Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the ARC of Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. This review will be available via Goodreads and will be avaialable to read on my account indefinitely. I knew after reading Mexican Gothic, also by Moreno-Garcia, that I needed to read Velvet Was the Night. I am a huge fan of "noir" novels, especially ones where the characters are flawed but dedicated to sovle the mystery. The main character, Maite, has never excelled nor found any great excitement in her life. She wasn't particularly likeable, but I did want to follow her story as she delved into the underworld of various Mexican gangs and political turmoil. Overall it was a solid story and I liked its murky territory. I would be interested in seeing how the characters cointue to grow should there be a second.

Last year, I read and enjoyed Moreno-Garcia's UNTAMED SHORE, so when I heard about this book, set in the early 1970s in Mexico City with a noir flair, I was really excited to read it! And even more thrilled when my NetGalley wish came true! Unfortunately, this one didn't quite live up to my own expectations. I really had a hard time connecting with either of the two narrators - 30 year old Maite, who lives a lonely life as a legal secretary and who's main enjoyment in life are her own daydreams after reading the Secret Romance comics or Elvis, a thug in a group of men working to stop communism from gaining a foothold in Mexican politics. The to narrators don't overlap much at first, and yet, this doesn't stop the plot from following some surprisingly predictable paths.

The political machinations of the time drive the story forward - plus the disappearance of Maite's neighbor. As Maite tries to track her down (largely to stop feeding her cat), her life begins to resemble the comics she loves so dearly - violence, intrigue, spies and more. I did appreciate the musical aspect of the novel, even if the storyline was so predictable. And while that familiarity fits with the noir flair, I just didn't feel invested enough in the characters to feel satisfied about having guessed the storyline correctly so early on. I never really found myself too eager to pick this one back up and because I knew where the story was going, it seemed to take forever to get there. I am still looking forward to reading more from Moreno-Garcia in the future - but this one definitely isn't my favorite of hers!

Silvia Moreno-Garcia always surprises me. All her books are so different, yet so interesting and they really draw me in every single time. This one did not disappoint.

The writing as usual is amazing, but I was not sold on this story whatsoever. I enjoyed the atmospheric writing and the setting. The characters were good, but the plot lost me. Not my favorite of her novels.

A noir set in Mexico, Silvia Moreno-Garcia does not disappoint. The author of Mexican Gothic takes on a new genre and does a marvelous job. She perfectly captures the dark and stormy nature of noir while fleshing out relatable but not always likable characters. I'm struck by Moreno-Garcia's talent to bring us into the story and keep us interested with fascinating scenes and dark content.

The book is based around the Dirty War in Mexico during the early 1970s. The book includes an author “afterword” with historical information and significance that I wished the editor had placed at the beginning of the book. So, note to any future readers, please read the author’s afterward first! You’ll better understand historical elements.

I enjoyed both main characters: Maite and Elvis. They felt like similar souls living out strangely parallel lives even though Elvis is a government thug who practiced violence daily and Maite is a “boring” legal secretary who loves romance pulp fiction comics. Both are selfish, flawed, and desperately lonely. I couldn't wait for their paths to cross as they both searched for Maite’s missing neighbor. I was secretly hoping for a love connection amongst the story’s darkness.

If you're looking for another book to read during National Hispanic Heritage Month, I highly recommend this one! I thoroughly enjoyed the artsy feel! The book was raw, gritty, with violence all too common. If this book gets made into a movie, I'm sure it’ll be an Oscar contender. It just has that vibe.

DNF @ 20%

I really didn’t like either of the characters we follow and I wasn’t going to suffer through a whole book of unlikable characters. The male character’s chapters had so much violence that I just couldn’t stomach. The female main character was incredibly boring and might have gotten more exciting but I couldn’t stand her “poor me” attitude.

I was thrilled when I received approval for an advanced e-book of the new Silvia Moreno-Garcia. This would be my first book of hers and after the hype surrounding Mexican Gothic, as well as the upcoming release of Velvet Was the Night, I couldn't wait. This book was selected by one of my virtual book clubs for their September read and unfortunately, I was not invested in the story. Moreno-Garcia's writing is superb, but the story was lacking in my opinion. The two storylines felt extremely disconnected and that made my reading experience disjointed. I think if the storylines had connected sooner, or there were hints about how they would intersect I would have enjoyed it much more. The characters seemed one dimensional to me and I was not connected to them at all. I wasn't rooting for anyone and could not relate to any of them. I did not finish reading Velvet Was the Night, which I was bummed about. I wanted to like it so bad, but it just missed the mark for me. I look forward to picking up Mexican Gothic and giving that book a try.

This book seems like it would be a good fit for readers who like character driven stories and don't mind disconnected storylines. I know several people enjoyed this one, but it just wasn't for me. Thank you again for the opportunity to read an early copy.

Velvet Was The Night is a nior historical set in 1970's Mexico. While the topic is unique and interesting the plot just never really takes off. I found the book slow and a chore. With more editing and better marketing this could have been a gem. On the heels of Mexican Gothic this was a huge departure from what we expect of this author.

This slow-burn book is like the perfect cross between gothic romance and classic noir. I loved Moreno-Garcia's exploration of the inner worlds and conflicts of two people in Mexico City alongside the politics of 1970s Mexico. She has a true talent for pulling readers into the atmosphere of her books, and this book was no exception. It leaves you unsettled and wanting more in the best way. I highly recommend this one!

4.5 stars. One of my favorite books of the year so far.

I’ve had mixed success with Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s books. I loved Gods of Jade and Shadow, her young adult fantasy, liked her sort-of-domestic-noir thriller, Untamed Shore, and didn’t care a bit for Mexican Gothic, the horror novel she came out with last year (I was an outlier; it was a bonafide hit). So I was torn about requesting an ARC of her most recent book, a mystery novel in the noir genre (a very different genre from today’s domestic noir thrillers—think The Maltese Falcon rather than Gone Girl) titled Velvet was the Night. Nevertheless, I did, and I was not sorry.

I really appreciate that Moreno-Garcia don’t write the same book twice. So far, the four books I’ve read have had a few commonalities, though, and they are all things I appreciate. They take place in twentieth-century Mexico (this one in 1971 Mexico City), feature Mexican characters, and all their heroines share a kind of restlessness, an alienation from their initial surroundings and/or communities. It is this restlessness that drives them.

Maite, one of the two central characters in Velvet is the Night, is such a woman. At thirty, she’s happy neither with her life nor with reality. It’s not just her job or her family or her body that she dislikes; it’s all three, as well as life itself—and not just how humdrum it is, but also how ugly. Nothing appeals to her or satisfies her except her record collection and her romance comics, where everyone is beautiful, everything romantic, and the most exciting adventures spread across the page in black and white. She is the most disaffected and cynical of the protagonists I’ve encountered in your books.

And Maite takes her need to escape quite far. She tells her friend and co-worker, Diana, lies about her life—stories of glamorous dates that stir admiration and friendly envy in Diana. She takes advantage of her neighbors’ trust to invade their privacy—peering into their medicine cabinet or trying on a dress from one of their closets—and collects a small memento (a cheap earring, for example) of each of these transgressions. Meanwhile, the political upheaval that takes place all around her she disregards—going beyond ignoring it to burying her head so deep in the sand that she’s barely conscious of it at all.

It is her neighbor Leonora’s request that Maite cat-sit for her that changes that and that brings Maite to the attention of a young man who calls himself El Elvis.

Twenty-one-year-old El Elvis belongs to a shadowy (and shady) organization named the Hawks. 1971 is a time of unrest in Mexico, with tensions erupting between student protestors and the Mexican government. In the first chapter of the book, the Hawks disperse the protesters by violent means. They shoot innocent people at the behest of the government, but the government later disavows them and denies any connection to their actions.

The Hawks operate in cells and the job of Elvis’s cell (four young men) is to make that easy for the government. El Mago, the tough, enigmatic, and taciturn man who runs the Hawks, orders the cell members to break cameras, beat up the journalists, and destroy the film. While they are doing this, the leader of Elvis’s cell is shot in the stomach.

El Gazpacho, the leader (the Hawks can’t use their real names, only nicknames, even with each other; El Gazpacho is from Spain while El Elvis is a music lover), is also young and he is the only peer El Elvis knows and likes. The other two members of the cell, El Guero and the Antelope, are trigger-happy and deride Elvis for his reluctance to use a firearm. All four are barred from sharing personal stories by El Mago’s dictum, but Elvis and El Gazpacho are sympatico anyhow, having bonded a bit over Gazpacho’s love of Japanese fighting techniques and shared cigarettes.

Elvis also admires El Gazpacho’s intelligence and feels some loyalty to him. Which is why, despite El Mago’s injunction against stopping to help another Hawk if he is injured in the protest, Elvis rushes Gazpacho to the hospital. Afterward, he calls El Mago to tell him what happened.

El Mago advises Elvis and the other two men to lay low. In the days that follow, El Mago doesn’t tell Elvis much about Gazpacho’s condition, other than that he is recuperating but still in the hospital. He instructs Elvis to take charge of the cell and look into another matter. An art student named Leonora has recently vanished without a trace. She may have important information and El Mago wants Elvis to track her down.

Maite is also searching for Leonora. Leonora engaged Maite to watch and feed her cat for the weekend and never returned, and Maite wants the money she is owed for cat-sitting, money that Maite badly needs. She also wants the cat off her hands; Maite doesn’t like cats. She traces Leonora to a printer’s shop where she meets Ruben, a member of a student art collective that Leonora also belongs to.

Reuben is worried about Leonora, whom he dated for a while; Maite is impatient to get paid. They compare notes and their conversation opens Maite’s eyes to the volatile political situation she has heretofore made herself ignorant of. She is drawn in by the excitement and adventure of it all and she begins to look for Leonora in earnest. She doesn’t realize that she is being followed and watched by Elvis and by other dangerous people.

This was a novel that should not have worked for me but worked brilliantly. After I read it, I had to think hard about why I liked Elvis so much more than I liked Maite for at least half the book. Why I disliked Maite at first was easy to understand—alienated by choice, lies, steals, doesn’t care, hates cats—but why I loved El Elvis almost right away was harder. He participates in things I find abhorrent including killing, interrogations, government-sanctioned violence, and attacks on free speech.

The author found a lot of ways to make me care, though.

This is a partial review. The complete review can be found at Dear Author,

I wanted to like this so badly but it just fell a little flat. The problem is it felt like nothing happened, even when there were guns firing and I felt like I should be worried, the stakes felt too low to matter. I liked Elvis and the reveal at the end genuinely took me by surprise, but I would have liked some more plot and higher stakes.

Thank you to NetGalley for e-copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

This year I am teaching a Silvia Moreno-Garcia novel to my World Lit students. I was looking forward to exploring this one as a potential novel to incorporate into my curriculum. However, I feel it fell a bit...flat. While it sounds ironic that I am teaching this from a "world/cultural" lens, I still feel like there is an immersion that is missing from SMG's novels. I feel like her novels could take place in Chicago, Hong Kong, Mexico City and it would be the same story. I send invisible vibes through the cosmos to pull more Mexican culture from her books but never feel she gets quite there.

I will say, I think SMG spins a great tale and is a better-than-good writer. There are some writers out there that I can not believe ever got a publishing deal (*cough....looking at you Elin Hilderbrand....cough*), but SMG is a very good writer and I give her a thousand props for exploring different genres and never feeling comfortable. SMG is an exciting writer and I will always be willing to explore what she writes.

I will say I do feel this one maybe wasn't for me, or I was just having mood issues connecting to it. The story itself was riveting, I just found the climax and resolution to be anti-climatic and a bit of a trudge. I also never really enjoyed any of the characters and found them...annoying, pedantic even which definitely hindered my reading enjoyment.

3-star reviews tend to be hard to write because I definitely liked it, I just didn't love it. Thanks again to NetGalley and Silvia Moreno-Garcia for this free copy for my unbiased thoughts.

We did not do a featured review for Velvet Was the Night, but we did include it in our Publishing This Week newsletter (with a five star consensus rating based on the media reviews at the time): https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Publishing-This-Week--Short-Stories-to-Sci-Fi--Memoir-to-Theater.html?soid=1102200958905&aid=XaSPnaJmnPU

Also on Facebook and in our Publishing This Week page on BookBrowse, and the notable books publishing this month list on BookBrowse, which also gets sent to subscribing librarians.

I enjoyed MEXICAN GOTHIC more, but this was still a fun read. The atmosphere was captured very well. However, I wasn't very engaged in the mystery, it almost felt secondary to the characters, and I expected Maite and Elvis to interact much more throughout the story.

My Thoughts

I recently read Mexican Gothic by this author and I had mixed feelings about it, but I always like to read more than one book by an author if I can. Here are my pros and cons for Velvet Was The Night:

Pros

1. This is a good example of noir fiction. If you aren’t familiar with noir fiction, it is defined on Wikipedia as “a subgenre of crime fiction where the protagonists are seriously and often tragically flawed” and they are often victims, suspects, or perpetrators. Noir fiction also typically takes place during times of unrest or corruption.

2. The cover is stunning! Like Mexican Gothic before it, this cover is eye-catching and kind of mesmerizing!

3. I enjoyed the references to music throughout the story.

Cons

1. Maite drove me nuts. I didn’t like her as a character at all. She was so self-deprecating that it was painful and a bit annoying to read. I understand she was supposed to be an innocent participant in what happened, but she needed to be more naïve, and less disparaging.

2. Elvis was underdeveloped. I didn’t connect with him in any way, even via his love for music.

3. How many times did the reader have to be told what Elvis had in his pockets? There were strangely repetitive references throughout the novel that felt a lot like filler.

4. I didn’t get enough information about the political unrest that was going on to be interested or care at all how it was influencing any of the characters.

5. The ending!! Vague, open-ended, and incomplete. So disappointed. No satisfactory reason was given about why everything happened the way it did or why certain people did what they did.

6. Was the cat okay?!?!?!

Summary
I call stories like this a surface read. There was no depth for me and no connection to the story or the characters. I wasn’t engaged at all. The writing is good – it is quite easy to read actually – although I did find it a bit repetitive from time to time (especially considering it isn’t a long book).

Just because this book isn’t going on my list of favorites, I would never dissuade someone from reading it if they are interested. I do believe there is an audience for this book. If you are a fan of noir fiction, crime fiction, or imperfect protagonists, you may truly enjoy this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the Del Rey for an electronic ARC, which I reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

After reading and loving Mexican Gothic I couldn’t wait to read this book. I knew going in this would be a total different genre. I liked the way the story started out, but felt it was repetitive and slow during the middle. The last few chapters were good, but I felt it was rushed. I liked both of the main characters and would have liked to see them get together before the story was over. Overall it wasn’t a bad read.

Velvet Was the Night is a noir-type novel based in 1970s Mexico about Maite a secretary who finds herself entangled in the disappearance of her neighbour and Elvis a goon who is also looking for the disappeared person for his boss and they both comes across a lot more dangerous truths which threaten to consume their lives!

I had mixed thoughts about this one! It was definitely well written and intriguing but I was not able to really get into the book fully, it took me some time to finish this book because my interest used to come and go. I did enjoy it but I wouldn’t say I loved it especially not as much as I did Silvia’s other books!

It was definitely a different kind of genre and one which I haven’t tried a lot of so I was not entirely a fan of the way of the narrative either because it was like watching one of those old movies and it did not engage me much.

So if you’re into such noir, old school kind of historical novels with some violence, suspense, intrigue then Velvet was the Night would be the perfect book for you!

DNF at 30%

My biggest problem with this author is that I keep chasing the high I had after reading Mexican Gothic only to be disappointed time and time again.

I don’t typically read noirs, so I can’t comment on the genre.

As per usual, the descriptions and atmosphere were lush, but I just found myself not engaging with the plot or characters.

Where do I even begin with this book? This book took me on an ADVENTURE! Let me start by saying that I could not have predicted the twists at the end.

This book (based on true events) tells the story of the missing Leonora. She leaves her cat with her neighbor and a cryptic message that she will be away for a while. Meanwhile, there are a lot of people (and groups) on the hunt for Leonora because of some incriminating photos that she has. Maite, her neighbor, finds herself getting deeper and deeper into the crossfire of this manhunt for Leonora until everything comes to a head.

Overall, I have ZERO complaints about this book. I couldn't put it down. It was amazing!