A coming of age story set in a sleepy town in Mexico in 1979. Viridiana is spending her days watching the shark fisherman pull in their nets. It’s hot and boring in her little town. Enter three wealthy tourists. Viridiana is hired as an interpreter as they don’t speak Spanish. A much older man married to a much younger woman and her brother are not quite what they seem. This was a slow burn but a good thriller. Not a classic thriller but more of a noir. I gave this 3.5

UNTAMED SHORE is a superb stand-alone mystery/thriller from Silvia Moreno-Garcia - an author who has shown herself to be skilled in a number of (sub-)genres.

Set in 1979 Baja California, the novel follows Viridiana - a bored local with dreams of Hollywood, the world, and excitement. When three wealthy American tourists enter her life, everything changes.

Superb writing, great characters, expertly plotted, and a story that kept me reading well into the night. Very highly recommended.

I am a member of the American Library Association Reading List Award Committee. This title was suggested for the 2021 list. It was not nominated for the award. The complete list of winners and shortlisted titles is at <a href="https://rusaupdate.org/2021/02/2021-reading-list-years-best-in-genre-fiction-for-adult-readers/">

Amazing... Silvia Moreno-Garcia knows how to give slow burn and provide just enough clues to get your mind thinking about what will happen next. I was shocked about the ending, but that was not a surprise because with this author the books never end how you expect them to, and that is a lovely thing.

At its heart, noir is when a storyteller takes a microscope to the strange alchemy that happens sometimes when desperate, unhappy people collide and how those chance meetings fan the flames of obsession and infatuation and cause events surrounding those people to spiral out of control.

But it also has a very defined set of stylistics and use of imagery, metaphor, and foreshadowing.

Untamed Shore is a perfect example on both these counts.

It's a very slow burn spiral, and I admit if I had seen the word "noir" in the book's copy instead of "thriller" I might not have picked it up, but I'm glad I did. While the story wasn't my kind of story, the writing was exquisite, and it genuinely read like one of the black-and-white films the protagonist is obsessed with. I don't always "see" stories in my head as I'm reading them, which is why I pay more attention to writers with a very strong, unique style, writers who offer more to grab onto than just the story they're telling, and I think Moreno-Garcia is definitely among that group.

A really interesting, updated take on the genre.

I dont thr this book caputred my attention as much as any of this authors other works  but the tale told here was still outstanding.  The plot doesn’t disappoint and the story is told well.

i really enjoy the way Silvia Moreno-Garcia writes a story, there's a realism and pulls you into the world. This was a great thriller and I enjoyed reading it.

Untamed Shore was like a YA version of The Talented Mr. Ripley--a stylish, noirish international thriller. I loved it, and recommended it in Oakland Public Library's 2020 Teen Reading List. 

Here's the blurb: 
1979, small-town Baja California. Viridiana takes a job for three rich Americans. When a suspicious death occurs, only Viridiana's wits can match their deceit.

Moreno-Garcia writes great female narrators. They are adaptable in the face of their circumstances and stay true to themselves. Viridiana thus turns what could have been a cliche story of a girl hooked out of her desperation to leave a sleepy dead end town on its head with such a satisfying ending.

I really like Moreno-Garcia's integration of setting into this narrative. The desert and the shark fishing grounds are very present throughout. Her characters are very vivid, and the plot is nicely paced. I really enjoyed the internal monologue of Viridiana as she navigates her small, conservative town and the young tourists that complicate her life. The action picks up at a page-turning pace, and I was surprised by the ending (in a positive way!).

I read the authors book Gods of Jade and Shadow and thoroughly loved her fantasy novel. Thought why not give her suspenseful thriller a try. Untamed Shore is more character driven noir than thriller. Do not get me wrong there are some definite twists and turns I did not see coming but on the flip side there were some slow moments especially the first part of the book. Untamed Shores is described as a thriller I was hoping to be grabbed in the first few pages or chapters. I think if I went in knowing it was a noir read in the vain of The Nice Guys, I would have gone in expecting something totally different and maybe would have not kept putting the book down. I am glad I stuck with it though the author does have a way of evoking such feelings from her characters and her writing is beautiful.  I loved our main character Viridinia I love how her character grew throughout the story. 

Overall Untamed Shore falls under the classic noir novels and less of todays modern thrillers that I think readers will enjoy a change of pace.

"You can kill anything if you have enough willpower. Just don't lose your mettle, because the shark always knows. If you weaken, if you falter for a second, it'll strike back."

Boy, what a book this was. When I read the GoodReads synopsis, then the one in NetGalley before hitting request button, I did not expect this experience. Yes, it was a crime thriller but only 30% of it was a crime thriller. It had murders, gang bosses, con artists, cops, and even money matters. But 70% of the book was a coming-of-age story.

The book begins with 18yo Viridiana, a small town girl who more than anything yearns to escape her dreary and drab small town and a bleak future of being married to a husband she'll never loves and bawling kids who'll never give her peace of mind. She's seen the housewives in town (including her mom) and she wants nothing to do with a married life like those. She wants to fall in love deeply with a man who will whisk her away from this town forever and into a city full of excitement and life and promises.

Oh how the book changes her by the end.

"Men could leave. Her father had left. But a woman couldn't leave. Especially if she had a kid. A woman was chained."

Her life changes one summer when three American tourists come to spend holidays at the town. A middle aged man with a trophy wife and her unemployed but handsome brother. Viridiana soon finds herself entangled in their secret, treacherous lives that force her to go through painful and shameful experiences, as well as experiences that peels off her naïve morality and propels her into a chasm of deception and lies. To get out of the web of lies, she must weave her own web as well.

"If there was something she had learned, it was that in order to deceive you should speak the truth."

Overall, this book is more of a coming-of-age story of Viridiana, a small town girl learning and unlearning what it takes to survive deceitful but charming people and save her own skin. The shark symbolism is really well thought out. If you are looking for a meaningful crime drama, not a shallow one full of bang bang, this is the one for you.

Thank you, NetGalley and Agora Books, for providing me with an eARC for my honest opinion.

I have a new book review to share with you today. Please note: I received a digital ARC of this book (via NetGalley) from its publisher in exchange for an honest and fair review. 

Untamed Shore by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a slow burn crime noir tale. Lets start with the cover. I love sharks so the shark outline with the wave imagery in the body immediately grabbed my attention. The black and white color scheme and blurred effect gives it a retro feel. 

Untamed Shore is the story of Viridiana, a young woman in 1979 Baja Mexico who works as a translator during tourist season. Three wealthy Americans show up and hire her for the summer. Viridiana sees this as the perfect opportunity to escape the boredom of her everyday life, and she is enamored by what she perceives as a glamorous life. But when one of the three Americans dies under suspicious circumstances, she is quickly caught up in a game of manipulation. Her naivety keeps her is a constant struggle to choose between her heart and her conscious and she finds herself in a real mess. There were times that I wanted to yell at her in frustration.  

Untamed Shore is an extremely well written character driven story. The world building is detailed and descriptive. You can really imagine the hard gritty lifestyle of this 1970's town. Though, I cannot express enough, that this is a SLOW burn. There is not a lot of action like Silvia Moreno-Garcia's other books. The ending is satisfying but it takes a while to get there. 

If you are a fan of slow burning noir crime dramas then go read this book! This gem published by Agora Books is available for purchase from all major booksellers. I give Untamed Shore 3 1/2 out of 5 gems. I cannot wait to read more stories by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, she is a fantastic author!

If you venture into this book expecting a high-stakes, fast-paced thriller, you will inevitably be disappointed. This is not a mystery; there is no whodunit, no hunting clues to track down the killer, no chases or escapes. Untamed Shore is instead a languid, character-driven coming-of-age tale, a sort of literary noir set against the atmospheric background of 1970s small-town Baja California.

And what a background it is. Moreno-Garcia has always had a way of bringing settings and locales to life. Her prose is exquisite: rich and dense and layered. The mood she evokes is thick and oppressive, heady with tension. I could feel the heat coming off the desert. I could smell the rotting shark carcasses. I could feel Viridiana's tension and boredom, her desperate desire for escape. There is a certain creeping dread to it all, an eeriness to this small seaside prison.

The narrative traces the development of Viridiana's arc, from clever but sheltered girl to clever and ruthless young woman. It is done slowly and carefully and subtly. The culmination of Viridiana's arc is what pushed me to give this book 5 stars; when I first started I was convinced this was a 3-star read. By 60% I knew it would be 4 stars. But by that explosive, absolutely baller ending? I knew this was 5 stars for sure. Viridiana is the star of this novel; she shines above the other characters and even the plot, which was very slow to start and never really found its feet. Because this novel isn't about plot; it's about Viridiana coming into her own and achieving her goals, no matter what it takes.

I received an eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

After reading and loving Gods of Jade and Shadow, I was absolutely thrilled when I found out that Silvia Moreno-Garcia has a few upcoming releases. After receiving a copy of Untamed Shore, I was very excited to delve into the novel. 

Untamed Shore follows an inexperienced, naive eighteen year old woman named Viridiana who feels trapped in her small town of Desengaño in Baja California. She must deal with her insufferable community and the expectations it puts upon her: working in her mother’s shop, marriage, having children. However, Viridiana wants more. She longs to leave for a bigger city where she can choose a life she wants for herself. She distracts herself with literature, Hollywood films, dreams of romance, and watching fishermen hunt sharks at the beach.

Viridiana’s seemingly boring life is interrupted when she is offered a job by three tourists: Ambrose, his wife Daisy, and Daisy’s brother Gregory. Working as a personal assistant and translator for these people offers Viridiana a chance to escape. However, things take a dark turn when one of the tourists dies. What comes next marks a drastic character change for Viridiana: she lies for her friends. Readers are then thrown into a web of deceit with many plot twists that I personally did not see coming. I loved seeing the change in Viridiana once she embarks on a path of self-preservation. Despite knowing the characters might be making bad choices, you cannot help but root for some of them. Viridiana is no exception to this; readers may identify with her longing to create a new life for herself far away from a town that wants to crush her dreams. 

Untamed Shore does not disappoint. I battled between wanting to read it all at once and wanting it to last forever. This book is a very character driven story, which I love. My experience with Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s work was limited to Gods of Jade and Shadow prior to this, so I was not sure what I would think about her tackling the thriller genre. In both cases, the writing is captivating and beautiful. In the end, all I can say is that I truly loved this novel! 

*Content warning: There are instances of violence and domestic abuse.*

Thank you to the publisher, Polis Books, and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this novel before its release.

When I saw that Silvia Moreno-Garcia was coming out with a noir mystery novel, I immediately knew I was going to have to check it out. Everything I have read by Moreno-Garcia has never failed to disappoint me and Untamed Shore was no different! The characters that she is able to create in her stories are such a wonderful blend of realism while simultaneously always giving me the feeling that something else is going on under the surface with them. Her novels are very character-driven and always manage to pull me in, even if there isn’t much action happening. 

Untamed Shore is a slow burn mystery following a girl named Viridiana in her hometown of Baja California, Mexico. Viridiana is a bit of a dreamer, having spent her whole life reading, watching old films, and learning multiple languages hoping to escape from her small town. When a group of American tourists arrives for the summer, Viridiana begins working for them and quickly finds herself tangled in their complicated lives and unable to resist the allure of the two younger tourists. She soon begins to realize that the group is not everything they seem and darker questions begin to arise about their identities. 

I loved the overall tone and feel of this story. It isn’t an explosive action-packed crime story, it’s the slow burn of a character allowing herself to trust unsavory characters until she realizes it might be too late. As the reader, we realize this is going on the entire time, and I was at times frustrated and at times completely understanding why Viridiana reacted the way she did. Many of us know the allure of trying to escape our small town. And Moreno-Garcia wrote Viridiana’s character expertly in this regard. 

If you are a fan of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s writing already, definitely check this out, because it doesn’t disappoint. And if you’re not familiar with her writing, but you enjoy character-driven, slow-burn novels with a noir vibe and expert prose, definitely pick Untamed Shore up!

I, unfortunately, was not a fan of this book. I think I fell into the hype around this book. This was pitched to me by someone else in the book community as a Jaws-esque book with diverse characters. The atmosphere is very well-defined and is beautifully lush. However, the story is painfully slow and has no shark action whatsoever. Also, trigger warnings for, among other things, description of animal death. I just wasn't a fan of this one, but would certainly read more from this author in the future because the writing was excellent.

In a genre stuffed to the gills with hard-boiled gumshoes and gangsters, serial killers and behavioral shrinks, narcos and narcs, Silvia Moreno-Garcia has cast aside her acclaimed fantasy bona fides to challenge reader expectations by delivering a crime thriller with literary undercurrents.

In her crime thriller debut, Moreno has taken calculated risks in delivering a literary leaning story with a slow crescendo in a genre crowded by over-the-top chases and traumatic brutality.
Untamed Shore is a coming of age story about an eighteen-year-old underemployed guide named Viridiana, who has managed to learn several foreign languages but is incapable of escaping her isolated Baja California fishing village of Desengaño, a town literally called disillusionment. Rudderless, she feels the growing pressure to follow the Desengañera –tradition—marry young and become the subservient wife.

Looking at him Viridiana had read her future in his eyes: the house they would share with his mother, the long hours behind the counter while Manuel went to play dominoes, the three children. She was saving to move to Mexico City and Manuel was talking of tying the knot and settling down. Worst of all, Viridiana was well aware that he was proposing because his mother wanted him to – and he was plain horny.
Viridiana’s dreams are dying like her town, a place where fishermen hunt ocean predators out of habit, the promise of prosperity having abandoned Desengaño long ago. “Viridiana thought Manuel represented more desire than affection, and knew enough about nets and sharks to picture herself tangled in a certain placid mediocrity which terrified her.”

At the end of the seventies, in a place that might as well be the end of the earth, Viridiana relies on silver screen classics as her sole vehicle to see what life holds beyond the desert and the waves.

. . . Viridiana spent a lot of time reading a myriad of books, yes, and the books promised more, as did the films. Rita Hayworth kissed Glenn Ford. Montgomery Clift embraced Elizabeth Taylor. I can see you. I can hold you next to me, they declaimed in glorious black and white.
Viridiana sees a glimmer of hope when three Americans rent the lone manor at the ocean cliff’s edge, their secrets in tow. She is hired as a live-in assistant to Ambrose, a wealthy man with aspirations of writing his life story in the peaceful isolation of Desengaño. She is quickly swept away by Ambrose’s glamorous wife Daisy and his brother-in-law Gregory—“If the woman looked like she could be a film star, he looked like he might be a model. His features were chiseled, his mouth generous.”

She daydreams of having a life like Daisy’s and the love of a man like Gregory. When Gregory seduces Viridiana, she releases herself to his promises of what they could be and where they could go, hoping it isn’t just afterglow.

As time passes, Viridiana sees blemishes in the glossy veneer of the foreign couple’s marital bliss. “She guessed it didn’t matter if you were rich or poor, a local or a foreigner, there were always men wanting to be all-important, making their wives or girlfriend feel like dirt, slapping them around when they got too mouthy.” As more warning signs threaten her fantasy, Viridiana grapples to assuage her fears—“Virdiana told herself that if a man was ever disparaging to her, she would not forget. She wouldn’t sweep it away. She’d hold it in her heart and notch down his cruelties. She’d bite. Hard.”

Like Martin Solares and other Latinx authors who’ve based their stories in the states around the Gulf of California, Moreno brings an authenticity to the cultural pressures and sociological impact of a small Mexican desert town that has outlived its economic usefulness.
When Ambrose dies under suspicious circumstances, Daisy and Gregory ask Viridiana to bend the truth. To keep her fading dreams alive, she takes the bait and ties her fate to theirs. The consequences of her simple lie escalate as more strangers arrive.

Like Martin Solares and other Latinx authors who’ve based their stories in the states around the Gulf of California, Moreno brings an authenticity to the cultural pressures and sociological impact of a small Mexican desert town that has outlived its economic usefulness.  The eyes of Desengaño are on Viridiana as she struggles to free herself from her misplaced trust and still escape the life she never wanted.

Moreno makes excellent use of the harsh coastal desert and a time devoid of technological conveniences to amplify a sense of desperation and confinement. In an environment full of natural predators, the most dangerous are the foreign interlopers.

Several times she’d compared them to sharks, but thinking it better, she decided scorpions were the better animal. Scorpions killed a lot more people than anything else in Baja California, lots more people than snakes and black widows. They’d sneak up on you, sneak into your camping tent or your bed roll, your shoes, and that would be the end of it. … Sharks were clean killers. Scorpions were not. Scorpions were secretive little monsters.
In her crime thriller debut, Moreno has taken calculated risks in delivering a literary leaning story with a slow crescendo in a genre crowded by over-the-top chases and traumatic brutality. This is a story where social issues and the environment play an important role in the plot, placing Moreno’s novel in an esteemed class with the likes of American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson and Beautiful Animals by Lawrence Osborne.

Though there were points where the ties that entangle Viridiana to the central crisis seemed to stretch thin to the point of her peril being avoidable, I was compelled to follow the journey to completion to see how she emerged on the other side. Nonetheless, she delivers a compelling character-based novel packed with distressing realism. At the end of it all, I feel the riptide of Moreno’s Untamed Shore pulling me toward her other work, and I’m swimming off to devour her whole fantasy catalog.

Apparently Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a hit or miss author for me. I loved Prime meridian and  Gods of Jade and Shadow but couldn't even finish The beautiful ones. However, Untamed shore sort of falls in the middle; while the descriptions and setting are lavish and evocative, something I've come to expect and enjoy in her work, and the characters were masterfully crafted,  I didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped. It might be a matter of personal preference, since I usually read scifi, but the story in Untamed shore felt unexciting and only managed to finish it because the psychology of the main character was fascinating.

I received an e-ARC from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.
I first became a fan of Silvia Moreno-Garcia after reading her exquisite novel Gods of Jade and Shadow. One of the best things about that book was the main character,  a strong young woman dealing with the constraints of her life and time and making the best of them. Viridiana, is another main character in a similar vein. She is a small-town girl, living in Baja California in the late 1970s,  dreaming of escaping that suffocating small-town life, much like her father did years before, abandoning her and her mother. This being a coming-of-age noir, she soon gets involved with a trio of Americans who have rented a house nearby for the summer and who may or may not be exactly what they seem. The story takes it's time getting started, but the ending is a lovely joy ride. Having read and watched a fair number of noirs none of the twists were especially surprising, but Moreno-Garcia is such a gifted writer that the journey was well worth it