A review by vampfang
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

4.0

i really enjoyed this!! it definitely took me a while to get into it though. as much as i love gothic horror i'm not a big fan of how the ann radcliffe-esque gothic novels often start off so slow and this book was no different. it took a while to get to the supernatural stuff and once it did i thought it was pretty out of left field. even with the mushroom foreshadowing, something about the tone of the book as pretty scientific and realistic clashed with the introduction of the supernatural explanation for the occurrences, even if it is fairly scientific (i don't really understand how it works. maybe it's not that unrealistic idk but to me it felt like it). outside of all that, though, i really enjoyed the book. once things picked up a bit i found them to be fast-paced enough to hold my attention and i really got into it. i liked how it wove aspects of race and class into the main story and used the "gloom" as a metaphor for the way rich white families maintain their power—i found myself getting really angry and frustrated on noemi's behalf at times. i thought noemi's character was also very interesting. in addition, i really liked moreno-garcia's writing style, she has this really visual way of describing things that i thought was beautiful and also made me want to see this as a movie. really enjoyable!