Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

917 reviews

literarybear's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is such a great gothic horror, with its creeping sense of dread, dark family ties, chilling nightmares, and cursed heroines. It was a little slow, but I feel like it helped build the descent into madness. Still, I’d have liked to see more action in the first half. I was positively nauseated at some of the descriptions but could not pry myself from them. This was a great choice for entering my spooky season reading. 
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augie_'s review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Very well written and creepy in the right way. I usually avoid horror or horror-adjacent books, but I was hooked. 
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wabisabigio's review against another edition

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

3.0

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carefulfearanddeaddevotion's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

What a reprehensible little family. Noemi Toboada <3 i luv u <3 I wish you'd never met them.

Very interesting concept, surprisingly thoughtfully feminist and intersectional. Underneath the
mind-controlling, life-extending, consciousness-transferring mushrooms
is a story about the use and abuse of female, non-white, and poor bodies at the hands of a colonial power and men who never hear or internalize the word "no." Is it ground-breaking or particularly deep? No. But I was glad that
the people who mattered (Catalina and Noemi) made it out alive and triumphant and that Agnes was freed. I also appreciated that, at the end of the day, Catalina and Noemi saved themselves/each other, instead of being saved by a man.


Also, learned a new word: lugubrious = adj. looking or sounding sad and dismal. It played in my head on a loop for three days after I read it. Very fun word to say, one might even say too fun to mean "sad".

Weakest part of the book for me was the romance between Francis and Noemi
, wish they just ended as friends. Though I guess the novel itself tells us that we never know what the future has in store for them, so they may very well breakup
.
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mndln's review against another edition

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adventurous dark

2.0

the ending sucks. if you're going to write horror, then write horror. 
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jascahue's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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bail33's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Good book! Great way to get into spooky season. I’m just getting into gothics and I think this was a fantastic way to start. The most literal definition of the house being a character.
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bogbodyanon's review against another edition

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4.0

Horror always seems an appropriate genre to critique issues like colonialism, classism, eugenics, etc. Moreno-Garcia writes in evocative prose that really immerses you in the story. The ending did seem anticlimactic to me
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baileymalaylee's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

jesus elizabeth christ that was messed up
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astralfeline's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

3.0

I love the idea of this story and the aesthetic of it all, but it felt like such a chore to get through. Every time I thought the plot was going somewhere it slowed down again, to the point where when the plot actually DID pick up I didn't even care anymore and was just trying to finish the book. 
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