V. Castro is one of the leading voices in the horror genre right now. "The Haunting of Alejandra" is a beautiful retelling of the classic Mexican folktale of La Llorn. Like Castro's other work, the story is sensual and empowering while also terrifying. The concept is so strong and promising.
Unfortunately, this story fails to deliver as well as her others. Some of the elements of Alejandra's character feel far too dramatic and overdone. The plot itself is clumsy and cluttered in comparison to Castro's other work. I will continue to seek out her writing, but this one just didn't do it for me.
Thank you to the author, NetGalley and Del Rey for the advance copy!

Bummed I didn't love this one as I've very much enjoyed Castro's other work. Maybe it was a matter of me simply not being the right audience but I struggled to connect with the main character and what she was going through. I also found the writing itself to be strangely stilted, which is odd as I don't remember that being the case with Castro's other novels.

V. Castro is a singular voice in the horror genre - sensual, empowering, terrifying, and strange. Her work doesn't just offer alternative perspectives of the world; they change yours. Here, Alejandra is a woman struggling with her prescribed roles in the world, wife and mother, and she finds herself haunted by a dark specter she comes to realize is La Llorona. Only by unraveling generations of women's trauma can she hope to save her children and herself.
Castro dives into Alejandra's perspective in ways that feel suffocating, claustrophobic, and, yes, haunting. The horrors of motherhood, lost agency, and abandonment/trauma are explored and build to a satisfying conclusion. It was hard to put the book down once I started reading. Castro's use of body horror - both the natural and supernatural - create vivid imagery. The figure of La Llorona is suitably terrifying but she's also humanized as Castro explore how centuries of trauma can rewrite and create trauma. Also, that cover is gorgeous and captures both the brightness and darkness of the narrative.
Overall, I recommend The Haunting of Alejandra for women who are battling against nature versus nurture, for mothers struggling with expectations, and for readers of horror dripped in folklore.

The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro is a spellbinding novel that fuses otherworldly horror and supernatural elements with human emotion, problems and turmoil. By doing this fusion the story is all the better for it as it allows for a stronger connection to Alejandra's plight with La Llorona as well as the struggle she is enduring in her marriage. The book is an easy highly enjoyable fast read due to the already mentioned fusion and the way that fusion interacts, creates, and ripples around the characters and the world they live in.

The pace of the book made this a page turner. It captured the essence of Mexican culture. It was hauntingly beautiful and captivating.

Sadly I had to DNF this book,the book felt like a chore to read and I just couldn’t handle it anymore.

Thank you NetGalley and to the publishers for giving me an early release copy in exchange for my honest review.

Mexican folklore meets women’s fiction and horror, in this novel pulling from the legend of La Llorona. Alejandra feels like she losing herself as a mom and wife and wants to end things, but little does she know how every woman before her in her family has gone through something similar, as all are also being haunted by the shadows and an apparition of a woman crying in a white gown. Together, the women of this family will gather all their strength in fighting this demon instead of succumbing to the darkness.
This was a refreshing horror novel full of folklore, with plenty of time hops and POV changes.
Thank you to Del Rey for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for this free ARC.

An interesting retelling of the Mexican Myth of La Llorona. It was hard for me to get into this story at first becuase her family were just so horrid!

V. Castro just does NOT miss! This is my third or fourth book by the author (including novellas as well), and I just can't get enough. The way she's able to create these incredibly powerful and sometimes scary women characters is incredible, and I love that every book she writes is steeped in and influenced by her own culture. Definitely an author to watch & I will continue buying and reading everything she writes!!

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I am looking forward to more from this author. I think she captured the feeling some moms get when overwhelmed by the kids, house, husband, etc. Plus, who doesn’t love a bit of spooky folklore thrown in?

I remember starting this & being like “this is gonna be so good. A La Llorona story?! Heck yeah.”

.. and then I remember the story being really heavy on the “my life sucks” which I mean, lol I get it. Buuuuut it was a lot.

This is not a memorable book. At all. I have loved V. Castro’s shorter works, but this full novel didn’t work as well for me.

Talk about gripping! The stories of these women are not easy to digest but the payoff is strong. Mexican folklore provides a haunting backdrop to this story, weaving culture and religion and societal expectations throughout. I found myself rooting for Alejandra early on, eager for her to prevail until the very last page. I think this is a wonderfully done piece on depression, motherhood, and womanhood. Highly recommend!

While Alejandra and I live VERY different lives, so much of her pain and sadness, despair, negative self-talk, etc. was a direct description of what I so often struggle with. To see it all depicted in writing was beautiful and normalizing in a way. I give it 4.5 stars because two major moments fell flat for me. Overall, this was a great horror with Mexican-American heritage and lore highlighted. This was a fantastic twist on the legend of La Llorona, and entwining the idea of general curses into Alejandra's journey was engrossing. There are a few trigger warnings so check the list before diving in.

I just didn't care for this. Felt like a lot more telling the reader what was happening than making them feel it, and I just didn't connect to it. I do think that the creative use of La Llorona and the focus on the loneliness of motherhood are really unique and I'm glad this was published, but this wasn't my cup of tea.

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group - Bellantine, Del Rey, and V. Castro for the opportunity to read The Haunting of Alejandra in exchange for an honest review.

I don't often read fiction featuring a mother's perspective or novels that revolve around parenting/families, but The Haunting of Alejandra is an exceptionally well-written and fascinating novel in the above genres.

Alejandra is a wife, mother, and adopted daughter. The stresses of life tug away at her, pulling her into darkness. She is starting to lose faith in her marriage, and she is trying to be a good mother, but sometimes inner hauntings can affect that role. So can real hauntings, for that matter.

In therapy, Alejandra explores her family history. Not knowing her biological mother, when secrets come to the surface, she finds a darker past than she expected. When she is having a moment of despair, she sees visions of a woman crying, a ghostly form. Alejandra learns the apparition to be La Llorona, the murderous mother from Mexican folklore who killed her children. She must be haunting Alejandra for a reason. What connection could this mythical entity have with Alejandra and her lineage?

A very well-written fiction novel for an adult audience with a nice touch of Mexican mythology. The myth of La Llorona is explored nicely through Alejandra and her family history, and the display in the novel almost makes this feel like a psychological thriller. An excellent explortation of family, history, culture, and self.

A spine tingling horror with themes of generational trauma.. This novel has alot going for it. Dark, gritty, intense. This novel has a great deal of substance, well written, thought provoking- does justice to the folklore of La Lorna

Had me on the edge of my seat. Definitely was a horror bc it also had me scared to look in the closet or dark corners of the room sometimes…lol but a beautiful story overall & very EMPOWERING as a woman & as a mother!!! Read it.

V Castro can do no wrong. I was so excited to be chosen to read this arc. Thank you to V Castro and Netgalley for the opportunity. After reading Goddess of Filth and the Queen of the Cicadas, I was so excited to get this in my hands.

A woman finds herself being haunted by a Mexican folk demon by the name of La Llorona. All while she is in the midst of discovering dark secrets from her own family's past. Alejandra finds she is losing herself - th0ugh those that are around her claim to still see her as they always have, Alejandra cannot connect with herself. She is spiraling and knows she needs help. Upon visiting a therapist, learning of her birth mother, and tracking down her family history she sees the suffering of all the women of her family tree and the haunting that has stayed with them generation to generation.

I related so heavily to Alejandra when reading this tale. As someone who went through post partum psychosis, a bipolar diagnosis, and years of disassociation - I know what it's like to lose yourself, and I know what it's like to feel haunted by an entity sent to do nothing but harm and pain. Each turn of the page felt like it was written for me personally, even though I am as white as can be. I appreciated the narrative style and a viewpoint different from my own. I highly recommend this to horror, folk, feminist fans and anyone else who would like a good view into hardships that women have to face.

I don't usually read any horror because I am a big baby when it comes to anything spooky related. I felt I could get through this book because I grew up hearing La Llorona stories, so I had some idea of the level of "horror". This book is a masterpiece. The combination of psychological thriller with la llorona, genius. I was so into this story I was left in emotional distress. Dual time line and relatable.

Blog:
The concept for this book is super original. A family with a genetic predisposition to postpartum depression is also haunted by an interdimensional being who takes advantage of that among the first-born daughters. It tackles both intergenerational trauma (especially of the colonized) and postpartum depression through a speculative lens. This speculative horror book also shows the main character going on a healing journey.

I particularly appreciated that the postpartum depression wasn’t a mere symptom of the haunting. Alejandra has postpartum depression. The being essentially targets the negative things Alejandra’s brain is already telling her. An example from the very beginning of the book is Alejandra is crying in the shower because she is so sad, and the being shows up and starts suggesting her family would be better off without her. An idea Alejandra has probably already had, but now she’s hearing it from this being that she thinks only she can see. This strategy becomes clearer when we see the flashbacks to Alejandra’s ancestors. The being also sometimes takes advantage of physical ailments but it primarily targets mental ones. I appreciated how this meant the story still took the reality of postpartum depression seriously while also tackling the issue of the multi-generational haunting. The story is told both in the present and through extended flashback chapters to previous generations.

The main character is Chicana married to a white man. In the flashbacks to the previous generations we see the racism her grandmother endured in the 1950s, and we also learn some about Mexican history (both recent and in immediate colonization by the Spanish) through two ancestors further back. The main character is bisexual, and there is a significantly important trans side character in a historic time period flashback. I particularly appreciated seeing a trans person represented in a historical time period.

The writing was at times a little clunky, especially towards the end. It just felt like I was reading a book, as opposed to getting lost in it, and it felt like different characters sounded the same. Again, this wasn’t throughout the book but limited to occasional scenes especially toward the end of the book. I also found it an odd choice to inform the reader the present-day was 2020 and then never acknowledge any of the 2020 issues. (For example, expected the mother with postpartum depression to end up dealing with distance learning for her two school-age children. But nothing ever came up.) Everything else could have stayed the same and been in 2019, so I’m not sure why it wasn’t 2019. I also felt that the husband character was treated in a two-dimensional way, as was the marriage. Marriage is very complex and yet complexity was only allowed to the postpartum depression and not the marriage. While I enjoyed this read, I did prefer the author’s previous book, The Queen of the Cicadas / La Reina de las Chicarras (review). One reason that is also evident in the title, was that book had more Spanish in it, which let me practice my Spanish more.

Overall this is a really unique read that explores postpartum depression and intergenerational trauma through a speculative lens. It’s a plot that will keep you guessing and intrigued.

GoodReads:
The concept for this book is super original. A family with a genetic predisposition to postpartum depression is also haunted by an interdimensional being who takes advantage of that among the first-born daughters. It tackles both intergenerational healing (especially of the colonized) and postpartum depression through a speculative lens. In spite of being horror and supernatural, the main character goes on a healing journey.

The story is told both in the present and through extended flashback chapters to previous generations.

The main character is bisexual, and there is a significantly important trans side character in a historic time period flashback.

The writing was at times a little clunky, especially towards the end. It just felt like I was reading a book, as opposed to getting lost in it, and it felt like different characters sounded the same. Again, this wasn't throughout the book but limited to occasional scenes especially toward the end of the book. I also found it an odd choice to inform the reader the present-day was 2020 and then never acknowledge any of the 2020 issues. (For example, expected the mother with postpartum depression to end up dealing with distance learning for her two school-age children. But nothing ever came up.) Everything else could have stayed the same and been in 2019, so I'm not sure why it wasn't 2019. I also felt that the husband character was treated in a two-dimensional way, as was the marriage. Marriage is very complex and yet complexity was only allowed to the postpartum depression and not the marriage. (view spoiler)

I enjoyed the read, but I did prefer The Queen of the Cicadas.

Check out my full review.

*I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.*

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Alejandra, deep in the throes of postpartum depression, starts to see the specter of the Mexican folk demon La Llorona. A really unique read with bi and trans rep that explores postpartum depression and intergenerational trauma through a speculative lens. It’s a plot that will keep you guessing and intrigued.
I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
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