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Mexican Gothic
After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region. Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.
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Community Reviews
*major spoilers*
Giving this one star because the writing was good in parts. I read this in book club because the young librarian said it was like Jane Eyre and other Gothic novels. My face as I read the last third of this book was held in an almost permanent grimace with the occasional gag.
I did like the initial premise of the book: a Latinx take on the Gothic novel where the Barbie girl Socialite Naomi is sent to the creepy Mexican Mountain Mansion to rescue her newlywed cousin who has written a mysterious and troubling letter that her new husband and family are poisoning her. The forlorn cousin may also be seeing ghosts and is going crazy.
The book slogs through the first 2/3 of 300 pages to introduce the weird British Doyle family who are truly awful and into eugenics and control. (And this is the good part of the book.)
Then in the last third it gets truly bizarre and disgusting. The house is a mold mind hive that is controlled by a cannibalistic, misogynistic, incestuous, baby killing being that is 400+ years old. Controls and kills and hears all that people within its walls hear, see and do. Magic mold can create a bond within time so that long dead sister wives and relatives can talk and commune with those in the mold mind meld. There's also the 400+ year-old patriarch of this crazy fungus family -- who kisses and pukes moldly black putrid fungus into the beautiful, strong-willed Naomi's mouth (*gag*) -- while plotting to transmorph into his own son to continue this wretched stench of a (book) family line. Forced marriage, attempted rape and matricide are the gateway to the end of this wretched gothic saga.
Luckily, she, cousin and new forced husband managed to kill or maime the mushroom head mamma, 400-year-old boil infested patriarch and several of their mold zombie servants. They escape through a mold-slime tunnel covered with phosphorescent glowing mushrooms
Giving this one star because the writing was good in parts. I read this in book club because the young librarian said it was like Jane Eyre and other Gothic novels. My face as I read the last third of this book was held in an almost permanent grimace with the occasional gag.
I did like the initial premise of the book: a Latinx take on the Gothic novel where the Barbie girl Socialite Naomi is sent to the creepy Mexican Mountain Mansion to rescue her newlywed cousin who has written a mysterious and troubling letter that her new husband and family are poisoning her. The forlorn cousin may also be seeing ghosts and is going crazy.
The book slogs through the first 2/3 of 300 pages to introduce the weird British Doyle family who are truly awful and into eugenics and control. (And this is the good part of the book.)
Then in the last third it gets truly bizarre and disgusting. The house is a mold mind hive that is controlled by a cannibalistic, misogynistic, incestuous, baby killing being that is 400+ years old. Controls and kills and hears all that people within its walls hear, see and do. Magic mold can create a bond within time so that long dead sister wives and relatives can talk and commune with those in the mold mind meld. There's also the 400+ year-old patriarch of this crazy fungus family -- who kisses and pukes moldly black putrid fungus into the beautiful, strong-willed Naomi's mouth (*gag*) -- while plotting to transmorph into his own son to continue this wretched stench of a (book) family line. Forced marriage, attempted rape and matricide are the gateway to the end of this wretched gothic saga.
Luckily, she, cousin and new forced husband managed to kill or maime the mushroom head mamma, 400-year-old boil infested patriarch and several of their mold zombie servants. They escape through a mold-slime tunnel covered with phosphorescent glowing mushrooms
I wanted so bad to like this. I heard really good things about it but, I did not enjoy it. It was slow and boring! No climax at all.
This book seemed super popular when I bought it, and I generally like gothic horror so it seemed like a safe bet, and ultimately I don't regret reading it. I like that while the story does have a lot of traditional gothic horror elements, the setting and main character felt fresh. The heroine is bold, confident, and smart. I read What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher around the same time and they both have similar plot elements based on the Fall of the House of Usher. I think they are each unique enough to stand on their own. Mexican Gothic deals more with the horrors of misogyny and colonialism blended with the actual horror elements. This won't be a top favorite for me because there were some scenes that felt too gross and disquieting for me to want to re-read, but it's nothing too gratuitous or horrific.
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