Lush, atmospheric and perfectly creepy. This was all I love in gothic fiction, with a beautifully fresh twist. I adored the setting and the intricate family secrets. Moreno-Garcia uses pared-down prose to create a fever dream of mystery, magic, and danger.

This is the first book I read by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and it completely met my expectations. I’m going to read some of her other works, highly recommend.

Mexican Gothic (Jo Fletcher, 2020) by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a much beloved book. It is set in early twentieth century Mexico, around Noemi, a headstrong young woman. Her cousin has recently gotten married, and sent them a letter that has the family worried. So Noemi goes to try and figure out what is going on in the remote estate of High Place. It’s a textbook Gothic novel, with mild horror elements and psychological tension. I can appreciate that it is a really good book, but I do have to say that it wasn’t for me. I found myself wandering off and not caring at all, and I think it’s just me not clicking with Moreno-Garcia’s writing. But if you’re curious, I do recommend taking a look!

Mexican Gothic is a dark book - aesthetic & content

TW : on page assault & seizure, mind control, incest, body horror, manipulation, donotreadthisifyoulikemushrooms, several mentions of rot & smell of decay, Sexual assault, Gaslighting, smoking, drinking, racism, white supremacy, isolation, several mentions of Pandemic, not-so-subtle-misogyny, grooming

This book got me thinking I should stop reading twitter recs. I've seen people praise Mexican Gothic and thought oh well this is gonna be good I guess. But I had no idea about the content of the book .

First things first, Mexican Gothic is an excellent book if you're into mysteries and dark gothic horror . There's an intriguing mixture of magic realism , fantasy and mystery.

The immersion , oh god, Silvia has written this book in such a way you get extremely immersed in the environment and become one with the pungent air in the gothic castle sits atop a hill.


This book deserves all the stars it get. It just wasn't for me. Read the tw before jumping in!

Wow I loved this. I’m a big horror movie fan and I will admit I haven’t read that much horror fiction. However the few I have read have never really been very scary for me. I guess it’s harder to build tension with just reading scary scenes for me. This however really got to me. It was creepy and very atmospheric. There were some scenes where I had to take a break after because they gave me goosebumps! I really loved our main character Noemi, her strong and most of the time sarcastic character was a joy to follow. Francis was a great character too with lots of layers and I really enjoyed seeing Noemi interact with him. Also I assumed this would be like a paranormal story but it had a twist that I did not see coming and it will definitely stay with me for a while. The Mexican setting was also great for creating great descriptions. I really enjoyed the vivid details as it added to the claustrophobia the mansion gives off. One of my favourite parts is the message of family in this and what you’re willing to do for them and I just loved that. It did however have a slow start which you need to kind of push through and that is my only critic.

Lovely and spooky and stylish, I'm really enjoying the unique stories from this author. A big favourite amongst all my bookselling staff.

I was originally really excited to read this book, there was alot of hype surrounding it's release but honestly there isnt a great deal to say about the book.
I enjoyed the general feel and eery vibes. But non of the characters were very likeable norrealistic.
I listened on audio and unfortunately this didnt work for me. I had real  troubles following the plot.
That being said, I really enjoyed the resolution and thought it was very clever.
Overall I was disappointed by the read. I think I expected more, but there were some redeeming factors.

[Gifted] 
A deeply unsettling, mushroom-filled story, about a woman effectively trapped in a mansion on the top of a mountain with a very weird family. Her cousin is sick, and seems to be dying slowly under the pressure of living in this strange place. This reminded me of so many classics I love: Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, of course, but also The Secret History and We Were Liars and We Have Always Lived in the Castle - books where the place is just as much a character as the people.
The writing was particularly beautiful in this. Often I found myself rereading the writing, just because it so beautifully captured the setting. There were some lovely turns of phrase. 
This is exactly what I want adult fiction to be: it's like a YA novel, all grown up. Dark and female-focused and utterly modern in everything except the time period. 
Wonderful!

I am...a bit perplexed and don't really know what to say about this book because there was objectively nothing wrong with it and I was even really enjoying it in the first half but then something happened along the road that made me disengage from the story. Maybe it was the fact that it took me so long to read/listen to, or maybe it's because although the reveals were smart and intricate, they somehow fell flat for me. I was just very detached from the story even though I could see its merits.

One thing that I really appreciated though is how eugenics, racism and colorism were an integral part of the horror, as well as colonialism, since the "antagonists" are English folks who came to Mexico, settled, profited off of its people and bled the land dry. That as well as the gaslighting and making women think they're losing their minds for having real concerns about things that are actually happening, that was the creepiest and scariest part for me. How these women were made to think that everything happening is in their heads and that they should stop being "hysterical" and "dramatic" and just get with the program, even more so when a woman is one of the people also inflicting these wounds.

Overall, I wouldn't stop anyone from reading this book but I think it either wasn't a book for me or I read it at the wrong time.

I’ve been meaning to read this forever, and in fact I originally had an advance copy of this. As often happens when I get a much-anticipated book as an advance copy, I actually bought it as soon as it came out, since it didn’t feel fair to read the ARC anymore. So… Mexican Gothic follows Noemí Taboada, a girl from a rich Mexican family, living in the city and hoping to go on to study more, enjoying her life as a socialite. Her cousin recently married, but it seems that something odd has happened to her — she sent home an almost incoherent letter, raving about the awful things happening to her — and Noemí’s father decides to send her to see what’s happening.

Noemí goes, partly out of affection for her cousin, partly out of curiosity, and partly to prove herself. She immediately finds that Catalina’s new family are rather odd, with oppressive rules and a rather awful house. And Catalina is ill: tuberculosis, the doctor says, and yet Noemí doesn’t think it seems to fit. When she snatches a moment along with Catalina, her cousin sends her to get a remedy from a local woman, and yet it seems to make her even more ill…

I won’t say too much more about the plot: it settles in to be nicely Gothic and weird. I don’t know if it was because of the books I’ve been reading lately (I shouldn’t name them, in case it’s too much of a spoiler), but I figured a good chunk of the plot out through noticing a recurring motif. I found that I wasn’t as riveted as I’d hoped to be, because it took me time to really connect with Noemí — – her confidence in her own intelligence, beauty and charm was a bit too much toward overconfidence, and though I can’t say that I’d fall in with the traditions of Catalina’s new family(!), it also seemed weird that she was so unwilling to respect simple things that are asked of her as a good guest, like not smoking in the bedroom. (Sure, different era and all, but… being a good guest hasn’t changed that much.) She just seems quite entitled.

However, as we got to see more of Francis, and as Noemí worked things out, it started to work a lot better for me — and the last third/quarter of the book, ish, is pretty nail-biting. Naturally, it doesn’t end in a terribly comfortable way, leaving a few questions and horrible possibilities hanging…

Really enjoyable, all in all, though I didn’t get into it as much as I’d expected to until later.

I really enjoyed it. So atmospheric. Not sure I can look at mushrooms the same. I don't understand why some people are saying this isn't a horror. It's definitely a horror, just not the most gross or terrifying, though it is still those things. I love the agency given to the Taboada women. Though Doyles except one were very unsettling and upsetting.

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘭, 𝘪𝘵 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵, 𝘷𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴, 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘥.
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Noemí receives a frantic letter from her cousin, claiming her new husband is poisoning her and that the house they live in is full of ghosts😱
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Add this book to your Halloween TBR immediately, it is one wild ride. During the first half, I thought I was just in for your classic gothic horror story in a stately home...oh was I wrong. Things take a weird turn halfway through, and I just couldn't devour it quick enough. It is gory and gross and so unnerving, everything you want from a spooky read. The main protagonist Noemí is incredible, she wears amazing gowns just to pop to the shops and gives sassy comebacks to anyone who crosses her. She doesn't take crap from anybody💃🏻
.
𝘚𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘪𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘦𝘯. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘧𝘭𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘳.
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I loved Gods of Jade and Shadow but this was so different. Silvia Moreno-Garcia is showing so much range as an author already, and I truly can't wait to see what she releases in the future.

So I have changed my rating for this book about four times now as it left me feeling SO many different things, but I have finally decided that it is a solid four-star book. 

When Noemi's recently married cousin sends an odd letter pleading for someone to save her, she agrees to go visit and see what the problem is. Upon her arrival, Noemi finds that the situation is far direr than she could have ever imagined. Her cousin's new husband is both menacing and alluring; his father is an ancient patriarch with an obsession with Noemi and the lavish estate that begins to invade Noemi's dreams with visions of blood and doom. 

If you're looking for a creepy book that is beautifully atmospheric then this would be a good match for you. I'll admit that I was expecting something a tad scarier seeing as this is considered a horror, but it was still wonderfully creepy! A lot of people complained about the slower pacing at the beginning, and I would largely agree with these comments, however, the pacing definitely picks up at the 50% mark. I absolutely adored Noemi. She was outspoken and not afraid to share her thoughts. Her love for her family really shone through and made her easy to root for. My main complaint with this book has to be the romance. It came across as being quite weak and it almost felt like a convenient thing to happen with regards to the story. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and feel very lucky to have been provided a copy for review. However, I'll definitely be avoiding mushrooms for the foreseeable future!!

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

An incredible gothic horror book that horrifies and shocks the reader, while intriguing us with beautiful details. 
An instant classic that is definitely one of my favourite books read this year!

This extraordinary and thrilling book is like a mix of Daphne du Maurier’s, Stephen King’s and Edgar Allan Poe’s books, add some latest horror/black humor movies/tv-shows to the mix. This haunting house, family mysteries, toxic environment, surprising allies - all of it makes a fairly fascinating read. But it’s not horror (for me at least), but it is interesting (even if I figured out the evil spawn fairly quickly :) ) and it was hard to put down.

Good read, but not horror, for me at least!

This book was weird, super weird. But it was also so amazing. 
The weirdness is what did it it for me, I loved Noemi and I really loved Francis from the start.

I'm not really into Horror Books but the synopsis got me interested and i'm happy to say that i really enjoyed this book. especially the atmosphere!

Mexican Gothic is a completely immersive story that hooks you right in before you have much of a chance to get your bearings. A lot of people have compared it to Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, and to that I'd add The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and a hint of We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. It begins in 1950 in Mexico City, when a charming and headstrong socialite called Noemi is instructed to visit her beloved cousin, who sent an alarming letter saying that her husband was trying to poison her. No one had seen her since she married into a wealthy English family far from the city, and Noemi's father is keen to both protect his family and avoid a scandal. Once Noemi gets to the huge yet claustrophobic home of the would-be aristocratic Doyle's she soon realises something suspicious is happening. 

The family and the house have a lot of secrets to hide and despite herself Noemi finds herself drawn in by the powers of the house, by something that seems to be lurking in it's very walls. The language is rich with description that seems at first beautiful and then more sinister, and it's so atmospheric it feels like you're being put under a spell, waking too late to discover what danger you've sleepwalked into. I highlighted so many sections where the feeling of dread in the house is almost given corporeal form, as Noemi feels a heartbeat along the walls and it seems ti push her from one room to the next. It makes sense then that that body horror is such a feature, where evil and growth in the walls of the house are mirrored by disfigurements and wounds on bodies.

The Doyle family are English, seemingly having settled there during the English Victorian era and having brought their customs and style with them.  The grandfather of the family is obsessed with eugenics, phrenology and openly comments on Noemi's "dark beauty" while presiding over the dinner table. The house and the mine next to it, where local people were exploited and eventually were killed in an accident, and a young woman forced into marriage shot her family and herself, are a site of trauma, and any evil Noemi senses feels like it was born of the exploitation of women and the native people the family employed.

In many ways, the horror of the patriarchy and of colonialism is the true rot at the heart of the novel, but the plot is in no way predictive despite this clear theme. I loved that Noemi was stubborn and resourceful, and didn't back down from the face of real danger: sometimes supernatural, sometimes the threat of very real sexual violence. She isn't made a victim, despite all efforts to the contrary, but is able to defy people who traditionally hold so much power over him and not bend to their will. This is the kind of book to read with a book club or a friend, as you'll want to discuss each and every turn.

A review copy was provided by netgalley and Random House Books in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. 

Content warnings: Body horror, abuse, incest, gaslighting, attempted assault, blood, mentions of cannibalism

My Rating: 5 Books out of 5

Highlights: 
Noemí is the fabulous heroine we all need. 
Seriously this woman could face down Satan himself and she would do it in a gorgeous dress and full makeup, she is my idol. 
Never trust suspiciously isolated rich people
Especially if everyone they hang out with or employ DIES 
The writing is just stunning
It has A Spotify Playlist!

She recalled, rather grimly, that certain fairy tales end in blood. In Cinderella, the sisters cut off their feet, and Sleeping Beauty’s stepmother was pushed into a barrel full of snakes. That particular illustration on the last page of one of the books Catalina used to read to them suddenly came back to her, in all its vivid colors . Green and yellow serpents, the tails poking out of a barrel as the stepmother was stuffed into it.

This is one of those books that I saw everywhere before it came out, and those can be a double-edged sword. Will they live up to the hype? This one absolutely did. A beautifully atmospheric and deeply haunting book, it’s not just a pretty cover (but my GOD what a cover, isn’t it stunning?). 

Inspired by Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, Mexican Gothic follows Mexican socialite Noemí Taboada as she travels to visit her cousin Catalina following a concerning and mysterious letter. Catalina claims her new husband is poisoning her, her ramblings about the family home - the secluded and aptly named High Place - and its happenings tinged with hysteria. Stepping outside her comfort zone, a world of glittering parties and suitors, where the expectations that Noemí marry well clash with her desire to study at the National University, she casts aside the bustling city for a lonely mansion atop a treacherous hill. 

I love gothic literature, with its moody atmosphere and crumbling ancestrals homes, and this book was just a gorgeous homage to the genre - and one that calls to attention the string of silently abused and forgotten women that it leaves in its wake. Catalina represents the madwoman in the attic, the wife locked in her room for her own safety, the powerlessness of the gothic bride against the insanity that surrounds and threatens to consume her at every turn. She dreamt of fairy tales and forgot the blood that flows through them. With her mysterious high-born groom whisking her away to his estate in the country, Catalina speaks not a word to the cousin she adores until a letter of her ramblings shows up on the doorstep. Noemí expects a brief trip, intending to bring Catalina home to Mexico City for psychiatric help, but High Place seems unwilling to let them go. Standing in the shadow of tragedy after tragedy, the house is a place of silence and decay. The Doyle family are clinging to the remnants of a dying era - and to a country they left long ago. In an extract that just screams Dracula and his boxes of Transyvalian dirt, we see the following exchange: 

“High Place?”
“That’s what we call it , our home. And behind it, the English cemetery.”
“Is it really very English?” she said, smiling. 
“Yes,” he said, gripping the wheel with both hands with a strength she would have not imagined from his limp handshake. 
“Oh?” she said, waiting for more. 
“You’ll see it. It’s all very English. Um, that’s what Uncle Howard wanted , a little piece of England. He even brought European earth here.”

It does beg the question, if you love England that much then why did you move to Mexico but that is rather the point. The theme of colonialism in gothic literature is impossible to avoid, and nowhere more so than in Mexican Gothic. Catalina is forbidden from speaking her own language in her new home, entering an existence where her husband’s language and culture take precedence over her own. That and his family Patriarch’s unhealthy obsession in Eugenics make for a highly uncomfortable living environment. 

Even without everything that follows, that alone is a substantial reason for Catalina’s melancholy fading. 

The writing in this book is just gorgeous, often dreamlike and unnerving to the extreme. It is so easy to picture High Place and its graveyard, the mist that creeps in and feeds the mould growing up the walls, such a cold, damp, desolate place clinging to the remnants of ‘greatness’. The Doyle’s are menacing and standoffish - does Virgil truly not care for his wife’s madness? Is Noemí correct when she thinks him distant, even cruel in the face of Catalina’s decline? In a house where words carry, how is Noemí to find answers and help her cousin before it is too late? 

Mexican Gothic is one of those books that will stay with me, it is horrifying and hauntingly beautiful and the perfect piece of modern gothic literature for those of you also fascinated by old houses and the secrets they keep, by noises in the night, figures in the cemetery and women tired of taking shit from a world trying to devalue and dismiss them.

Mexican Gothic has all the hallmarks of a gothic suspense novel. There are secrets, family curses, a house at seems to be alive, madness, and a beautifully creepy atmosphere. It gave me a Crimson Peak vibe, but set in Mexico.