Book Review: Mexican Gothic

Happy Thursday, readers! Nearing the end of the week now. I’ve been waiting to review Mexican Gothic in my blog for a few days now so let’s jump into it!

QUICK PLOT: The book opens with our main character, Noemí, who is a glamorous debutante, receiving a letter from her recently married cousin, Catalina. The letter is a cry for help. Catalina claims that her new husband is poisoning her and that her house is haunted. While Noemí is certain her cousin is just being dramatic, her father still send her out to the Mexican countryside to check on Catalina and bring her home if necessary.

Noemí is immediately greeted with hostility by Catalina’s husband, Virgil. It’s clear that she isn’t welcome and the house itself appears to have seen better days. On top of that, Noemí promptly begins having horrid lucid nightmares and her thoughts begin to blur together. Determined to save her cousin, she persists as tensions rise around her.

THE GOOD: Noemí is a feisty character with a quick wit and ambitious personality. She certainly doesn’t back down easily and she can handle herself in almost any situation. The book is definitely gothic literature and the horror is more atmospheric than anything else, especially in the first half. I liked that the book jumped immediately into the action of Noemí receiving the letter from Catalina. It caught my attention right away and there was a lot of spooky build up and tension from there.

THE NOT SO GOOD: This book really dragged for me. I’ve realized I’m not the biggest fan of slow burn books unless the characters are quite multidimensional and constantly developing a character arc. I didn’t find the characters to be that fleshed out in this book, even though I did enjoy the main character. On top of that, the plot doesn’t really get moving until after the halfway point and at that point I had mostly checked out. The twist was kind of cool, but I had predicted most of it by that point so it didn’t really blow my mind.

FINAL THOUGHTS & RATING: I rated this one a 3 out of 5 stars. Three stars for me means that it’s about on par with other books in this genre- not overtly better than nor overtly worse than a typical book for the genre. I liked the atmosphere here, but the book didn’t feel unique or fulfilling enough for me to rate higher.

Have you read Mexican Gothic? If so, what was your rating?

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