i don't really have much to say about this one. nothing made me stark-hopping mad, i just didn't like it because it seemed to be in turns either dull, incoherent or both. it seemed to me half-formed, like the author had a good idea but then didn't really know how to execute it or what she was doing, which could have (and should have) been rectified by a good editor.

basically, i didn't really think anything made much sense at all. what was the overall aim and plot, anyway? preventing that dude from killing all those children at the orphanage and raising carla? why didn't they just find the guy and kill him, and get carla and raise her, instead of all this train palaver? i just think everything needed a little bit more work, and thought.

Things I liked:

The writing of this book is incredibly rich and very sensual. You feel drawn into the world from page one and every place that Juanita goes, you feel like you can picture it very clearly. I really like books that are set in desert settings, and I feel like this was one of the books where I could feel the desert very viscerally.

The characters are interesting and well developed; they are all flawed and all of them do bad things, but they are treated as the nuanced people that they are rather than lionized or vilified. The main character is a wonderful strong and complex and nuanced female character who gets thrown into a lot of terrible situations and gets through it with fortitude and determination, and I really appreciate that. 

Several aspects of the worldbuilding were quite interesting. Although I found it a little hard to keep up with, the relationships between the families involved were satisfyingly twisty and kept you interested as the author revealed more and more details. The magical aspects and the spirit world were executed very well; I found the fact that spirit guides are just as variable and sometimes untrustworthy as living people very refreshing.

The author tackles head-on the challenges of being a woman in this novel. Juanita deals with sexual assault, rape, pregnancy, general assumptions and limitations based on her being a woman, etc and while some of this is hard to read, it's treated honestly without glossing over the issues or playing them up for shock value (for the most part). 

Things I liked a little less:

Although I just said I appreciate how the author tackles tough issues, I did think that the rape and sexual assault got a little gratuitous at some point. Some scenes made my skin crawl and the fact that Juanita had to work with her assaulter later on in the book...I felt for her, a lot. It's not a dealbreaker, but I have a bit of a weak stomach for scenes of sexual assault and they were quite vivid, with the power differential very plain. It's not necessarily a flaw, but something I personally felt hard to read. 

Although I found Juanita to be a wonderful character, besides Juanita and her deceased mother, grandmother and best friend there were practically no female characters with a significant role. Again, not necessarily a flaw, but I would have liked more.

I won't go into detail in order to avoid spoilers, but I found the climactic scene to be a little rushed, hard to follow, and resolved too easily. It felt out of place compared to the rest of the novel, and then the novel ended. I really enjoyed the novel as a whole, but I would have to say the ending was the least satisfying part.

Finally, the relationship between Juanita and Guide skeeved me out a little, to be perfectly honest. He was over 100 years old, if I remember correctly, and she was in her teens when they met and barely...seventeen or eighteen, if I remember right? when their relationship veers towards the sexual. Relationships with a large age or power differential make me very uncomfortable, and this relationship had both. Additionally, the way that he treated her upon a few occasions made me very uncomfortable with the relationship as a whole, especially since she is in a vulnerable position compared to him. And the resolution of Juanita choosing that she wants to be with him and raise his baby at the end just felt very...I don't know, I just feel like she was very young and choose to base her entire life upon this man who is not really good for her anyway. This is a matter of personal taste though, and may not put other readers off like it did me.

Some other minor gripes: I am not a fan of the "sexual healing" trope and I was not a fan of it in this book. I also did not really appreciate the fact that the gay male character spent time flirting with Juanita's assaulter despite the fact he had a life partner. It's a minor gripe, again, but I am very sensitive about how queer folks are portrayed in literature, especially if they are one of the only queer characters, and that just rubbed me the wrong way.

However, on the whole I enjoyed the book a lot. The plot was creative, the world was rich and interesting, and the writing was engrossing. Personally, I would say that the writing and the feeling that it created for me as a reader was by far the highlight of this novel.

Disclaimer: I received an e-copy of this book on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book starts with a thrilling story about the escape from a train whose destination is death. The little girl Juanita, who is saved by her grandmother and the ghost of her husband, grows up to be the towns mystic. When she has her first vision at 15, she soon realizes that she has to go on a deadly mission to save many. 

This story cleverly combines steam punk, western, ghosts, and romance in a quite elegant fashion. While I'm normally not a fan of relationships with a huge age difference, I actually grew to enjoy the relationship in this story quite a lot, since there was so much build up between these two. There are other relationships however that are more disturbing to read.

What I absolutely loved was that no of the characters were purely white or black. Good characters did bad things, bad characters did good things, it kept the story very interesting. Juanita was also an incredibly great character, I absolutely adored her. She always had a goal that she wanted to achieve and despite her young age, she worked relentlessly to get there.

Another thing I absolutely adored was how lively the side characters were. Despite there being quite a huge cast of supporting characters - the cigar-smoking ghost of a mechanic, a mysterious man with a twisted past, a member of the cruel and feared Mendoza family and a creepy mechanical creature - none of them felt one-dimensional or boring. they were all very fleshed out and even though there were some absolutely despicable characters, there are times where you just can't help but feel for them, at least a bit.

My favorite thing, however, was how incredibly vivid the story telling was. At times I actually felt like I was being transported in that hot desert world and riding beside Juanita and Guide. It was truly an amazing story and it was an absolute joy to read it.

Since none of the other reviewers have mentioned it yet, I thought I'd include a list of trigger warnings before I end my review. There are many mentions of rape throughout the book and there is one attempted rape scene and one rape scene that's shown a bit more. It's not detailed, but I definitely would have liked a warning before I started the book. There is also a short mention of csa. With the theme of murder of the poor and those who the higher classes don't think are useful for society, there is also ableism, racism, violence and murder mentioned. There is also a relationship with a huge age difference (an 18-year-old girl with a slowly aging 100-year-old man, who looks like he's 40)

All in all, this story was definitely different, but in a really, really great way. I absolutely adored it.