A review by a_picara
The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro

Did not finish book. Stopped at 42%.

This book has a phenomenal premise but is just badly written. The characters are flat. Both the text and the characters point out the mental health struggles and personal failings of the characters in a pseudo-psychology way (which feels very social-media captiony and not like it belongs in a book). The chapters with the actual therapist are just empty vessels for infodumping backstory. The chapters themselves oscillate between characters and time periods, which is perfectly fine, but then also abandon this structure to do a character analysis dive (ie: chapters are titled by a character's name and the year that part of the plot happens, but then sometimes they are just labeled with multiple characters's names and no date as it spans a longer period). The balance of horrific monster demon and mental health crisis is not handled well, and the cosmic explanation of the demon is where I knew this book was beyond saving.