Carmen and her daughters Izel and Luna are New Yorkers currently living in Mexico. Carmen is an architect, and her company has netted a solid contract to restore an abbey in Tulancingo. Since Carmen is Latina, her presence is a win-win for the company … except that she's not used to maneuvering through the resentment for her nationality and her gender. The foreman Joaquín is especially macho and aggressive. Confrontations build, offering the foundation of a solid drama about a hardworking woman converting the active and passive chauvinists she's working with. However, author Leopoldo Gout has other things in mind than a story of harassment, corruption, and human drama.

While the mundane world's challenges intensify, a mystery woman arrives with thinly veiled threats. Yoltzi seems like yet another corrupt official until she reveals Carmen's children are in danger, possibly from supernatural forces. It seems like a joke, but Carmen's trusted artisan Quauhtli vouches for this sensitive woman. Then, a strange old lady is sighted walking in the neighborhood, stopping in front of their rented house and gesturing in a pointed, mystical way. Then, someone breaks in while the children are there alone, taking nothing but leaving behind a jade bracelet. Then, a major accident at the worksite reveals a hidden cache of pre-Hispanic artifacts behind a walled off section of the church. Then, Carmen's youngest child starts to develop some strange antisocial behaviors. It is almost a blessing when Carmen's company calls her home due to irreconcilable differences on the work site. She and her daughters can head back to the States and resume life as normal.

Or can they?

Ancient forces do not respect geographic borders. Luna secrets a piñata that is more than a simple craft or toy. It is a repository of bloody history, and the forces aligned with that relic are taking their toll on Carmen's family. Can this single mom figure out what is happening and find a way to free her child from an until-now, dormant god's clutches? In Leopoldo Gout's Piñata, answers are seldom easy and victory is even less often assured …

I love a book that kicks off with solid blows to my gut, heart, or nards.

Piñata manages to hit all three with a killer prologue, which is perfectly heartbreaking, infuriating, and marrow chilling. This sequence chronicles a brief scenario during the Spanish conquest of Mexico when the Catholics would subjugate the Nahua children, forcing them to smash their culture's deities in the forms of piñatas and meting out strict punishments for disobeying the orders to do so. The head friar has a visit from a powerful being that is not his one, true deity and pays a hefty price for his cruelty and insolence … That opening sequence has all the hallmarks of classic Clive Barker fiction, hinting at intriguing lore, a blend of reality with incredibly dark fantasy, a climax that is both gruesome and beautiful, and plenty of heart and horror told with powerful prose. It could well be a gem of a short story, doing quite a bit of work setting the stage for the drama to come.

It therefore comes as a surprise to find Gout shifting gears to a slow burn build up with minor flares of the fantastique for much of the book's opening half. Instead of continuing the mood of that prologue, we get a simmering situation with all the construction yard drama we could ever want. The darker, supernatural elements are sly and subtle at first, building steadily. However, there are no volcanic eruptions quite as potent as that prologue until well into the second half of the book. Instead, we get a work that reads like a companion to William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, spinning a story that finds a mother whose family unit is slowly coming apart as an ancient power unearthed from its entombment increasingly claims her youngest child.

Gout manages to eschew the Catholic trappings, finding a much more intriguing clash of religions to focus his piece on. As well, there's a sense that the cultural history we forget may well come back to bite us, which adds more gravity than Blatty ever achieved for me as a reader. That said, I was primed for something cosmic and cool from the get-go, and it takes quite a bit of time before we get to that place again. So, readers looking for more of the prologue set in the modern era will be disappointed. However, those who are eager for a lovely blend of human drama as well as horror fiction will find their time rewarded as we dig into the lives of our protagonist family: Carmen, Izel, Luna, and their abuela Alma are well-crafted characters, people we can cheer and fear for.

Even better is Gout's inclusion of Mesoamerican cultures that do not get enough visibility in fiction, such as the Nahua and Mexicas. The characters of Yoltzi and Quauhtli are enjoyable secondary characters, whose excursions and tangential storylines offer up some intriguing history lessons as well as drawing upon unfamiliar folklore for both good and ill stakes. Black butterflies, unsettling dreams, and hideous corpse-people blend together in a tapestry of subtle supernatural interactions with the mundane world.

One of the joys found in tales of horror and dark fantasy is the free rein to look at real human fears and concerns through metaphor. Tales of possession can have a lot of resonance and ripples for readers. At its heart, Piñata grapples with possession horror, and it's not difficult to see how that fantasy element can encompass the changes that teenagers undergo as they stretch their own wings and explore personal passions. It seems like tweens/teens can turn into different people overnight, and as the weird forces assail Luna, a generous-spirited and socially acclimated kid becomes foul mouthed and isolated. Carmen is left to rationalize these changes as rising from their vacation or even their vacation being cut short, but those rationalizations cannot cope with the changes yet to come ...

The author has some things to say about being a parent, about the responsibilities of adulthood, and about being a part of a modern world that has little to no time for superstition or history. Sure, there are some strange situations and circumstances featuring inhuman creatures. However, a good portion the horror stems from every parent's dread that their child will change in unnatural ways, heavily touted symptoms of issues like drug use or suicidal depressions. What if the problem is even worse than what the news tells us we need to worry about? What if our kids are chosen for great, terrible things by forces we have no hope of contending with? Gout seems to enjoy asking these provocative questions, providing a potent spine of unease for anyone who has kids, who has nieces or nephews, or friends with kiddos.

From a structural perspective, Piñata's narrative is a tad splintered, jumping between adult and young perspectives with surprising fluidity. Izel and Luna's journey would fit comfortably between the covers of a YA novel, while Carmen's story, the abuela's point of view, as well as a couple of desperate journeys from Mexico when allies make their difficult way to New York are defiantly adult oriented. Some readers may find the shift in focus from adult horror story to a YA tale to be a bit jarring.

Despite the surprising shift in tone and scope between the prologue and main text, Piñata is a good page-turner, which finds a family beset by nightmarish powers having to acknowledge repressed heritages if they are to survive. Gout delivers an interesting work of fright fiction, which employs some untapped elements in its construction. I wish the whole book had veered closer to the prologue in terms of tone, intensity, and effect, but taken on its own merits, Piñata is an enjoyable read.
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A special thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for the opportunity to read an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Ok. So I picked this solely on the cover and brief synopsis. It looked and sounded interesting. I read a lot of everything. From classic to romance to horror and splatter punk. I read it all. But for some reason this just didn’t click with me. It didn’t drag me in like I want my horror story’s to do. I gave it my best shot but was unable to finish it. I may come back and try again but at the moment I don’t think I will. Three stars because I didn’t hate it. It had promise but I just couldn’t finish.

Not enough to keep my attention throughout. Clearly this book wasn't made for me and I need to do a better job of looking out for a few things but it's well written and I'm sure it will get a great audience.

Thanks NetGalley, TorNightfire, and Leopoldo Gout for the eARC of Piñata.

The cover is incredible and the premise mesmerizing, and the exploration of the interwoven horror, haunting, and colonialism of it's cast promising. Unfortunately the writing simply didn't hold up.

While the book is worth a perusal on its merits alone, the pacing is stuttered, the prose uncomfortably bland, and the unfolding of the horror elements anticlimactic.

What fantastic cover art! It’s what initially caught my eye as I was browsing ARCS to request.

I’ve been trying to read every Latin horror book I can find: “The Hacienda”, “Mexican Gothic”, “Certain Dark Things”, etc.

The folklore, the culture, the vibe is just so interesting and compelling in these books. I can see that Piñata tried to capture that, and partially succeeded, but just didn’t flow as naturally. A very interesting book, but a bit dry as I’ve seen other reviewers note.

Definitely give this one a read, but go into it with an open mind, no expectations; I think the reader would enjoy that much more than trying to compare it to “Hereditary” and other Latin horror fiction.


Thank you to NetGalley, the author, & Tor Publishing/ Tor Nightfire for a copy.

Piñata by Leopoldo Gout is seemingly everything I’ve been wanting in books lately- weird paranormal horror. But this one just fell short for me in many different ways. The dialogue, especially the dialogue between the eldest daughter and Carmen, the mother, was just strange to me. Most teenagers don’t speak the way Izel did. It took me out of the story a lot. Secondly, some parts of the book were so heavy in history that it was difficult to keep up if you didn’t already have some background knowledge. There were so many new terms and historical names that were introduced that I didn’t fully grasp which lead to me having a hard time understanding the historical horror aspects.
However, the horror scenes were great! This author is great at imagery. I have such a fear of things with wings that this book really got to me. The other strong point of this book was the characters. I felt like I was able to picture each character and got a good sense of how all the characters related to each other, and how they would react in each situation.
We follow Carmen, a divorced mother, who has two children: Izel and Luna. They go to Mexico during the summer so Carmen can work on a renovation project of an old church. Then an accident happens at the worksite and reveals some old artifacts, but the accident causes Carmen to lose her job. She takes her family back home, but something evil has followed them…
Considering all of this, I am giving this book a 2.5 stars. If you do like books with strong historical elements then this may be the horror book for you. This book is set to release on March 14 2023. Thank you to Tor Publishing and NetGalley for this ARC.

Origin stories of pinatas especially one that has special meaning.

I liked the beginning story that takes place in the distant past and would have preferred to read more of that- even a whole book based on that. I felt that the beginning of the main story focused too much on explaining Carmen’s family situation. And then later on in the book, too much is over-explained- people's feelings, etc.

Inconsistent spelling of Haley- Halley

I thought the book could be condensed so that it is faster paced.

I requested a digital copy in order to sample the prose on my phone (since I don't have a eReader) before requesting a physical copy for review. My review will be based on the physical ARC I read (if I qualify)

DNF - The premise for this story is a fantastic one however this book is a case wherein an author necessitated a very diligent editor to add a flow to the story at hand. The majority of this book is tedious to read through because everything is pedantic; nothing is shown, and everything is told. We did not need an entire section wherein Carmen explained, in detail, how her daughters remind her of herself - we could have gleamed that by instances in the manner in which she treated them, There is far too much build-up within this story to merit the haunting that has already been shown to the reader within the prologue. The entire writing format is didactic & holds no intrigue of the story at hand because it feels as though the tale is being told by a person who really didn't care enough to be invested in listening when a friend of a friend, told it to them for the first time.

I'm sure some of the structural errors will be tended to prior to publication, such as the changing ages of the characters which vary from one chapter to the next.

In all, this could be a very gruesome telling of Mexican lore, religious figureheads of old, colonialism, & horror. Instead, it reads as quite boring & slow-moving to the point where nothing matters because Carmen is on another tangent about god knows what that doesn't actually advance the story but acts to give her character the depth that the author did not in fact write intrinsically. I truly believe that a diligent editor could help make this piece wonderful but as it stands I could not muster the energy to read the entire book set at a snail's pace where the only thing to happen worth reading about was in the prologue.

This novel is completely engaging, beautifully narrated, and absolutely terrifying.

This is a story of possession but not in the traditional way that you might think of. It concerns dark and bloody ceremonies of the past in the Mexican/Aztec history and the need for revenge against those who colonized these people long ago.

A young girl, full of curiosity and light, is the conduit for these evil forces and they wish to use her as a portal to enter this world and take back what is theirs.

Luna is with her mother and older sister in Mexico, the children's first time there exploring their heritage while the mother begins her work there, and through a series of unfortunate circumstances she takes a relic home with her. However, this relic has other things attached to it and what follows them is an evil hell bent on revenge and suffering.

I absolutely raced through this book, unable to stop reading as their situation gets more violent and nefarious. You can readily tell that the author is a poet as his prose is full of wonderfully written accounts of these events yet never veering into word salad territory. And it's just plain frightening!

If you're reading this, I hope you take advantage of reading this novel and I think it will be talked about quite a lot when it releases. I highly recommend this.

Super unsettling (positive) and creepy (also positive.) A strong read and I'm excited to see more work from the author!

Del Toro meets Brom-esque storytelling in this creepy, wonderful book about gods, spirits, and the tethers that exist between them.

Oh man. Piñata has been at the top of my list ever since it was first announced—the description hooked me immediately and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. That’s why I am sad to say it wasn’t a five star read for me.

What I loved: the folklore and the atmosphere. It is sadly all too rare to see a horror novel drawing on indigenous Mexican lore, and I absolutely loved all the details in this novel. Leopoldo Gout really did his research and it shows—the supernatural elements were scary and markedly different from anything I had seen before. The novel also doesn’t shy away from dealing with colonialism and the effects ancestral genocide have on the survivors. I also appreciated the cast of characters, especially the character of Carmen.

What didn’t work for me: given the imaginative and unusual approach to possession, I hoped that the plot would deviate from the formulaic. However, in many ways this was a very by the numbers possession novel, and beat followed predictable beat. Despite this, I kept reading—I wanted to know what happened to Carmen and her family. There is also a kind of pleasure in just enjoying the ride, even if you know where it is headed. The thing that really tipped the book over into three star territory for me was the prose, which verged on painful at times. The dialogue was often stilted and packed with exposition (“It’ll be my first Mexican party, the first authentic piñata I’ll get to break,” said Luna enthusiastically). The narration also leaned heavily on telling rather than showing, to the point where certain pages became tough to get through.

All that said, I love that Tor is publishing diverse horror and I would love to read more novels focusing on Mexican folklore—or any non-US folklore, to be honest.

Thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for an early copy of this book.

3.25 stars
Average.

This was somewhat of a tedious read. It moves very slow. I’m all for slow burn novels but this one was just extra slow.
However, there are a lot of good elements too, the lore and overall atmosphere of the book is great. The story is also very good, it just takes a while to get a decent flow.

It’s not my favorite but I’m happy to have read it.

Thanks @NetGalley and @TorNightfire for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. I can’t overstate how excited I’ve been to read this one! I’ve had this title sitting on my want to read shelf since I first heard about it and read the synopsis, and I definitely did a little happy dance when I was approved.

Unfortunately this one was hard for me to get into(aside from the killer prologue of an Aztec village being completely defiled by Spanish invaders)— there’s a lot of mundane details of everyday life with the family we’re following that don’t go anywhere. It was a little overly-done for my tastes and left me wishing for more of the action from the prologue. The pacing is pretty slow, and every new plot point is super “this is a horror tale, so this is the order of operations” predictable. The only thing that elevates this above just another cliche possession story is the vibrant Nahua history and lore that’s baked into this story.

Gout’s writing style was a miss for me—I felt the over-explanatory, dry nature of the prose took away from my interest in the story as opposed to adding to it. It didn’t “flow” well for me and was a bit tedious to read. There was never a point that I was really itching to get back to the story after putting it down.

I’ve seen this novel compared generously to Hereditary, A Head Full of Ghosts and Mexican Gothic…Please PLEASE, for the love of god, stop comparing average stories to big, buzzy, masterful horror works. Doing so just sets novels like this up for failure. This story is NOTHING like any of what it’s being compared to, so fans of any of these works are going to be disappointed.

I had such high hopes for this one, which is why it absolutely KILLS me to say that, despite being such a culture-rich story, it was just ok in its execution. I don’t think I’d take the time to read it again. IM MAD ABOUT THAT, because I’d been so looking forward to reading this baby.