Reviews with content warning for Drug abuse - Mexican Gothic

Reviews tagging 'Drug abuse'

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

28 reviews

nahret's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

I really enjoyed the atmosphere in the book. The house in question was very oppressive, and the eerie things very disconcerting, I found. I also enjoyed the whole colonialism aspect that underlies the story. The foreshadowing was well done; if one were to consider the culprit in that particular direction, it would be quite obvious from the start. I didn't, so I had my "aha!" moment.

See, the unseen horrors can usually be one of two: natural phenomena, often orchestrated by a very human villain, or supernatural entities of some sort. I think my gripe with the book is that it went in one direction when I would have preferred the other, which is obviously a me problem. I also found the solution - once we knew what we were dealing with - very obvious, but it took the characters a whole two chapters to figure it out.

The pacing was a bit odd; it durdles in the middle, when the setup could probably have been swifter, only to rush through to the end. I can say that I did find the resolution very satisfying, especially since the characters finally did what I had been telling them to do for some 70 pages or so.

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straybutterfly's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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_raine_'s review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book set out to horrify and it did.

I would like to preface this review by saying that anyone thinking of reading it should absolutely understand that it is terrifying, and not in a jumpscare that isn't actually scary kind of way, but in a disgustingly graphic and detailed kind of way.

I was gifted/cursed (you decide) with not being able to visualise. When I read I see nothing in my mind, just the words on the page. This makes it a lot easier for me to read things that someone else (particularly my age) who can visualise can't. I am not the target age audience for this book. I acknowledged that going into it. This book is most definitely not for teenagers, which I am. Like I said, however, I can't see it. Should I have been able to visualise, I would have never picked this book up, certainly not at the age I am. I'm aware that I shouldn't have anyway, and it is nobody's fault but my own.

That being said, this book is a masterpiece. It was written so beautifully, and whatever Silvia Moreno-Garcia set out to do, she achieved that and so much more. I was confused the entire time, and didn't want to be any the wiser. I'm a huge mystery fan, and love piecing stuff together, but this book (which focuses more on the horror (obviously) than the mystery) had me stumped. I had no clue what was happening until it happened, and even then I was dumbfounded. Our main character and narrator, Noemí goes through a lot of gruesome, horrible things. So do a lot of our characters. Unfortunately, although this is a paranormal (?) horror, a lot of what she and others go through in this are very real issues in not only her time (1950's), but nowadays too. The paranormal side of the story definitely has stabs of truth in it, and you can tell that Moreno-Garcia thought about every little word and detail down to the pixels on her screen.

Only two books have ever made me feel physically sick to my stomach, made me feel like I was actually going to be sick (thanks, aphantasia). Girl in pieces by Kathleen Glasgow, and this. Take every review and trigger warning you see at face-value, and then double it. Nothing could have prepared me for this book. Whatever you're thinking might happen when you read the trigger warnings for this novel, it's probably much worse and much more disgusting than you realise. This book truly is not for the faint-hearted, and i absolutely urge you to turn your mind away from it if you think even the smallest detail could trigger something in you. I was lucky enough to not relate to anything in this book, unfortunately, that isn't the case for a lot of people. It is not a book to enjoy, especially the last 100-ish pages (where it gets really detailed with everything), but rather a book to think on. Yes, read it for fun, but be aware that there are maybe 3/301 pages that have any happy content in them.

Saying all this, you may be wondering why I even gave it five stars at all, after all I'm literally saying "Don't pick it up!", but if you don't understand, someone else will. Reading something that will only succeed in opening wounds you've healed already is not good for a persons health. I will absolutely be recommending this book, most likely for many years to come, but I know (and no doubt Moreno-Garcia knows too) that books like this have a very specific target audience, and someone who isn't prepared to step into it, should not.

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