This was definitely a unique take on the haunted house story, and I definitely enjoyed it! Estela finds herself shipped off to Spain, months after a terrible tragedy took the lives of her parents and everyone else who was on the subway with them- everyone, that is, except for Estela. She's obviously going through it- survivor's guilt, horrific grief, the unbearable pain of wondering if she could have somehow saved them. It's bad. But after a stint at an inpatient facility, apparently some long-lost family of her mother's is found- only, those folks are in Spain. And they live in a town that can best be described as... eerily unusual.

At the center of said town is the big ol' titular castle. And as the title also clues us into, there is something cursed going on. Estela's family isn't exactly giving her the warm fuzzies, despite the fact that she's been to hell and back, they just keep giving her vague warnings to basically tamp down her curiosity. It's as if they never encountered teens before, and think that "don't open any doors or investigate anything" won't just make her do the exact opposite.

But obviously she's going to dig, because who wouldn't? I would, and I am an old. So. The townspeople are also a little... different, so Estela is really unsure of who, if anyone, she can trust. There are a lot of great twists and turns, which I appreciated, but also some more introspective moments for Estela to try to figure things out. There is a romance, which did seem a bit insta-lovey to me, and is probably my only complaint. There are times it is quite dark, but there is also some humor to balance it out. Basically, another solid novel from Romina Garber!

Bottom Line: Creepy and dark, but with enough humor and heart to balance it out, this was an atmospheric adventure that I quite enjoyed!

I was initially drawn in by the mystery and gothic vibes. This book is a bit slow and then toward the end it starts to give more, which I think works well with the story in order to keep you interested. I was able to guess some of the plots because I start to jump to conclusions as soon as a little piece of information is given. I felt like the romance was a rushed and I wanted a bit more chemistry. The story did not go how I initially thought it was gonna go and I was shocked at some revelations. Sadly, it did not turn out to be a new favorite of mine. There were certain things I would have loved to happen differently.

This book is perfect for a fall/spooky season read. I wish I could have loved it more but I’m confident that other people will enjoy it.

Thank you to the author, St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley for this e-ARC.

4.25 stars!!! I really enjoyed this book! It was a well done gothic romance that kept me turning the page over and over again! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a chance to read an eARC! I really felt like I was able to completely immerse myself in this book and it was just so enjoyable to read!

2.5 stars

My main gripes with this book are all spoilers, which I try to leave out of reviews, so this will probably be short. Billed a gothic romance, this book follows Estela after the sudden and mysterious death of her parents as she's sent to Spain to live with an aunt she's never met in a castle rumored to be haunted. She meets a boy with silver eyes that no one else can see, and starts to wonder if her parents' death is connected to her family history and the castle.

The first ~70% of this book is quite slow, and then suddenly the last ~30% is so fast it's hard to keep up with what's going on and why. There are so many plot threads introduced at the end and only lightly explored that it's disorienting, and then wrapped up equally fast. I was also really not sold on the romance, it felt like it went from 0 to 100, and even more so once I realized that the events of the book all happened within TWO WEEKS. The FMC felt younger than 17 for a lot of the book in her thought processes and reactions, which is fine, but then when there were suddenly ~intimate~ scenes I felt a little weird reading them. One other issue, there is a lot of Spanish dialogue and text in this book, which makes sense since it takes place in Spain, but not all of it is translated to English. I think I pieced together what was being said well enough from context clues, but that was a bit of an annoyance. I think overall this was just not for me, but maybe a teen who's just getting into reading and fantasy might enjoy it more. Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

Castle of the Cursed
By Romina Garber
Publication Date: July 30, 2024

Okay, but the way the last page of this book left me aghast...

This is the perfect book if you're looking for a YA gothic fantasy with a creepy Spanish castle, spells and curses, vampires, and a paranormal romance. Castle of the Cursed had so many twists and turns that I didn't expect and a murder mystery that kept me guessing.

This story takes place in a creepy castle in Spain, and I really loved how Spanish dialogue was interwoven within characters' conversations, as well as the references to various Spanish foods like croquetas, tortilla de papas, gazpacho, and paella. It truly left my mouth watering and wishing I was back in Madrid.

Among the horror and gothic elements, the FMC is dealing the tragic loss of her parents, so please be aware that this book also tackles themes of depression, suicide, grief, and survivor's guilt.

Overall, I had a good time and I appreciate the ride this book took me on. I also have to admit that I agree with other early reviews that this book is a mix of Twilight and telenovela vibes, so pick this up if that feels intriguing to you.

Thank you @Netgalley and @Wednesdaybooks for providing me with an eARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

3.5 / 5.0

Castle of the Cursed by Romina Garber has intense gothic vibes and sets a spectacular scene. The cast of characters are mysterious but do not feel grounded in the plot. I enjoyed the writing in this and how the story developed, but the ending felt weak and then outright goofy.

Overall, it is a good read and not too extreme though there are significant trigger warnings. Be advised before reading.

Until Next Time,
MC

Castle of the Cursed is the first book I’ve read by Romina Garber, and I’m so glad I buddy read it with Leah @ Leah’s Books because we had a great time analyzing the characters, making predictions, and talking about the author’s amazing writing style.

The story is a suspenseful and mysterious Gothic romantasy that follows Estela, who journeys to her family’s castle after the tragic death of her parents. I loved the Gothic vibes and the mystery surrounding the castle, the town, and her family. La Sombra isn’t just a castle. It becomes a character itself, and the sinister secrets it holds are fascinating. I think I found La Sombra almost as intriguing as the characters and love how immersive the setting is. The imagery and figurative language create a dark and atmospheric backdrop for the story.

Almost as mysterious as La Sombra is one of its inhabitants. Sebastián is trapped at La Sombra and can’t remember his life before waking up there. He’s a mysterious shadow who spent all his time alone until Estela arrives. He has an interesting and brutal backstory, but losing his memory, spending so much time alone, and developing a relationship with Estela allows us to see a softer, more vulnerable side to him, a side Sebastián never knew existed.

Estela is a fascinating protagonist as are some of the secondary characters, especially her aunt and her new friend Felipe. I love how the author created such unique and layered characters, each with their own compelling story to tell. As Estela works to figure out the mystery surrounding her parent’s death and break the curse that has plagued her family for generations, she also learns about the townspeople, her childhood, and more. Garber makes good use of flashbacks, and those, as well as the many twists and turns, kept me guessing and invested in Estela’s story.

Like the characters, this story has a lot of layers, and just when I thought I knew where the plot was headed, it went in a direction I totally didn’t expect. It definitely kept me on my toes and made for a fun buddy read. A mesh of Gothic mystery and paranormal romance, it’s an immersive, suspenseful, and unique story. Special thanks to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for providing me with a copy of the book. All thoughts are my own.

This was an interesting book but I ended up DNF at 25%. I found this book needed a more thorough list of trigger warnings.

Estela and her parents (her father especially) like to play Sherlock and Watson until one day, Estela's entire life changes. Facing intense survivor's guilt and PTSD, Estela is rescued from the mental hospital by an aunt she didn't even know about and is whisked away to the titular castle, La Sombra in Spain.

Her aunt is strange, the town is strange and the castle is stranger yet. Her aunt, the town doctor, is cold and distant and seems less than thrilled to be saddled with a teenager. She leaves Estela with one rule : no one is allowed inside the castle. She also wants her to take Spanish language classes with a young man in town. However, it doesn't take long for the supernatural to begin to happen especially with the appearance of Sebastian.

The love triangle potential ends rather quickly (by someone being a creep) and honestly if there was something that didn't work for me it was the romance. I hate insta-love and this whole thing takes I think two weeks and the almost sex scenes seemed forced and in weird places plot wise, like why would anyone stop for sex at this juncture outside of a schlocky slasher fic plot?

I will give it that it has a creative take on the whole vampire prince trope. There were twists and turns I didn't expect and I did like Estela for the most part. She has a lot of flaws but someone that young having so much life changing crap happening, you can forgive her those issues. At about the 50% mark the big twists start happening and that's about all I want to say about those.

I enjoyed this and would look for more by this author.

I wanted a dark, gothic, Spanish-inspired fantasy tale... and unfortunately this did not deliver.

The initial mystery was very compelling - Estela is the sole survivor of a subway tragedy, and an estranged aunt invites her to live with her in their family's ancestral castle in Spain.

From there, the plot goes in so many directions, and none of it felt like it actually worked together. A sentient monster castle, family secrets, a boy only Estela can see, magic, witches, AND SO MUCH MORE THAN DID NOT MAKE SENSE.

The romance was weird and based on, let's face it, very little.

This is a book that I rage read, and I regret everything. Two stars for the use of Castellano Spanish and the description of Spanish foods.

⭐️⭐️
Genre: Gothic Urban Fantasy
Age Level: Upper YA
Content: heavy makeouts, brief/mild open door

I think this book is having a bit of an identity crisis…and I have no idea how to rate it because of this. But I audibly snorted far too many times to rate it above 2.5 stars, so that’s where I’ve landed.

From the book synopsis, I went into the story expecting something with Starling House gothic horror spooky-killer-house vibes, but soon realized this was to be more of an over-the-top telenovela mashed with Twilight vampire love and Dark Shadows camp.

With the serious overtones of the first couple of chapters (along with the trigger warnings) it took me a hot minute to realize what the book was trying to do - and this really took away from the story for me. I couldn’t tell if it was trying to be serious or campy. It missed the mark for me with the whiplash of “wait, what?”

Unfortunately the pacing is off. The age of the characters honestly feels bizarre. And the romance was so so very flat.

It also seems to bounce genres from a gothic fantasy, to campy horror to science fiction? I think this can be done, but unfortunately here it feels like it all got away from the author and the plot doesn’t make sense in the end.

Hopefully it finds its audience, but I think the summary and promotion could use a tweak to help with that search.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an advanced electronic copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Netgalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review. DNF 23%. I really had a rough time with this one. The narrator was good but she had some interesting narration choices that I didn’t love. This was a lot darker than I thought it would be from the description and the list of trigger warnings is definitely necessary. I thought we were just having a fun gothic romance with a castle but it’s a bit creepy and dark which I wasn’t expecting. The main character is badly depressed which is understandable after your parents died but gosh it was a downer. When you aren’t expecting that it’s hard to get through 😂 I didn’t like where the romance was going at all. This book clearly just wasn’t for me. The castle was cool and I enjoyed that Spanish was used and not always explained. Besides that I didn’t enjoy it 😂

I would like to thank Wednesday Books (St Martin's Press) for providing me with an advanced copy to review. Castle of the Cursed will be available on July 30 2024 at your local bookstore or public library.

Estela has never had a home but has a life with her parents on the road, her mom is a freelance journalist and her dad is a private investigator who has taught Estela how to solve mysteries which comes in very hand after a crazy accidents takes away her only family and lands her in front of a castle in Spain with her only remaining family, a cold and distant aunt Beatrice.

This book was such a fun time. It felt like a combined Twilight with a Spanish a telanovela, there is supernatural suspense, hidden identities, magic spells and impossible romance. Estela begins to heal and find out that there is so much more to her life, even in the wake of losing her parents. She overcomes impossible events and learns just how powerful she can be.

Thank you to Wednesday Books for the eARC and opportunity to review this title early!

Castle of the Cursed really surprised me, and even with the synopsis, I didn’t fully know what I was getting into at first. I also don’t read many gothic stories, but I enjoyed this one. Estela is such a smart heroine and the mystery pulled me in from the first chapter. The writing flowed so well that it just kept me reading chapter after chapter.

The story deals with some sensitive topics, so I would be aware of those before reading, but overall, I really enjoyed this!

I loved the gothic and Spanish-language aspects of Castle of the Cursed, but felt constantly sidelined by reveals and turns of events that eventually made me lose interest in the story.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with a free ARC in return for an HONEST review.

Ok…I don’t usually do reviews on books that I disliked or found so many faults with, but I felt I needed to in this case.

My review is basically just one big spoiler so proceed with caution.

SPOILERS***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS***

The premise of this book sounded really interesting and it started out really good. It had that spooky, dark, Spanish Gothic horror movie vibe to it - sort of The Invitation meets El Orfanato (The Orphanage) with a splash of 30 Monedas (30 Coins), at least that’s how I saw it in my head…You had a town full of creepy founding families that didn’t pay rent or for services with money…they paid with their blood…but we only ever heard/learned about one of those families because their son, Felipe was tutoring Estela in Spanish and he was also obsessed with her except he wasn’t really obsessed with her he just didn’t realize that. So, for the first portion of the book after the tragic subway deaths and the mental hospital stay we get the backstory on the town and the castle Estela has been carted off to. This was done in a great way. It had me hooked. I was curious about the town’s history, what the hell her Aunt was giving her every night instead of her prescribed medication, and what/who was the smoky creature/person she kept coming across that was threatening to kill her if she didn’t remove the spell she put on him…because she’s supposed to be a witch (but that plot point kinda gets forgotten about) Then it starts to get a bit wonky when Sebastian the smoke creature guy bites Estela and we witness him(through a memory)…playing with a blue baby bear that his father later murders in front of him…? What? Is he an alien? An inter-dimensional alien vampire? I’m so confused at this point. So, of course Estela falls hard for this “creature” that has threatened to kill her basically every time he sees her after she throws herself at him and shoves her tongue down his throat.

I can ignore the immature insta-love on Estela’s end seeing how’s she’s an almost 18 year old and we all thought every crush was love back then. I can also ignore the fact that she missed so many red flags when it came to Felipe. Dude was a walking, talking red flag, but she never really had friends, she was in a different country/culture, etc. What I can’t ignore is how the story basically went from a supernatural, Gothic horror story to some weird ass ripoff of The Magicians at about the 68% mark. It was like I was reading a completely different book at that point. A book I did not like or have any interest in reading.

So, the founding ancestor of the Estela’s bloodline and castle is some sort of creature that’s literally banging his way across different universes/dimensions and his offspring all end up at a mirror image of the castles in their own worlds? Oh, and they hate humans, and they “feed” the castle they currently reside in when they “graduate” but they don’t know what that means…like, they don’t know what anything means. They’re just a bunch of blood thirsty assholes except for Estela’s twin sister (that she didn’t know about)but then she turns into some diabolical mastermind too.

The dialogue in this book is weird and does not flow at all. I’m not talking about the sections where it’s a mix of Spanish and English, that was normal. I’m talking about the fact that the flashbacks of Estela and her sister have them talking (and thinking/acting) like grown ass adults as 6 year olds for starters. Then we have Sebastian…he comes from a completely different dimension/realm and learns English somehow by reading all the books in the castle…the books that are all in Spanish…because this takes place in Spain. He also somehow goes from using very formal, almost broken English to making sexual innuendos and using a much more colloquial way of speaking even though Estela doesn’t speak that way. Is he getting tutored in American Slang 101 when he just poofs away during daylight hours?

Then we have Antonela. Like I said above, her storyline is basically a weird ripoff of The Magicians that takes over around the 68% mark. I don’t know what inspired our author to go this route, but she did…Antonela definitely got the short end of the stick when she got sent to the Hogwarts from Hell Academy, so I can understand how she turned out a bit…evil. I think my biggest issue with her in particular is that she’s just dumb. She did not think her plan through all the way/enough in regard to using ol Iron Vampire Prince Basty Boy as her intergalactic taxi back to Earth. Her whole convoluted plan to get an audience with him in the first place was absolutely ridiculous and made me wonder how dumb all these other mythical creatures are.

I wish that the love story between Estela and Sebastian had been fleshed out A LOT more. It literally went from 0 to 100 out of nowhere. They kissed a few times then he decided he was going to give up his chance to return home because he was in love with this young girl that seems to attract messiness to her on a daily basis? What? There was absolutely no real build up and no chance for me to become emotionally invested in these two being together. Oh, and this takes place over a span of two weeks. TWO WEEKS and this dude is giving up everything and basically proposing.

Ok, I will say that I liked the very end with the whole ‘rounding up criminals and letting Sebastian hunt his dinner’ thing.

Maybe it’s because I’m an adult and this book isn’t aimed at someone my age I just couldn’t ignore all the stupid things Estela did or that the pacing was really weird. But I just didn’t enjoy this book once it took the weird turn into the other dimension. If the author had gone more of an “The Others” route I think the book would have flowed much more organically and I would have loved it. For me this was more like a 2 1/2 star read.

Castle of The Cursed is a gothic romance that proves to you that sometimes family isn't all its cracked up to be and secrets that have long been buried in the past are maybe something that needs to be dug up and exposed to the light.
Estella has spent her life on the move, her parents never settling down in one place. She longs to be a detective, finding ways to pass the time on the road with paying close attention to those that surround her but on one day, one trip on a subway she became known as the soul suvivior of the tragedy and took her parents and the lives of so many others.
Enter La Sombre the imposing Castle on the hill that she will now call home along with her aunt whom she barely knows. Estella hasn't spoken since her family died and has been in a mental institution but that is all changing now.
Shes not sure if she is losing her mind as she is seeing and hearing a monster from her dreams. She worries that she is spiraling out of control but things in this town, this castle are not at all what they seem.
I want to thank #Netgalley for giving me the chance to read #CastleOfTheCursed in return for a fair and honest review.
I very much enyed Castle Of The Cursed.

A wonderful gothing romance sure to thrill YA audience. Exactly what is needed in this genre, written in a way that will captivate readers and make them love the charaters and the plot! Excellent story!

⭐️ 2 Stars

Unfortunately this book was not for me. It was overly dramatic and poorly written at the start making it difficult to get into. The pacing seemed off and chaotic at times. There was so much going on at the end, that I felt like all the elements got away from the author. I would pass on this one.


Thank you NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

Unfortunately this was just not the read for me. Gothic Twilight seemed like a just-fine premise to me and I was thoroughly excited, even with the mixed-reviews. I'm just not too sure what to think of it but the writing, plot, and characters just didn't work for me.

I didn't love this but it doesn't mean that you won't. Vampires and dark, haunted castles is a real mood (maybe I'll try again in October). Plus Twilight has a huge cult following, so this might be for you if love twilight :)

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review :)