“String of saliva dribbled from open lips, revealing teeth that resembled a forgotten cemetery.”
MESTIZA BLOOD by V. Castro
Stripped down and raw, stories that leave you wondering and wanting. The collection is a mixture of dark fantasy, tension, sensuality, terror and the cruelest sides of humanity. There is a wide variety of stories, some that were so unique that I craved to know more about that universe with others felt so real that I was sure V. slipped in some non-fiction parts. Castro can be an evocative temptress with words, stoking the fires of lust and desires while showing the human side of sex workers. A few stories had me picturing V. as the main character and left me feeling a bit flustered watching her perform. Really had me relating to Blake from The Final Porn Star. I’m not going to explain that one, you’ll have to read it to understand.

Mestiza Blood by V. Castro was filled with strong women, hideously foul monsters and lots of awesome lore.

Here are my favorite stories:

Donkey Lady Bridge was a tale of lore mixed with the saddest story. I think I’ve heard of this urban legend before. The description of the donkey lady was so well done. I felt like I could see her. She was every woman who’s ever been abused, taken advantage of and beaten down. A sad tale but with a hopeful ending.

The Most Wonderful Time of Year. Perfect for this season! I related to most of this book. The joys and monotony of motherhood. I laughed out loud at the protagonists descriptions of her children. “The big one is like Nosferatu, lurking around the house, shuffling from the kitchen for feeding back to the lair of the playroom”

So easy to read through all of these stories and I feel like I learn a little more each time I read something by V. Castro.

LOVED this book. As an anthology, it had the perfect mix of traditional horror, atmospheric folklore, and realism that connects directly to current events.

V. Castro has outdone herself with this one because it’s obvious that her writing has gotten significantly stronger from her previous pieces. She doesn’t rely on pizazz and 100mph endings every time. She has nailed a great balance between more subtle endings that don’t need more explanation, and knock outs that will force us to leave the lights on at night.

I loved the last V. Castro novel. Short story collections are arguably harder to impress -- you're bound to have some stronger than others -- but Castro is unique and interesting and exciting. My full review will come early 2022 around the release timeframe. Flame Tree is familiar with me and knows I'm good for my review, even though I'm backlogged getting things online. My final review will appear in it's normal purchase locations, Goodreads, and my website.

It’s kind of hard to review short story collections as giving any sort of synopsis sort of ruins the story.

This collection centers around the Mexican American experience and blends folklore with reality.

I thought I had an imagination before I read V.Castro. These stories are WILD.

My fave from the collection:
Donkey Lady Bridge
the Demon in my Eye
Cam Girl Sally
The Cold Season
Truck Stop

All of her female characters are strong whether mother or s. Worker.

Stories focus on desire and dreams, nightmares, revenge, with an obvious commentary on socio economics .

I’m sold. Can’t wait to read some of her longer work. The world building is incredible. Some of these stories could easily be developed into novels.

Thank you @netgalkey @flametreepressfor my gifted e-arc of Mestiza Blood by V. Castro.

V. Castro is quickly becoming one of my auto buy authors. I really liked Goddess of Filth and The Queen of the Cicadas. I absolutely loved Mestiza Blood. I gave it 4.5/5 stars. I felt like each story just kept getting better and better. I love V. Castro’s mix of Horror, Folklore, Erotica and her “sin pelos en la lengua” (doesn’t beat around the bushes) style of writing.
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She writes about motherhood and the struggles of it, which I could relate to in some parts. Also she’s super honest with her characters sensuality and doesn’t hold back on taboo topics.
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My favorite of the 14 short stories were:
.The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
. The Cold Season ❤️
. Truck Stop
. The Final Porn Star
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I just wished that some of these stories were a bit longer!!
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It’s no secret that V Castro is one of my favourite authors. From the moment I picked up 𝗛𝗔𝗜𝗥𝗦𝗣𝗥𝗔𝗬 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗦𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗖𝗛𝗕𝗟𝗔𝗗𝗘𝗦, to 𝗚𝗢𝗗𝗗𝗘𝗦𝗦 𝗢𝗙 𝗙𝗜𝗟𝗧𝗛 and lastly, 𝗤𝗨𝗘𝗘𝗡 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗖𝗜𝗖𝗔𝗗𝗔𝗦, I have been hooked on her writing. V is truly a force to be reckoned with.

So I’d like to thank @flametreepress for my ARC copy. This collection comes out 𝗝𝗔𝗡𝗨𝗔𝗥𝗬 𝟭𝟴, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟮 and you really won’t want to miss it.

If you know me, then you know that I often struggle with short story collections but this collection of short stories is fantastic. It’s loaded with grief, revenge, folklore, predators, and strong women. Her characters are often sexually charged and it’s something that I appreciate about her writing. I also LOVE the elements of folklore that she includes.

Another thing I’d like to note is that her writing stays consistent, no matter which book you choose. I highly recommend you check her out.

V is the face of spooky but make it sexy.

Some of my favourites from this collection:

🥀𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗖𝗢𝗟𝗗 𝗦𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗢𝗡 (my fave)
🥀 𝗣𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗔𝗚𝗥𝗔𝗠 𝗣𝗘𝗘𝗣𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗪
🥀𝗖𝗔𝗠 𝗚𝗜𝗥𝗟 𝗦𝗔𝗟𝗟𝗬
🥀𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗙𝗜𝗡𝗔𝗟 𝗣𝗢𝗥𝗡 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥

4 ⭐️

Since V. Castro’s novella Hairspray and Switchblades, she has been making a huge amount of noise. This year she released a novel, The Queen of the Cicadas, a novella, The Goddess of Filth, and early next year, she will release a short story collection, Mestiza Blood. If you have not picked up any of her works yet, you are missing out on a great talent and some remarkable stories.

Mestiza Blood is a story collection with all different sizes and lengths of story. All but three of the 14 stories make up the first half of the book and the second half is primarily two longer stories, “Truck Stop” and “The Final Porn Star.” Even though the stories are varied in size, they seem to have common themes seeped in Mexican folklore, tradition, and survival. Like any story collection there are stories that I like more than others, but there are very few that did not just make me fall in love. Here are my favorites.

“Night of the Living Dead Chola” starts the collection with a bang. The Rio Grande is drying up and all of the dead women at the bottom are starting to rise and walk to earth. The main character seeks out her killer. Even though this is only a five or six page story, there is so much idea and plot packed into it that if I found out she was writing a novel based on these women, I would preorder it immediately.

“Donkey Lady Bridge” A local legend of a creature half donkey/half woman named Diana is living under a bridge. Another woman, Jackie, is walking home drunk across this bridge and nothing is the same afterward. This is a good example of the present day and folklore meshing.

“Cam Girl Sally” A college girl gets hurt during a campus shooting. Out of desperation to pay her medical bills, she becomes a cam girl. When she gets a chance at revenge, she takes it. This story is perfect, and I enjoy the plotting and the empathy we feel for the main character.

“The Cold Season” This is the first of three longer stories about a woman, Araceli, who has her mind transferred to a new baby so that she can live on. The story starts at the end of one life and the beginning of another. We follow her through her newest life, and with all of the twists and turns her life brings.

“Truck Stop” This is my favorite of all of the stories in this collection. The story starts with Sonora found as a baby wrapped in her dead mother’s arms while they were trying to cross the desert, and after she lives in an orphanage for eighteen years, she leaves and finds a home working at a truck stop, making money by being company for truckers. She has regulars and she has a decent life, even with the secret on her chest, literally. This reminds me of Basket Case (which is actually mentioned in story “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”), and I will say that someone needs to make this into a film. There are a solid three acts and it would be a movie that the horror community needs.

Many people are hesitant to read short story collections, but this is one that really showcases V. Castro’s talents and her storytelling abilities. There are some stories where I thought about how she writes like Ray Bradbury, particularly “The Cold Season”. She is able to drop us into a world that is already off-kilter but the characters think it is normal. Her short story writing is strong, and she can make a six page story feel epic.

She also does such a great mix of Mexican folklore with sex positive and female positive literature that also shows a female empowerment that I don’t always see, especially in horror fiction. Even though there are monsters and demons throughout the stories, there are many harsh reminders that much of the real evil is performed by men against women. This is something that V. Castro uses as a theme in all of her work, and as long as men do not change, she will always have a story to write. Her writing is important as much as it is entertaining and exciting.

I received this as an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Most of the stories in Mestiza Blood fall into the category of "Don't Go In That Room/House/Drainage Pipe/Hot Tub Unless You Are A Fool. As it turns out, most of the characters choose to be fools. A big vulture/human thingy with dried blood all over it asks you to follow it down into the sewers so of course you go. What could go wrong? Something is eating both the wildlife and the humans at the isolated ranch house of a porno shoot--and the characters decide to stay an extra few days--and one decides to go hot-tubing all by himself, even though something is noshing them for the main course.

Even though there are hopeful endings to most of the stories, they didn't feel realistic--as if horror is realistic. I'm willing to believe a teenage girl stabs a monster/flying/human-faced thingy to death, and then finds a chest full of gold, but I found it hard to believe that a random drug dealer and his fence are willing to help her turn the gold into cash and expect nothing in return. Who knew criminals could be so helpful? And the teen was able to carry her baby and the chest full of gold, no problem. Do you know how heavy gold is? How about babies? Some of them are tubby.

It was a fun read, though. The key for me was to read it like it was the old-time horror, the kind B movies were made from. Most of it was so over the top that I couldn't help but laugh. This is not necessarily a bad thing if the reader is looking at the stories as if they are a 1960's double feature following "Hell's Angels A GoGo. The stories didn't scare me, but I had a good time with them.

This collection has it all. Supernatural, revenge, love and horror. Each story packed a punch, they were gripping and fascinating, leaving you wanting more.

🩸🩸🩸 / 5

A review for "Mestiza Blood" by V. Castro (beware of spoilers)

The best way to describe this collection is violently vibrant, eager to lovingly describe every horrible detail of the monsters that crawl through its pages. The image of the Donkey Lady's face was both terrifying and deeply saddening, while the descriptions of the sound viscera makes as bodies are stabbed, slashed, hit, or torn are nothing short of poetic. A similar unflinching yet loving hand is applied to the sex as well. It’s bizarre and weird and wonderful.

The stories are carried by said descriptions and the ideas—ideas which, in my opinion, are far too big for short stories and would have worked better as longer novellas or novels. As is the largeness of the idea weighs the story down causing it to suffer regarding character and pacing. Stories like 'the Demon in my Eye' have really interesting premises, characters, and worlds, but are rushed in execution and sacrifice subtlety outright, leaving the characters feeling like nothing more than flat stereotypes to act out the plot. Others, like 'Donkey Lady Bridge,' are heart achingly sad but end before the story really begins and would have benefited from having some sort of resolution, making it feel more like a pitch for a larger story than its own standalone thing.

The collection is at its best with the longer stories like 'Truck Stop' and 'the Cold Season,' where the endings are not definite but do have a sense of finality to them—the story’s heart has been shared and though the story marches on in its own world the readers do not need to be there to see it (though both stories have the strength and the character--especially 'Truck Stop'--to be novels as well).

'The Final Porn Star' encapsulates both what made this collection shine and what made it suffer. The plot is a love letter to what has come before--in the long-standing tradition of folklore as well as with slasher movies--wherein a middle-aged porn star is travelling out to the Texan desert to do a final shoot before retirement. I loved the main character and her attitude around her life; how she clearly loves and appreciates the industry and the people she works with yet also worries about the social judgement that may come with it focused towards her daughter, as well as acknowledging the issues with said industry. The side characters did not fall flat and were all given characterization and love in their own right. They all seemed like genuinely good people, which made their deaths seem all the worse. The violence was good, as was the tension and buildup with the monster closing in.

However.

The death scenes were too fast and rushed to really feel impactful or tense or terrifying, which really makes me sad as the bit describing the consumption of the corpse was excellent. Everything that came after and just before that, though--discovering the head in the hot tub, then the attempt by the three survivors to escape--was just... rushed. It would have been so much more tense and interesting if we got a more protracted scene with people being picked off and eaten one by one.

The monster kill scene: it was a lot, yes (she shoves a vibrator down it's throat then drowns it in champagne), but it just sort of happened, if that makes sense. It didn’t feel believable that this monster wouldn’t just rip her to shreds as easily as it had the others--it can decapitate people with a single swipe of the claws and I'm expected to believe one person with a dull kitchen knife and a dog could not only kill it but come out the other end with nothing more than a popped chest implant and a scratched thigh? It's reach, speed, and strength is far greater than hers, and the choreography of the scene just didn't feel all that exciting overall because we as the readers know she's going to survive. The fight just wasn't all that tense. The 1v1 is over in eight paragraphs.

There were also some minor complaints that impacted this final short story for me, such as the name dropping. About three or four times, the title is namedropped, not just in the narration but also as the character's speak to one another. It felt out of place and awkward and too on the nose.

Overall, I look forward to more by this author. I might pick up some of her novels, as (based on my experience reading this collection) I think I would enjoy her writing far more in her novels.

(Instagram post's review was cut down due to character limits)

V. Castro's Mestiza Blood is a brilliant, spine-chilling, Latinx force to be reckoned with, and all rolled together into 14 short stories. Tales filled with grief, revenge, motherhood, the supernatural, and Lantix empowerment, V. Castro brings something unique to the table and leaves readers wanting more. As a Latina, most of these stories brought something closer to my heart, and I could relate to the experiences, the lore, and traditions. But Mestiza Blood isn't just catered for someone like me, there is a story for everyone in here, and that is a feat all on its own. Although I will have to admit that some of V.'s stories were stronger than others, the collection itself was overall a win. With Mestiza Blood being my third V. Castro read, I would like to note she is very consistent with her writing, and her storytelling is impeccable. I personally would recommend anyone reading my review to give Mestiza Blood a read, and make sure to let me know if you loved it as much as I did. Happy Reading! x

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

"Mestiza Blood" by V. Castro is a compilation of weird-as-hell stories that run the gamut between science fiction, fantasy, erotica and horror, with a specific focus on tales of wronged women seeking vengeance. I'd read and enjoyed "Queen of the Cicadas" earlier this year so I was very excited to see more of Castro's work, and indeed "Cicadas" prepares one pretty well for the general themes found in "Mestiza Blood". As with all short story collections, there are some stories that are stronger than others - several of these here felt like set-up for novels that had not been written as they had very detailed worldbuilding that didn't quite translate into successful short stories. My favorite story was "Donkey Lady Bridge", because I will always (always!!) love a good cryptid story, and this one was bizarre. I kind of wish that there was greater variation in subject matter - save a few stories, all were about wronged women somehow getting back at the world and being victorious - but Castro writes this set up well that the sameness wasn't a detriment.

For anyone interested in horror with an erotic bend (or erotica with a horror bend), "Mestiza Blood" is satisfying and very unique.

I've had the opportunity to read multiple books by V. Castro this year, and they're all so fun to read. This short story collection has some I preferred more than others (as all short story collections do), but overall I enjoyed it.

3.5 stars, rounding up for Goodreads and NetGalley.    V. Castro is quickly becoming a favorite author of mine, and this collection of short stories showcase the broad range of her writing talent.  Focusing on the Chicana experience, these stories are blends of fantasy, horror, sex, and urban legend/local folklore.  As with any collection, I thought some were more successful than others.  There is a common theme of the inner strength and powers of women, and all are truly unique.  If you haven't had a chance to read any of Castro's works, I recommend this as a great place to start.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC of this book. This whole book was extremely good. This author has become a favorite. Loved the other books, and this collection just proves this author is also brilliant at short stories

Enjoyed several of the stories. One was about La lechuza and now I have a while new legend to research, never heard of that one!

This book was extremely readable. V Castro has such a unique voice in the horror genre. This anthology blends horror, erotica, the Chicana experience, and the supernatural all together in a way that is totally new. As always with anthologies, some stories landed better than others. For me, the standouts were "Pentagram Peep Show," "Night of the Living Dead Chola," and "The Latin Queens of Mictlan," but every story had a lot to say and a unique twist. I wish this anthology was longer or that some of the stories were a little longer, but the short story length made it a very fast read. Highly recommend if you're looking for a strong voice in the genre.

Long before reading Mestiza Blood, I had the pleasure to hear Violet Castro read a short piece of her work at StokerCon. I could tell from listening to her read she had intense passion for her craft. I've read plenty of horror stories by women writers, but I can't say I've read many by women minorities. Reading from her perspective is eye opening to say the least. V. Castro's female protagonists are at times jaded about the world, and probably rightly so. Navigating a male dominated system as seen from the female characters perspective was interesting. I dug that she had strong female characters. I really enjoyed many of the stories in this collection. My personal favorites were as follows; The Demon in My Eye, Cam Girl Sally, The Cold Season, and The Final Porn Star.

V. Castro never disappoints. Wow. Some truly stunning stories in here. I would pay good money to read some of these developed as full novels. Erotic, weird, disturbing, horrifying and powerful, this collection hits every target.