Silvia Moreno-Garcia's stories have yet to disappoint me! I love how effortlessly she is able to include Mexican culture into everything she writes. I did find the main character is this pretty stubborn but other than that, I loved the friendships, the magic, and the music elements.

Moreno- Garcia blows my mind with how her books are all so different from eachother but are always absolutely fantastic, this is my fifth book by her and she hasn't let me down yet!
Signal to Noise is a nostalgic coming-of-age story focusing on three friends who discover the power of magic through music. Ringleader Meche is overbearing and prickly but that makes her softer moments even more tender and I especially felt that in her relationship with her grandmother. Infact for someone that could come across as wholly unlikeable I really felt for Meche, both in the 80s and as an adult. I liked how this story could have just been about magic but was balanced beautifully by exploring friendship families and growing up.

Thank you Netgalley and Rebellion Publishing for providing me with a free digital copy in exchange for an honest review

Io amo Silvia Moreno Garcia, e mi piace il suo muoversi fra diversi generi sempre con un occhio alla tradizione e uno all'innovazione. Mi intrigava l'idea di una magia realizzata attraverso la musica, anche se non avevo idea di come l'avrebbe sviluppata: e la storia alla fine è quella eterna degli adolescenti, delle loro famiglie, delle loro amicizie, dei loro desideri - e di come non vedano che tutto ha un costo, che sia magia o meno. Intelligente, credibile (anche e soprattutto nel mettere in scena una protagonista profondamente antipatica - e che no, dopo vent'anni non è migliorata...), si fa leggere come sempre con vero piacere.

I recently fell in love with Silvia Moreno-Garcia and her writing after completing Velvet Was The Night and The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and when I saw the rerelease of Signal To Noise I jumped to read it. Overall Garcia’s strengths show: deep characters, strong world building but I did not love this book like I did her others.

While the characters were deep, I never cared for them and I even disliked them especially Mercedes and Sebastian. I know they are teenagers throughout the book but they felt like brats. I did feel sympathy over Mercedes parents but the rest of the book, even as an adult, she felt cold, angry and bitter. That was the problem because I never wanted them to succeed, I wanted them to change.

Overall Signal To Noise was not in my favorite books by Silvia Moreno-Garcia but I do look forward to reading her other books!

Silvia is my favorite forever, I would read literally anything she pens. I love this witchy story of misfits figuring out friendship, love, and sorcery. I love her main characters. They’re never sugar sweet and so refreshing. Also the music on this book? 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻

It's hard to know how to classify Signal to Noise, so in the end I have settled on "Fiction/Magical Realism". One thing I enjoy about reading Silvia Moreno-Garcia's works is that every one of them is different, and with each new book you don't know quite what to expect. Signal to Noise is her earliest work, but one I am only getting to off the back of reading several more recent tales. It has a quiet start, initially seeming mostly to be a drama about family and friendship and wounds from the past, before the magical realism elements start to come in, making you wonder if the events that took place were real or just imagination. Interestingly, I read this shortly after watching the musical K-drama The Sound of Magic, and that series featured a few similar ideas. The theme of music running through Signal to Noise is a delight and ties everything together so well. By the quarter mark I was fully immersed in the action and keen to see how the story would progress, and my interest held until the finale--an ending which I found satisfying. If you liked any of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's other books, you will certainly like this one, and if you are new to her writing, Signal to Noise would be a decent place to start. It gets 4.5 stars from me.

(My review will go live on my blog at the link provided below on 30 August, closer to release date for the title. At that time I will also share on Goodreads and across social media.)

I introduced Silvia Moreno Garcia's books to my students recently and they fell in love. This new title - a reprint of SMG's first ever title - is the ultimate slice of nostalgia pie.

This ARC was provided to me via Kindle, from Rebellion and #NetGalley. Thank you for the opportunity to preview and review. Opinions expressed are completely my own.

Wonderful characters, a plot that’s amazing.

I love literally everything Silvia Moreno Garcia writes and this is no exception. I love the characters amd the plot and the setting and how much feeling SMG puts into the story without overwriting it. 5 stars.

Woah! Being able to read Silvia Moreno-Garcia debut re-edition novel was amazing.

Signal To Noise is a wonderful coming of age story.
Meche, Sebastian and Daniela are so well written.
I loved following Meche's story. She felt so relatable and real.
The dual timelines - 1989 and 2009 was pretty neat.
I loved the pop culture references. Even though I was born in 89 I thought it was pretty cool hearing and reading about the music back then.
The details of character, dialogue and setting are some of the best.
If you enjoy a great coming of age story and some good music you'll love this novel!

“I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.”

Rebellion|Solaris,
Thank You for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

Reviewing the reprint from Solaris, which I received as an e-arc via Netgalley. There may be changes between what I read and what is finally published; I hope one of them is to fix the vocabulary error "hierophants" for "sycophants," and another is to remove the numerous coordinate commas between non-coordinate adjectives. Otherwise, apart from the odd slightly off turn of phrase that is probably because the author is not writing in her native language, the writing is highly capable.

I've read a couple of Moreno-Garcia books that I very much loved (The Beautiful Ones and Gods of Jade and Shadow), and one that didn't work for me and that I abandoned partway through (Mexican Gothic). The ones I loved pulled off the move I call the Glorious Ending, where things seem to be going inevitably downhill, because people, but then someone does a truly loving and wise thing and turns the looming tragedy into triumph. The one I didn't love was, I think, the wrong genre for me (the Gothic novel). I found this one closer, unfortunately, to Mexican Gothic than to the other two; it's an 80s-nostalgia book, a very-into-music book, a coming-of-age novel, and features a protagonist who is dealing with her pain by shoving it onto other people, none of which endeared it to me. I did finish it, though.

I grew up in the 80s, though I'm about seven years older than the main characters in this book; they're 15 and at high school in 1989, and I was in my last year at university by then. I wasn't into pop culture, and certainly not popular music, in the 80s, either, which makes me an atypical 80s kid and also means that 80s nostalgia properties don't connect with me all that well. A lot of the music referenced here is in Spanish, as well, since the story is set in Mexico City, and I don't have a frame of reference for it at all. I know some of the better-known English-language songs, like "A Whiter Shade of Pale," but the thing about very-into-music books is that the things that are so evocative for the characters don't necessarily translate for the reader unless that reader is also into the same music and in the same way. The title of a song is just a series of words if you don't have any emotional or cultural context for it, and because the music is so central to the main character, it carries a lot of meaning for her - but little or none for me.

The evocation of the setting is otherwise rich and powerful, I assume because the author is writing from her own experience. There's a decent amount of skill shown, too, in the dual timeline, 1989 and 2009, in the same setting with some of the same characters; a young woman who has escaped from Mexico City to work in Europe as a computer programmer comes back for her father's funeral and has to face up to what happened 20 years before, including a betrayal that is teased for some time before being revealed, which makes sense out of so much of what has gone before.

Unfortunately, though, I didn't get from this book the full Glorious Ending that I got from a couple of the author's later works. The ending is slightly more hopeful than everything preceding it has necessarily prepared the reader for, but only slightly, and I can't help cynically wondering if the relationship that's tentatively (re)formed at the end is doomed by the fact that, honestly, the main character is not well equipped for loving relationships by either nature or nurture.

These are alienated characters who are mostly dealing badly with the disappointments of life (with the exception of the female best friend, Daniela, who, while a bit spineless, genuinely enjoys a relatively conventional life and finds fulfilment in it), and who are, as teenagers, striving earnestly for outcomes that would not actually make them happy and are a bad idea, by means that will cost them more than they realize. As a matter of personal taste, I don't enjoy following such characters, and that's reflected in my low rating for the book.

This is one of those cases where the execution is good, but the book is just not for me.

Hubo una época previa a Spotify, a Internet y otras zarandajas donde el tráfico de cintas de casete era floreciente. Los más expertos hacían sus propias mezclas, con canciones grabadas de la radio y los radiocasetes con doble pletina eran la cumbre del pirateo.

Silvia Moreno-García revive la nostalgia de aquellos tiempos con su novela de debú Signal to noise. Utilizando dos líneas temporales, conoceremos a Meche, Sebastian y Daniela, unos adolescentes mejicanos aislados de sus compañeros (ahora se llamarían bullying, pero antes no) que como forma de rebelarse contra la sociedad comienzan a practicar magia.

Este es uno de los aciertos de la novela, la magia se encuentra en la música que ellos aman y a través de los vinilos que coleccionan tenemos una imagen clara de los hits de la época. Resulta sorprendente la gran influencia de músicos españoles en los jóvenes de Méjico, y aunque intento hacer memoria no creo que el efecto contrario fuera tan acusado. Las canciones nos serán familiares y por tanto, conseguirán que nos sumerjamos más en la lectura.

Signal to noise es una novela de paso a la madurez, donde los protagonistas comienzan a comprender lo que significa ser adulto, con sus pros y sus contras. La magia, aunque está presente, nunca es intrusiva, actúa de forma velada… casi podría decirse que nos encontrarmos ante algo de realismo mágico.

También me parece un acierto los cambios de perspectiva cuando se salta de un momento temporal a otro. El asombro y la inocencia de la juventud transformado en rencor y hastío en la madurez se notan en la voz propia de los personajes en cada capítulo.

Lo que menos me ha gustado es la parte que se desarrolla en la actualidad, porque no parece muy creíble. Es difícil pensar que un reencuentro tras veinte años acabe de esta forma, aunque proporcione una conclusión satisfactoria para la novela.

En definitiva, Signal to noise es una lectura sosegada y relajante. No es fantasía al uso así que no sabría si recomendarla para los lectores habituales del blog, pero si sabes cómo se utilizan en conjunto un boli y una cinta, quizá sea para tí.