Wow, I feel like I just got gut punched. THE DEVIL TAKES YOU HOME by Gabino Iglesias is a roller coaster of emotions, packed to the brim with revenge, and has elements of crime, thriller, horror, and more. When this has been described as genre-defying in blurbs and other reviews it means just that. Iglesias cannot be placed into a single box and this book proves that. It's loaded with themes of revenge, poverty, racism, systemic oppression, fatherhood, and more. It had my heart pumping almost the entire time. And it broke that same heart a few times. From bolt cutters and disembowelment to gun trafficking and the supernatural, The Devil Takes You Home is a dangerous ride that will definitely have you questioning all sorts of things when you're done. There's a little Breaking Bad going on and a little S.A. Cosby vibes, too. But there's 100% Gabino Iglesias happening and he never holds back. This is fast-paced, brutal, and gut-wrenching at times. The Devil Takes You Home is absolutely making my Top 5 of 2022.

It took a loved one's leukemia diagnosis for Mario to fully appreciate just how much of a terrible hand he's been dealt. Before that came in, he had a good job, useful insurance, a loving wife, and a beautiful daughter. That special little girl is unfortunately too special, a member of that fraction of a percentage of children afflicted with a disease that is non-responsive to treatment. As the struggle against the disease carried on and on, Mario lost that good job, lost that useful insurance, and thanks to the rotten situation and a few terrible choices on his part, he ultimately lost his family. With no support system, it's a short slide into meth use. With all compunctions compromised, it's a shorter slide into working for his pal Brian, killing men for small fees. So, when Brian brings him an offer that seems almost too good to be true, Mario suspects its bullshit. Surprise, surprise, it seems to be for real. Mario stands to make two hundred grand for being part of a small team of men taking down a truck that brings drugs into the US and takes money back to the cartels. It's a suicidal scheme, of course, but one that is attractive to a man with little to lose and everything to gain. His share of the multi-million dollar haul might be enough to tackle the bills, win his ex-wife back, and start a new life from the ashes.

However, the money is not simply waiting there. He's going to have to work to get it. This work takes a lot of shapes, including holding his white boy pal Brian out of reach of their hotheaded partner Juanca, dealing with the casually racist pricks he encounters who have the tools and things he needs and attitudes he does not, or witnessing the ritualistic mutilation of a kid whose body may well be blessed with some kind of bullet resistant charms, or doing the work of killing men who are trying to actively kill him first.

Gabino Iglesias' newest novel is yet another glimpse into the intersection of subtle supernatural thriller and ballsy crime fiction, a barrio noir that echoes some of the themes and motifs of the author's previous works, Zero Saints and Coyote Songs. Here we have the story of a man who is well and truly finding himself neck deep in trouble, drowning in grief and turning to bloody violence as a means of pulling himself together. Mario is not a gangbanger as the novel opens. He's an educated guy with a job in insurance, and the machinations of plot (or quite possibly the whims of chance or fate) draw him into a bleaker side of existence. He is, in many ways, the classic hardboiled character. The opening sections make for some harrowing reading, as we get a glimpse of Mario's life falling into the whirring blades of a Cuisinart. The relentlessness which the author applies, compounding the situation with Mario's little angel of a daughter is merciless, and builds a lot of sympathy fast. It's something of a necessity as we see the protagonist's subsequent slide into a very personal hell, a part of the book where he becomes less sympathetic. We never fail to empathize with Mario, even if we recoil from his actions. He's a challenging character, well written and with a defined arc, but the deeds he is a part of are often repellant (as befits good crime fiction).

The novel eases up on the relentless pacing when it enters into the job that will maybe give Mario the chance to start over. Then, the book becomes much more concerned with the journey into a far more brutal hell, allowing out character numerous opportunities to step out of the situation. He cannot leave this ride early, however. This long road toward confrontation and reward are something he must see through for several reasons.

Iglesias had applied his talents for crime and horror to a novel that reads, more or less like a road story. This is Barry Gifford territory, quirky and grotesque and funny and chilling in equal measure. The author makes the material his own, giving us an eyeful of the sorts of crooks and civies who populate the American southwest and Mexico as well as giving us a look at the tunnels that run along the border. There are monsters aplenty here, some human and some criaturas (creatures), none of which would be out of place in an EC Comics cautionary tale.

This is not to suggest Iglesias' novel is cartoonish or campy. It's got a pulp vibe to it, but it takes its material seriously. There may be some humorous exchanges between the characters, but there are no knowing winks or nods to the reader in the narrative itself. This is a solid crime thriller with supernatural touches and an impressive mean-spiritedness. We don't read this kind of book to see the characters treated with kid gloves or kindness. We read it to see the characters suffer, to have their worlds blown open, and to find out how they will cope with a new perspective. Such fiction is often populated by doomed people, whose fates are written out ahead of time. Iglesias always keeps some hope alive throughout his work. Yes, there are betrayals, pains, tortures, and torments, but we can always cling to a shred of belief that Mario will make it out. Maybe not as whole as he came in, maybe not with the money he's been promised, but alive. Whether or not this is true, I shall not spoil, but we nevertheless keep that hope until the final revelation. Balancing the cruelties Mario sees and performs with this optimistic vein is a trick many authors have difficulty doing. Iglesias does a fine job.

As with his previous books, the author is not afraid to pepper the text with Spanish dialogue. Some characters can switch mid-sentence, while others are monolingual. Iglesias has solid chops at weaving the two languages together, and the flow of language is fluid. Most of the passages are given enough context and subsequent translation for us to piece out general and specific meaning. This level of immersion is not for everyone, but it is certainly effective.

Another nice touch is how clear a sense The Devil Takes You Home has with its locations. Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico all make appearance in the novel, and Iglesias paints them with a grounded sense of their individual characters. Where the magic really shows up are those places that are not familiar, such as the creepy tunnel systems along the border. These are the sorts of places that a film like Belzebuth (2017) make use of. It's ripe territory for writing that emphasizes the dark, claustrophobic aspects and the sensory impressions that visiting such places can evoke. The author does a solid job

The Devil Takes You Home is one hell of an engaging read. I love the way this author merges crime and the supernatural, weaving a seamless tapestry of quality characterizations, strange circumstances, and plot twists to deliver a thrilling and often heartbreaking page turner with both brains and guts.
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Thank you to Netgallley and Mulholland Books for allowing me the opportunity to read Iglesias' new novel ahead of publication. I was supplied with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Though I've read some of Gabino's short fiction, The Devil Takes You Home, was my first novel from the author. Its landscape is gritty and dark. Mario's backstory is heartbreaking. I've always loved crime and horror blends, so this was right up my alley. The supernatural elements are of a light touch for the most part, but when they come, they come hard. For me, the horror is Mario's life; I couldn't do it. I have kids and would kill myself if I lost them. The fact that Mario continues on and even daydreams of reuniting with his wife to "try another miracle" was difficult for me to grasp. Aside from this disconnect with the main character, his story sucked me into its darkness and held me there from start to finish. I also appreciated the authenticity of the dialogue and beliefs expressed throughout the novel. Using my Kindle translator for the Spanish conversations was rewarding and made the story more interactive and real.

I devoured this book and would definitely recommend it to anyone.

A compelling genre-bender fueled by unbridled and sometimes righteous wrath. An inciting tragedy transforms a protagonist into a ruthless killer, sending him on a dangerous journey with threats real and fantastical. Part horror, part crime thriller, pure terror. Iglesias uses a fresh perspective to cast an unflinching eye on social issues, racism, and feelings of Other. More ingenious is the way the author uses his deeply flawed protagonist to submerse the reader and confront them with the social commentary.

It's a bleak thrill ride with no easy answers and no easy outs for any of its characters, right up until its bittersweet end. Bravo, Mr. Iglesias.

This book is unapologetic on many levels. Unapologetic with its mix of crime and horror. Unapologetic in its heavy doses of culture, with Spanish liberally sprinkled throughout, oftentimes minus a translation. Unapologetic in its examination of grief. Written in the first-person perspective of a Hispanic man named Mario, the story delves into his daughter's leukemia and his unbidden anger/sadness/hopelessness/... when she unfortunately succumbs to the disease. The grief impacts Mario's relationship with his wife, Melisa, and eventually that relationship suffers the same fate as his daughter. Left without much to care about, Mario teams up with an old friend, Brian, and a cartel member, Juanca, in a scheme to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from a rival cartel. From there, the three of them encounter horrors both supernatural and real. Monsters, but also racism. This is a propulsive, difficult read, and will appeal to readers who aren't squeamish about blood and gore. The movie rights have already sold, and I can't help but start casting some of the main players in my mind. Well done!

Let Him Take You!
Gabino Iglesias hasn’t released a novel since 2018’s Barrio noir, Coyote Songs. This August, this Bram Stoker, Anthony, and Locus award-nominated author will once again drag you through a horrific nightmare of grief, loss, and desperation. One thing you can count on when reading anything by Iglesias you are in for a weird, wild, and strangely violent ride. I found myself reading this book at odd times and in unusual places just to get in one more page. 

Be advised, he unapologetically sprinkles Spanish throughout the novel. It flows like the blood gushing through and out of this tortured tale of a man agonizing the loss of everything he loved—his daughter and wife, and what little life he managed to piece together in a country that dangles its promises in front of far too many—just out of reach. The Devil Takes You Home is as much a horror as it is a crime novel, but it is also a human story. It is a brutal account of a near-impossible heist. It starts with the horror of a happy family losing a child to cancer—a loss that should not have happened and wouldn’t have if life was fair. 

You don’t know horror until you’ve spent a few hours inside a hospital looking at the fitful sleep of a loved one who is being taken from you. You don’t know desperation until the uselessness of praying hits you.

Cancer is just the beginning. It gets darker. Much.

The protagonist, Mario, is a rich and complicated character. Along for the ride is his junky, friend Brian and a cartel man, Juanca. Mario is willing to go any length to hang onto what little piece of hope he can. As his story unravels, it begs the question, how bad can you be and still be good? How much can you witness? How much can you force yourself to do before you lose what makes you human?

Someone needs to give Iglesias duffel bags full of money so he can write full time and bleed more stories. Let him conjure up more “magic” to transport us to a dangerous world between worlds where magic, blood, and hope live. My hope is he won’t make us wait four more years for his next novel.

The release date for this one is August 2nd, 2022. That date coincidently is the release of Don’t Fear the Reaper, Stephen Graham Jones’s followup to last year’s My Heart Is A Chainsaw. Pre-order both of them NOW from your favorite independent bookstore.

Thank you to the publisher, Mulholland Books and NetGalley for the review copy. And an added thanks to Gabino Iglesias for keeping me up late and scaring the shit out of me. Again.

Thank you, Mulholland Books, for allowing me to read The Devil Takes You Home early!

Gabino Iglesias is a renowned author in the horror community and I absolutely understand why. Even though, The Devil Takes You Home is my first reading experience by him I was enthralled and scared simultaneously. Trapped in a web of anxiety-inducing words and sentences. Ready to be prey and meal to Iglesias' genius.

The descriptive blurb for The Devil Takes You Home is absolutely correct. This book is an incredible melding of SA Cosby and Stephen Graham Jones, a combination of crime thriller, noir and the supernatural all thrown together in a mix of superb writing.

Mario is Hispanic, a citizen of the US, who after losing his four year old daughter to leukemia, then loses his wife after he hits her. To try to get his wife back, he agrees to go on a job to kill cartel members and make hundred thousand dollars. Together with his junkie friend Brian, and Juanca, member of another cartel, they embark on a journey across Texas. During that journey, they encounter racism, violence and the supernatural. I’m not going to reveal the ending, but it was a total shocker.

The writing is propulsive, angry at times, and white hot. The sporadic violence is graphic and intense, and some of the images from those scenes are seared into my brain. None of these characters are even close to being likable, and the author really brought them to life. The scenes involving racism towards some of the characters made for very uncomfortable reading.

I have read criticisms of the author’s use of Spanish dialogue, sometimes, but not always, translated later in the text. For me, this was a minor glitch. Though I initially did use Google Translator for some of the dialogue, I found that by doing this I was losing the intensity of the book and so stopped. The lack of translation was not an issue for me.

This is the first book I’ve read by the author, and I’m looking forward to catching up on his back catalogue.

Highly recommended, though if violence makes you cringe, this may not be the book for you.

My thanks to Mulholland Books and to Netgalley for providing an ARC of this excellent novel.

What I got gut wrenching, heartbreak story. Battle between being good having to do bad. Gabino made you hurt off the gate.

The writing is good. It’s hard to understand what is going on in the book though with the frequent switch between English and Spanish conversations.

THE DEVIL TAKES YOU HOME is the kind of novel that builds up tension until it’s deep inside your bones, weighing you down, making it hard to move. Paralyzing, in the best of ways, and worthy of being savored.

Mario's daughter dies and his wife leaves. All he knows is if he had more money his life would be better. In walks a shady guy with a shady opportunity. While on the job supernatural/spiritual things happen and we are pretty much always waiting for the shoe to drop.

This book was interesting. It was disturbing at times and overall entertaining. I did, however, have a hard time getting through this book. Mainly because of the switch between English and Spanish. A few words or phrases are okay but, whole paragraphs left me confused. Granted if I were less lazy I could have looked it up but, I felt like a lot of meaning was lost on me and I missed important pieces.

After Zero Saints, Coyote Songs, and now The Devil Takes You Home, I have just one thing to say: Gabino Iglesias does not fuck around. This new sub-genre of thriller he has created and wholly owns—part high-octane crime novel, part blood-curdling horror, part merciless depiction of the desperation spawned by grinding poverty—is utterly original and devastating. I’ve seen it called barrio noire, and that seems apt to me. Like his other novels, The Devil Takes You Home is set along both sides of the frontera, the U.S./Mexican border. The tone is pitch black, honed to a razor edge, and steeped in a rich, atmospheric stew of Catholicism, mysticism, and supernatural lore. As always with Iglesias, Spanish is sprinkled liberally throughout the novel’s dialogue, lending it authenticity.

The story begins in a moment of grief, sorrow, and rage for a man named Mario. He falls into being a hitman to pay for his young daughter’s overwhelming medical expenses, and then finds himself drawn into the proverbial one last job that promises a large enough payoff to maybe, just maybe, let him start a new life. This leads to a harrowing descent into violence and unspeakable horror.

I won’t give away the particulars here. Those are for you to discover. Iglesias writes with an unfettered, feverish intensity. At the point where other authors might pull back and fade too black, he puts the pedal to the metal with what I’m sure was accompanied by, as he wrote it, a primal scream. There are a couple of scenes in The Devil Takes You Home that made me set the book gently down and step away for a little while. He writes with what I can only describe as a reckless bravado. Even when he’s showing you something you don’t want to see, he does it with such sensory-drenched language, such a flair for description, that you can’t look away. There’s a rhythm to the words, a musicality that I loved.

Iglesias’ characters, to a man and woman, are complicated and original, with backstories often delineated by heartbreak and violence. Mario, in particular, is filled with so much anguish and pain that I found myself understanding the choices he makes, no matter how foolish they ultimately are. The other characters are just as strong.

The Devil Takes You Home is not for the faint-hearted. Iglesias takes you on a tour through a world saturated with blood and defined by evil. It’s a frightening but exhilarating ride. It will be released on August 2nd, 2022. Don’t miss this one.

Be warned, this book stars out BLEAK. Content warnings for child cancer, death of a child, and domestic/intimate partner violence. Woo boy...this was a hard read, particularly getting past the setup. But the plot impetus is very gripping, and Iglesias's writing is, as always, razor sharp and really unique and intriguing. It's what kept me going when the setup was dragging me down, for sure, and it certainly propelled me the rest of the way through. It's a fascinating book with great horror/spec fic elements, to be sure.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This was my first experience reading Gabino Iglesias. I’ve had <i>Coyote Songs</i> on my Kindle forever … I know, I know … I’ll get to it one day. It’s in my ever-growing TBR stack. Going into this I knew the guy had writing chops and had been nominated for a few awards. Honestly, though, I only requested this because of the beautiful cover and the comparisons to SA Cosby. <i>The Devil Takes You Home</i> is Cosby-esque, but decidedly supernatural. In places.

It took a bit to get into this one, I’ll admit: I couldn’t quite connect to the main character despite his sad situation. But as the story went on, and I got to spend more time in his head (this novel is written in the first person) I grew to like him more. He’s just a fairly average guy thrown into some shitty circumstances and has to be sort of a villain to get out. It’s funny, as I’m writing this review I just saw a blurb that said this book is perfect for fans of <i>Breaking Bad</i>, and I thought the same thing—especially in the final fourth or so. It has a very similar vibe, and is sure to get the heart racing just as that show does.

By the novel’s end I finally decided I had to give 5 stars. This is a smart, gritty, thrilling, and occasionally scary story: one I won’t soon forget.

Overall very enjoyable and this makes me want to dive into the writers back catalog.
The scenes had nice set-ups, with a gripping storyline and plenty of thrills to last for the whole book.
Throw in a touch of Supernatural, without overdoing it, and you find yourself wrapped up in the plot.
You find yourself drawn to Mario.
A couple of spots did seem a little long winded, but not so much to take away anything major from the main storyline.

The Devil Takes You Home is quite a page-turner, and I know it will be a great success. It combines atmosphere, character-focused narration, and interiority with an eventful, often quite violent plot, so I think this book will appeal to a variety of different readers. The prose is quite clear and accessible and thought-provoking the same time. I felt very tense and keyed-up as I read, in the way I would watching a thriller movie, and I couldn't put it down for a second! At the same time, the book had me thinking about larger matters such as faith, systematic oppression and inequity, the big moral/ethical questions, and so on.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher, and Gabino Iglesias for the review copy.

I initially chose this book to read based on the cover and brief description. I've never heard of the author and have been itching to branch out of my normal rotation. I'm glad I did. Mr. Iglesias has written a beautiful novel about heartbreak and what we decide to do after. Unfortunately for our main character, he takes a very dark path. He engages with people as an outlet for his grief and shame, but at what cost?

I'll definitely recommend this book once it comes out later this year.

My first dive into Gabino Iglesias. This was very enjoyable.
Nice gripping storyline, and a great blend of a thriller setting with a touch of Supernatural.
It does get violent, but not overly violent to take away from the true plotline.
You do start to feel for Mario. A lot of emotions are within this selection.

After losing his young daughter to cancer and his wife leaving him, Mario begins to do hits to dig himself out of financial despair. The first kill is rough, but he quickly eases into the new lucrative gig.

Then a junkie acquaintance offers him the job of a lifetime, and if they pull it off without getting killed, they’ll both be 200K richer. Along with a brutal gangster named Juanca, they’re off to steal 2 million dollars from a Mexican cartel.

The set up of THE DEVIL TAKES YOU HOME is familiar, but Iglesias takes this simple premise, adds a latent supernatural edge, and manages to create a break-neck pace that had me reading half the story while walking around my living room. Yes, this is THAT exciting, and will easily top many crime and horror best-of lists at the end of the year.

This is a hyper-violent and emotional novel, full of some of the darkest characters out there, yet you’ll be cheering on our anti-heroes as they come face to face with evil in some of its most wicked forms.

This DEVIL is not to be missed.

(Review copy provided by Mulholland Books)