A review by paloverdepages
Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I instantly have a soft spot for this book. The author has definitely found her audience with me; I love film history and magic, and I'm not familiar with the movie making scene of 1993 Mexico or the details of the Nazi's esoteric practices. There's lots of jargon, but not knowing it all doesn't interrupt the reading experience at all. It does start a bit slow, but once it gets going it doesn't let up. It really kept me guessing the whole way through and I was happy to be along for the ride. However, there's already so much going on in this book that we really didn't need the romance. It felt disappointing and forced.

I can suspend my disbelief at them running into and befriending their favorite forgotten director, but I did have a bit of an issue with
how much information he explicitly laid out for them (for the reader's benefit?).
My editor brain kicked on for some word choices and minor plot things. The intersection of Mexican film history and Nazi occultism and conspiracies is a pretty niche topic, but I think that some of the
pages upon pages of them meeting are too heavy on Urueta talking about this stuff. And some of the dialogue between the three of them seems a bit too explanatory (again, for the reader's benefit?)
. I did like the smaller scenes
of Montserrat researching
that broke up these instances.

Another thing that bothered me was how many times it was mentioned that Montserrat was wearing graphic t-shirt with a different movie poster on it? And more importantly, how some storylines seemed to be dropped or forgotten about. I don't think
the plot with Montserrat's sister having cancer was woven in as well as it could have been, or any information about her mother
, and I was super intrigued by Tristán's past and I wish we got a little bit more of that. It took a while to reveal anything substantial about him, and I wanted to hear more about
maybe his upbringing in a Lebanese family in Mexico, or his bisexuality in the film scene of the 90s (and Montserrat is bi too! Cool how normal it's treated, but I want DETAILS!)
. His character has depth that's only pointed at. It might be asking for too much given the type of story this is, but I wanted more from the character's backstories.

I also wanted a bit more from the setting. I LOVED the mentions of how the scene was becoming more Americanized, and I would have been interested to hear more about that through maybe some interactions that Montserrat or Tristán had with other people. 

The overall plot is good, it just doesn't quite come together thematically. It touches on lots of interesting aspects without exploring any of them to their full potential. I think maybe this book needed another good once-over, but I've definitely enjoyed it to want to look into the rest of the author's work and maybe do some research of my own on what inspired her. 
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