Lucha of the Night Forest is a powerful story about sisterhood. It's a force that pulls you through the story. That no matter what happens, Lucha will always try to save her sister. In a world surrounded with inequity, with drugs, and power, Lucha is about to risk everything to save her home and her sister. Lucha of the Night Forest is a story that unfolds and expands. With an immersive forest setting, it features characters who are trying to protect each other. Fleeting moments of power, bargains and compromises, if you love Kay Mejia's writing style, you'll have to add Lucha of the Night Forest to your TBR.

Lucha of the Night Forest by Tehlor Kay Mejia is a young adult fantasy. It has plenty of mushroom magic, sapphic longing, and good vs. evil. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

• As if power or money had ever made a better man.
• ...art never told the whole truth.
• The only thing heavier than a parent's presence is their absence.

I would have liked to see at least one male character that wasn't a villain. The romance suffered from instalove, which I'm not a huge fan of. There were some pacing issues with the time spent in the forest vs other parts, but the book was well written and enjoyable for the most part.

Heavy CW for drug addiction and threats of male violence.

DNF at 70%

I really tried to finish this one. Really, I did. But every time I tried to read, it felt like the words were running away. I had no grasp on what was happening, and I never had time to really absorb the plot because it moved so fast. This book felt like a speedrun. I appreciate that it was a standalone, but I feel like it destroyed what this one had to offer. Not for me

If you've ever thought that the movie Jupiter Ascending needed fungal horror and a creepy forest, then this is that book!

Lucha reminded me of Koral from Monsters Born and made and Katniss from The Hunger Games – a girl desperate to save her family. She willingly enters a dangerous forest where monsters, lost gods, witches are rumored to lurk, and giant white mushrooms that feel like they have appeared straight from my nightmares. When a deal goes wrong that brings Luche connected to a missing god, the forest learns to answer her anger. With the help of an acolyte, Luche might survive destroying the drugs that harm her community.

Tehlor Kay Mejia has already proven talented at writing horror, as seen with the middle-grade series Paloa Santiago. The Night Forest is terrifying and gives me another reason to avoid unusual mushrooms. I admire Lucha's ruthlessness, which makes a beautiful juxtaposition against the tender care she shows for her sister. However, there were times when I had trouble discerning between the two POVs, one first-person and the other third-person, the switch in style almost throwing me out of the story. And while the plot is ambitious for a stand-alone, a duology would have worked better with the pacing and narrative structure.

That said, Lucha and the Night Forest is a book about the allure of power and the lengths people will go to have it.

NetGalley provided a copy. All opinions are my own.

Lucha of the Night Forest is my first book by the author and now I’m even more excited to read the other two I own. This YA fantasy book was a great escape. And let talk about the cover. Isn’t it absolutely beautiful?! It was one of the main reasons I felt drawn to this book. I absolutely enjoyed the sapphic love love element, but I do wish I would’ve been fleshed out slightly more. But maybe that was the point… How much can you flesh out a budding romance when you’re dealing with circumstances like the ones Lucha found herself in? It could be because I have a cold, but this book freaked me out more than I thought it would, but take that information with a grain of salt.

Thank you so much to the author and @tbrbeyondtours for my review copy and allowing me a spot on the tour! I am in no way influenced in my review. Make sure to check them out for future tours🤩
https://tbrandbeyondtours.com/

𝔽𝕒𝕧𝕠𝕣𝕚𝕥𝕖 𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕖𝕤:
✨ Strange things happened in the Bosque de la Noche every day, that much was known in all of Elegido. Monsters were born and died without a human ever laying eyes on them. Witches and spirits and (some said) even deities walked in its shadows
✨ There was no goddess, Lucha had known that for a long time. No savior. There was only what you were willing to do for the people you loved. Only what you were willing to pay for their freedom
✨ Many of them seek power for themselves. Some for righteous reasons, some for less. But the world strives toward balance. Power, and responsibility. For those aware of this balance, they must always exist together

Lucha

I’ll make this simple. I trudged through the first 70% of this book waiting for it to end. And the. The last 30% felt incredibly rushed. I wanted to see more depth in the characters. Paz had no personality, Lis was really boring as well. I loved the potential of this story, but I found myself not caring what happened to anyone in the story and just wanting it to be over. I feel like it needed editing in the middle specifically because all I was doing was reading about the forest and cliffhangers at every chapter end… but they didn’t make me want to continue. I have loved other works from this author, but this one just was not it for me.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

Lucha of the Night Forest follows Lucha, a girl who makes a deal to protect her sister.

This was a fun, fast-paced sapphic fantasy. While I did think some parts were rushed, Lucha was easy to root for. The magic system was intriguing and the overall plot kept me riveted, and wrapped up nicely. As with most stand alone fantasies, I could've read a hundred additional pages in this book and been happy, but overall it was an enjoyable read.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Lucha of the Night Forest by Tehlor Kay Mejia is a dark YA fantasy full of coolness and danger. The story revolves around Lucha, whose sister has left her to serve a true villain. Lucha will do anything to save her. She'll awaken her unknown forest powers. She'll team up with a dark entity. She'll even sacrifice her own life if it means that her sister will be safe. Will Lucha succeed in her goal, or will her powers get the best of her?

Here is an atmospheric excerpt from Chapter 1:

"Robado was a night place, and tonight Lucha Moya was glad of it. In night places, no one looked twice at a girl like her. Even one with a long knife strapped to her belt.
...
Revelry wasn’t Lucha’s purpose tonight, but the crowd served her needs nonetheless. She slipped in among the bodies, moving north, trusting that her expression would deter conversation if her knife didn’t. She had no friends to worry about offending. None in the south ward, nor in this entire cursed city.
But no one came to the Scar—named for its utterly barren land—to make friends. In fact, no one came here at all. You were born here, you died here, and you lamented your rotten luck every day in between."

Overall, Lucha of the Night Forest is an amazing, Hispanic-inspired YA fantasy full of danger. One highlight of this book is how it was darker than I anticipated. This definitely veers on the darker side of YA. Content warning: threats of physical and sexual violence to girls/women. Another highlight of this book is how cool Lucha's forest powers are. I thought they were so cool, and I loved reading about Lucha's journey. If you're intrigued by the excerpt above, or if you're a fan of YA fantasy in general, I highly recommend that you check out this book when it comes out in March!

Lucha of the Night Forest begins in the Scar, a desolate drug-ravaged community run by the merciless Los Ricos. At age 16, Lucha knows the biggest dangers to survival are trust and hope. Her father is dead and her Olvida addicted mother is missing, leaving Lucha and 13-year-old Lis to fend for themselves.

From the start, this story is dark and heartbreaking. Author Tehlor Kay Mejia doesn’t pull any punches, and Lucha’s desperation is palpable. The reader, too, finds their own hopes for Lucha repeatedly dashed as she and Lis fall victim to Los Ricos.

At rock bottom, Lucha makes a deal with El Sediento, a nightmare incarnate from the mysterious Bosque de la Noche. His power will allow Lucha and Lis to escape, and together they will destroy Olvida and Los Ricos.

The author’s skill in world building is clear from the first page. As Lucha moves through Robado, the city and its inhabitants were as clear in my mind as a motion picture. By weaving mood and mythology through this detailed imagery, Mejia truly brings this world to life. The constant sense of unease and danger were acutely felt in the pit of my stomach.

As much as I love stories with magic and fantastical creatures, this book’s strength is in the truths it tells about human nature. Mejia explores the lure of power and how it corrupts, along with the choices we make when we’ve run out of options. Themes of freedom, loneliness, forgiveness, free will, and responsibility are integrated throughout.

Lucha of the Night Forest is a YA fantasy, a coming-of-age story, a sapphic romance, and a critique of those who wield power. Readers who travel with Lucha won’t be disappointed and might even find hope at the end.

Thank you to TBR and Beyond Tours, Make Me a World, Random House Children’s Books, and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced digital copy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Children's for allowing me access to this book. I actually enjoyed this more than I thought I would! This world is incredibly interesting, cruel, and beautiful. And I enjoyed the relationships between the main characters. It was a fast read and it was pretty action packed. A good 4 star ⭐️ read.

This was a good fantasy! The magic system was SO interesting, Magic mushrooms? Are you kidding me? Also, I loved Lucha as a main character. She was so strong and cynical, but she also had so much love to give. The plot was cool too! I loved the idea of her adventuring through the magical forest with her sister and a budding romance.

I gave it three stars because the pace was very confusing. A couple of other people mentioned this, but a few pages would take place over months while the rest of the book took a week, with little or no explanation about the time span. It made for a confusing experience.

Also, I'm sorry, but we know NOTHING about the sister, while she was the catalyst for the whole plot. Honestly, Lucha didn't seem to like her much either.

All in all though, it was a fun quick read! If you're looking for a darker YA with a cool magic system, consider checking this book out.

Lucha of the Night Forest is a fast-paced, entertaining, and emotional read. Lucha will do whatever it takes to take care of her sister, including tracking down the horrible creatures that live in the magical forest and their mother when she's disappeared down the rabbit hole of drugs for too long. This time however their mom isn't coming back, she's taken so many drugs that she doesn't even remember who she is let alone that she has kids at home that need taking care of.

When Lucha's sister is taken, and, she's thrown in a cell where no one will find her, Lucha embraces the darkness, the man who lives in the shadows, and her magical powers to get herself out and rescue her sister. She only has to agree to one thing, and it's something she already wants desperately.

I was fully invested up to and a little past this point in the story. I loved the way Lucha was able to wield her magic and the ferocity with which she did it to protect her sister. The forest was beautiful and deadly... my favorite kind to read about, and the writing was so vivid I could picture everything taking place. The parts where it lost me a bit were mostly the romance between Lucha and Paz, it didn't seem like they really knew enough, or even interacted enough to have that level of feelings for each other at the end of the book, and I didn't feel much chemistry between them. Also the way it ended almost made it feel like there should be more. It left me feeling a bit unfinished.
However, these few things were pretty minor in my feelings for the book as a whole. The writing sucked me in, and Lucha and her ferocity, ingenuity, and well everything about her, kept me flipping pages waiting to see how everything was going to play out.

An amazing fantasy! I loved the setting so much, and the world building was amazing! I really liked this one, and I look forward to more from Tehlor Kay Mejia.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 4 stars
Thank you to the author for providing me with an eARC of this book via TBR and Beyond Tours in exchange for an honest review!

Lucha of the Night Forest is a young adult story about Lucha, who makes a dangerous bargain to rid the world of a forgetting drug and to save her sister.

“Remember who you are. Remember that you have a choice.”

My attention was really grabbed by the synopsis and the gorgeous cover this book has. It made me very curious to start reading this book from the moment I had it on my kindle app! I am all for a magical forest, adventure and high stakes in books and this is a book that has all three.

The plot starts of quite slow and remains like that for almost 50-60% of the book, when it finally picks up. I have to be honest and say I didn’t really enjoy the first half of the book a lot. It felt a bit dragged and it didn’t seem as if the story was making much progress. It did lay down the “ground rules” of the world, showed the world Lucha lives in and what the drug does. I did really enjoy the second half a lot better, from the moment the pacing picks up.

The magic system is really beautifully and cleverly done, but I feel like I could’ve had a deeper understanding of the system itself. I do like how Lucha uses the powers she has to fight and not just sit back and watch what’ll happen.

The whole story is told from Lucha’s POV, so while we learn a lot about the world from her perspective, I do wonder what more a second POV could’ve brought to this story. It might have battled the parts where I missed a certain depth to the story.

The characters are nice, but I didn’t love them. What I liked most about Lucha is her loyalty, bravery and the love she has for her sister, for whom she is so selfless. I also liked the growth she had and learning to understand why her mother is like she is. It would be good for people to read that realization, because I feel like a lot of people don’t understand addiction and the need to escape, which this book can teach.

There was a little bit of romance in this book, but I feel like it was very novel and didn’t have a lot of time to truly develop into something strong and beautiful. I did like the bit of chemistry that the characters showed. I also really loved the portrayal of the sisterhood between Lucha and Lis.

I really loved how this book ended! It was a conclusion I hadn’t expected and at the same time it fits perfectly to the story. I think any other ending would’ve brought down the weight of the importance of having a choice.

Overall, Lucha of the Night Forest is a fantasy book that has a deeper meaning than it seems at the start. It starts of really slow, but the end is worth it.

I'm a fan of this particular author, so I think I inclined to like this novel from the start. Magic, Mexican myth, and a corrupted reflection of the Christ story help make this semi-gothic adventure compelling and highly readable. There is an ongoing love-at-first-sight romance (same sex) that I felt didn't really add much and at times the insistent will-they-won't-they actually got in the way of the primary plot. I suspect it is a stand alone book but if it isn't, I'd be excited to learn more about Lucha's later adventures. It does not appear to be set in the same world at Mejia's other fantasy series (which is also excellent)

Lucha wants to be free from poverty or the leering strangers, and that isn't something that comes easily at all in the city. The Night Forest outside of the city is supposedly uninhabitable, and there are tales about El Sediento stealing souls. Lucha has a younger sister, one she can't bear to leave behind despite her desire to escape.

The description of Robado and the forests outside it are fascinating. I love the thought of the forest full of trees and mushrooms as tall as trees, and there are superstitions surrounding components found in said forest. There's also a drug that causes people to forget their problems. Lucha's problems stem from her mother constantly wanting that drug, a younger sister hungry at home, and people she used to know siding with the cartels and military that keep trying to cut down the forest to expand the city. Lucha hunts for plants or monsters in the forest to bring back for cash and must find her mother within a day or they'll be evicted and at the mercy of thieves, soldiers, and the drug runners. Lucha must protect her thirteen-year-old sister as best as she can, and that's best done by finding her mother.

Of course, things are more complicated than that, and Lucha is captured by the military while her sister Lis volunteered to be used by them. It's a terrible situation for them both and was always meant to be a lose-lose situation. If Lucha didn't have some semblance of power that she could bargain with, both girls likely would have been killed and there would be no story. Since she does, Lucha strikes a bargain with Salvador for power. It's not a fair bargain, and he is full of lies, but as the story progresses it's really unclear which of any of the characters is truly honest. We learn about the gods' actual history, how the forgetting drug was developed, and find out the true nature of Salvador's lies. It's a fascinating progression, one I really enjoyed following. There is no singular truth, just reflections upon broken people doing the best they can in an imperfect and broken world.

In the beginning, there's such focus on the evils of the world, on the way that power corrupts so absolutely in the city. We have a reflection of this later, in that protecting a sanctuary can still lead to isolating others and using power to reward loyal followers. This is a corruption of pure intention, but it's always about choices. There's no fate for Lucha to fall back on, everything comes down to the choices she makes and the intention of her actions. This is a story about families, no matter how broken or unable to meet the needs of others, and the power of love and forgiveness. It's a beautiful message within this book and was a lot of fun to read.

Lucha of the Night Forest caught my attention as a "fantasy about a girl who will do anything to protect her sister". I love stories about siblings going to great lengths to protect each other and the book does deliver on that.

I've spent a few days trying to find the right word to describe how this book felt to me and I have settled on that it's just kind of surface level in terms of world building and character development. At the start of the book I was very invested, but as I kept reading my interest lessened.

But this book is fast paced and a bit dark with a sapphic romance and I think a lot of other people will like this book more than I did.

Thank you to NetGalley for making this book available in exchange for an honest review!

Thanks NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC of this novel. 3/5 stars.

While it is an incredibly fast paced novel, I found myself rushing to finish it because it did not hold my attention. Lucha is some sort of warrior bounty hunter who ends up imprisoned for several months because she can also control nature...so she makes a deal with the local lore's boogeyman that grows her powers and she has to embark on a quest with him...but then everything backfires...and backfires again...and again. There was just a lot of plot twists in the novel.

I enjoyed the fantasy aspect of it. The latinx inspiration for it. The beautiful queer romance in it. But the rest of it was just...meh? I appreciate it being a standalone, but there were SO many questions about the worldbuilding that were left unanswered ESPECIALLY when a majority of the plot revolves around this mythology and power dynamics.

The cover is also stunning, though.

Lucha just wants to take care of her sister and survive. When she joins forces with a godly presence in a moment of desperation, she has no idea of the journey and the heartbreak ahead of her. A beautifully wrought and introspective story that takes place in a world of lush jungles, darkness and hope. A must read fantasy.

Trigger Warnings: Drug use, addiction, withdrawal, assault, violence

Lis is all Lucha has left, which means she will do anything to protect her - even if that means making a deal with El Sediento and his dark forces.

This did honestly take me a moment to get into it, and that’s due to me being distracted while reading and trying to draw out the world Tehlor Mejia had built in this novel. The place where the sisters are from is literally a mud pit, nothing grows there, but it still has so many layers to it. Then they went into the forest and the plants and animals there were also on another level. And, there is mushroom magic!

Lucha dealt with a lot in this book and she didn’t always choose the best or easiest path. She would do what it took to get where or what she wanted, and that sometimes included killing those she thought deserved it. It made me like Lucha a bit more, because she wasn’t perfect and her life was most definitely far from it, but through her flaws (and making a pact with someone she really shouldn’t have) she fought and grew to make it better.

The romance of this book I felt like wasn’t the biggest deal, which I kind of liked. I’m not much for YA where the focus is the romance, which is why I think I like Mejia’s writing because though it is there, it’s not the only thing on the mind of the main character.

I would recommend this book for those who like intricate world building with a badass female lead who will stop at nothing to save and protect those who she loves.

*Thank you Make Me a World / Random House and NetGalley for an advance digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review