could have taken away Noemí's agency and she would have easily ended up being a broken victim. However, she takes all the spirit and resolve that we've seen developing throughout the whole book and fights back against the big bad - not only for herself, but for the people she cares about as well. I think the balance between her acting 'properly' and then her standing up for herself is really well done. There are multiple occasions where Noemí uses her family's status in society and her knowledge of delicate social situations to her advantage. She tells the reader that she needs to act this way in order to accomplish X and Y later and every time it happened, I just found myself thinking "go get 'em, Noemí, they won't know what hit them". There's a larger discussion that I think would be interesting to look at in regards to the racial differences between Mexican Noemí and this English family who has been living in this Mexican town for generations and how that impacts Noemí's agency but I think that would quickly veer into spoiler territory.
I talked about the general horror aspects earlier, but I wanted to mention the way the house is used in this book. The house, like many gothic horror novels, is a character. We are told in the book summary that the house is invading Noemí's dreams and turning them into nightmares. It reminded me very much of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the way that there's a bit of a blurred line in most of the book on if the house is alive or if the characters are going a bit mad. The main house feels stuck in time, almost like the people living there are trying to hold onto the past, but Noemí notes the general decay and run-down status of the house. It was an interesting comparison to the glamorous life Noemí was leading in Mexico City. My favorite part of gothic horror is the atmospheric dread that settles over the story as the characters try to figure out what is going on. In this story, the house is consistently reminding Noemí that something is not quite right here. It seemed like every time Noemí would do something fun or a bit lighthearted, as soon as she walked back into the house, there was a portrait or stain or strange noise that would bring her back to reality. The house played a much larger part in the story than I was expecting and, in the end, we got answers and explanations to the overall state of the house and what had been happening to Noemí while she was there.
Overall, this was a fantastic gothic horror that had a nice slow build-up of weird and creepy things happening only to really kick into gear in the last 25%. Really great character building and agency for the protagonist throughout the book.
301 pages.
**CW/TW: suicide, body horror, incest, sexual assault, cannibalism, gaslighting
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