I received an ALC from Libro.fm and an ARC from Netgalley. While I primarily listened to the audio book I did occasionally read the e-book as well.

I enjoyed the thoughtful tone and careful pacing of this novel, although at times parts of the story seemed to drag on longer than I would have liked which is why it took me longer than usual to finish. Telling a story using three, fully fleshed out timelines is ambitious and Moreno-Garcia does a masterful job of weaving all the pieces together. Although I wasn't surprised by the ending it was still a satisfying conclusion. Overall a very worthwhile novel if you enjoy stories featuring witchcraft, strong female protagonists, and mysteries involving multiple timelines. Also, the voice acting was very well done and fit the tone of the novel perfectly.

4.5/5 Recommended for LibraryReads

There is something about coming back to a favourite author that is delicious, and The Bewitching promised classic Silvia Moreno-Garcia from the first page. Some Mexican folklore mixed with New England gothic: if itwasn't too confusing in her bibliography this could have been called Mexican, Gothic. And she gets to play with minor pastiche too, another of her favourite games. Set across three time periods, The Bewitching attempts to reclaim witches as proper horror antagonists and successfully merges the Mexican concept of the witch monster with the Salem style.

It is 1998, and Minerva is a Mexican student pursuing a postdoctoral fellowship at an old New England college. Writing about a minor female horror writer Beatrice Tremblay (who writes in the Shirley Jackson vein), she is investigating the effect of a friend's disappearance whilst at the same college Minerva is at, back in the 1930's. Minerva herself is steeped in the lore of witchcraft from her grandmother, who also - back in 1908 - was witness to a disappearance in the family. Minerva, who works as a campus supervisor on the side, is also starting to suspect that a student who dropped out, never to be seen again, might also be a missing person in similar situations. Moren0-Garcia runs the three stories in parallel - though Beatrice Trembley's story is in her own hand, and we are reading that along with Minerva. All three run concurrent mysteries which inform each other, and the eventual solution, as Minerva starts to realise she too has been placed under a spell.

Moreno-Garcia mentions in her afterword that she was a student in New England in the late nineties, and the sense of place (and time, particularly with music references) is painfully accurate. There's a pervasive sense of class that runs through all three stories too, from gender, to wealth, to power - and in some cases ,that will be mystical power. Minerva is an appealingly flawed heroine, as is her grandmother and Beatrice, and the details underpinning the rules and power of the witches is well done. The case is made for them as one of the geat neutered monsters, and in Minerva she creates an equally good monster hunter (academically and literally).

I really enjoyed The Bewitching! Silvia brings her signature blend of atmosphere and sharp character work to 18th-century France, layering court intrigue with eerie magic and a wonderfully ambiguous protagonist. It’s a slower-paced story, but the gothic mood and historical detail kept me hooked. I especially liked how slippery and calculating the main character was—you’re never quite sure what she’s up to, and that kept things interesting. It’s not as immediately gripping as some of her other books, but it’s a smart, stylish read that grew on me the more I sat with it. A strong 4 stars!

This is the latest from Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Three women from three different eras of the 20th century in Massachusetts and Mexico encounter witchcraft. It’s not scary and one of the stories was a little dull. It’s really 2.5 stars but I’m rounding up for an otherwise stellar author.

Every book I read by Silvia Moreno-Garcia increases my devotion, and THE BEWITCHING is no exception. I appreciate her modern take on gothic storytelling, and I appreciate how well she creates such atmospheric stories - the kind where the setting becomes a character on its own. While THE BEWITCHING is a little too predictable for my taste, I still found plenty to enjoy within its pages.

My favorite thing about THE BEWITCHING was the chance to revel in the late 1990s nostalgia. Just like Minerva, I graduated from college in the late 1990s, so each period relic Minerva uses hit me hard. Yes, we did have laptops in the late 1990s. No, the Internet and email were not really a thing yet, but we used our computers for writing papers. Research still had to be done in person in libraries, museums, or through interviews, and you wrote your research notes by hand. Paper was still king. We didn't have MP3 players or iPods yet, so Minerva's use of a Discman is apt. We didn't have cell phones, so you had to borrow someone's phone or use a pay phone. Everything about Minerva's story, aside from the mystery, took me right back to college and those years when the world was at your feet, waiting for you to make your mark.

Maybe because I connected so fiercely with Minerva's story, I read Alba's and Beatrice's stories with a more clinical eye. I was less emotionally invested in their tales, more interested in seeing how the three stories would connect versus appreciating each on its own merits. Alba's story is creepy; Beatrice's is more tragic. Both deal with loss, but Alba's hits harder because her loss was much more personal and included more people. Beatrice's story reads exactly like what it is, a journal of events written long after they happened and with hindsight being colored by love and the selective forgetting of memory. It is easy to dismiss Beatrice's story as nothing more than a tale told to explain the long-ago loss of a friend. You learn Alba's tale as it is happening, and, since it is happening to her, hers is the much more impactful.

Together, the three women's tales combine into one that speaks of power and violence. I've never read anything like the witches found in Alba's tale, so THE BEWITCHING is a new take on witchcraft for me, or at least the how of their witchcraft. THE BEWITCHING is a moody mystery, even if it is predictable in the who and the why. I know my nostalgia plays a large part in my fondness for the story, and that's okay. Take that away, and you still have a decent mystery with plenty of chills and thrills and things that go bump in the night.

I have come to fear the all-too-common trope of badass indigenous woman falls in love with mediocre white man, however, The Bewitching did not fall victim to it! I was pleasantly surprised by Minerva as a moody young woman of the late 90's and thoroughly enjoyed the narrative of Alba. Witchy and dark, yes, but an example of some complex women. Sapphic yearning makes an appearance, as well. Perfect October read!!!

The Bewitching was a bit of a slow read but I found the story and timelines intersecting compelling. It didn’t feel like the twists at the end were shocking or mind blowing and fell a little flat for me.

Readers who relish slow-building dread, academically inflected mysteries, and heroines whose scholarly curiosity exposes them to ancestral darkness will find this novel irresistible.

3.5 Rounded up | I’m glad that the story was different enough from the other book by this author that I read earlier this year - it began in a way where I thought that it would be the same. It was a bit more of a thriller than a horror but I feel like Moreno-Garcia didn’t do a good enough job of throwing suspicion away from who the perpetrators were. It was obvious from early on who it would end up being but it’s fine. There was a good enough build up for the conclusion, but I wish there was more of a mystery there. It was also slightly confusing to get all the years straight since it was so back and forth. The overlapping of some characters also made it a little confusing to follow. If you decide to read, I wouldn’t recommend the audiobook because it’s not easy to keep everything straight. It was still a decent book but I’ll most likely revisit it with a physical copy.

Sono felice di aver ottenuto questo libro su NetGalley e sono altrettanto felice di averlo potuto leggere in anteprima (anche se ormai è uscito il 15 di questo mese in lingua originale). È stata una lettura scorrevole e anche piena di suspence, come già la Moreno Garcia mi aveva abituata con Mexican Gothic, ma qui l’ho visto più simile (nei temi e anche nella struttura) a Weyward di Emilia Hart, sebbene The Bewitching abbia una componente “horror” più presente. È stato bellissimo vedere come le tre storie si siano intrecciate sotto i miei occhi, sebbene la parte iniziale sia stata piuttosto lenta e mi abbia quasi fatto desistere dal finirlo. Non so se supererà mai Mexican Gothic, ma per ora ha un posto solido nel mio cuore per quanto riguarda l’autrice.

I keep reading Silvia Moreno-Garcia books because I love the premises, but every time I can't get into the characters and/or writing. So many people love her, but for me it just feels so dry and disconnected. I did find this story more compelling than some others.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advance copy of The Bewitching for review!

Silvia Moreno-Garcia has been celebrated as a thrilling voice in horror since the release of Mexican Gothic, which is rightfully a modern classic of the genre. So when news of The Bewitching arrived, I was excited to hear her take on witchcraft and folk horror. Unfortunately, the novel rarely lived up to expectations.

Moreno-Garcia still has a beautiful style of writing, but in my opinion, the setup was far too long in The Bewitching. By the halfway point, very little action had taken place and throughout the novel, scares are few and far between. I enjoyed Alba’s point of view the most, and I wish the novel had focused more on this setting and time period. While the college setting of the other two viewpoints added an intriguing hint of dark academia, the stories weren’t as exciting to me.

While it could have done with more scares, you can feel a love of horror throughout the book. The Bewitching is an ode to horror in the vein of Stephen Graham Jones’ My Heart Is A Chainsaw (and keep an eye out for Moreno-Garcia’s subtle references to Graham Jones and fellow horror writer Nick Mamatas in the book). Perhaps more of a mystery than a horror story, The Bewitching was rich in atmosphere but lacked fright.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia has always been a versatile writer, with just about every genre appearing in her catalogue at this point. I've liked many of her books, and appreciated the skill of the rest even if the story or genre didn't strike me dead center. Her latest novel, The Bewitching, however, feels like a leveling up in both story complexity and craft. 

In 1998, Minerva is floundering at her New England graduate program. Her thesis is on the story behind a niche but foundational horror writer's most popular work means uncovering the truth of a student's disappearance in the 1930s—something much easier said than done, especially since the elderly woman in possession of the late author's papers won't return Minerva's calls. A chance meeting with the woman's grandson, however, breathes new life into Minerva's thesis, but the path it sets her down quickly frays her already-fragile mental health. The more she learns, too, the more she remembers the stories of her great-grandmother, Alba, about the witches that haunted the area around her small Mexican village during her youth.

In 1908, Alba is a young woman reeling from the death of her father, but also sensing new paths open up before her in the form of a suitor or two. Thoughts of romance are hard to cling to when strange and wicked things begin happening around home, ramping up to the disappearance of her brother. Alba's mother and handsome young uncle dismiss her worries that some evil magic is afoot, but her neighbor believes and helps her find answers—even though doing so puts him in danger, too.

Meanwhile, Minerva's exploration of those coveted author's papers reveals Beatrice's recollections of the fall of 1934, filled with fun and flirting and young love, and the dark underside of all three when Beatrice's roommate goes missing just before Christmas. Beatrice is only at the fringe of her roommate's haunting but still sees enough of her roommate's descent into madness or something like it for Minerva, or the modern reader, to see disturbing similarities about these events in the thick of the Great Depression and the ones that follow grandmother and granddaughter decades before and after that fateful semester.

It can be tricky for an author to create distinction among characters when each has their own point of view, especially when it's the same person writing all three. Here, though, I felt a clear difference between Minerva, Alba, and Beatrice's chapters and voices, a strength that held up even at the end when those POVs blurred. The mystery element is strong throughout in all three women's stories, and although I only guessed at one of the culprits, all of the answers felt logical, and even satisfying. The way that Minerva pursues those answers, like her great-grandmother before her, is tenacious without stretching the bounds of credibility.

Minerva is a likeable enough character, but Moreno-Garcia, never one to shy away from making her characters, particularly her female ones, a bit prickly, lets us see and feel the strain of not just the mystery but academia in general on our main character. Alba sometimes requires patience in a different way, displaying the kind of fancies and foolishness many of us have to grow out of sooner or later. Poor naive Alba was, for me, the weakest element of the book until well past the halfway mark, when she did finally show us perhaps why Minerva revered her so. Still, in allowing these characters to each be themselves, rather than heroic facsimiles thereof, The Bewitching takes on a more authentic feel, even with its witches and ghosts and curses.

Moreno-Garcia also manages to tread a fine line with those fantastical elements. We sign up for witches, assume curses come with the territory, but the few ghosts slipped into the pages are subtle, though important, elements that Moreno-Garcia wisely doesn't belabor. All in all, The Bewitching expertly weaves the supernatural and the pedestrian together across generations into something rich and haunting in all the best ways.

Suspenseful and tense! Silvia Moreno-Garcia is masterful at horror and her settings are so immersive.

The Bewitching
Genre - Historical fantasy / horror
Rating - 4.5⭐️/loved

I’ve shouted many times how much I love books by @silviamg.author. Each one is beautifully written and researched, with a unique story that feels fresh, while blending multiple genres seamlessly. This book felt like a blend of Mexican Gothic and Ninth House - two books I loved.

I alternated between audio and reading with my eyes - both ways worked for the story, but I did love the excellent narration of the audiobook. Each POV felt distinct and the three storylines built a feeling of dread as you get further into the story that ultimately tied together. While I predicted certain pieces of this story, it didn’t take away from watching the paths play out. Overall, a slowburn, creepy, witchy read that blended genres and kept me turning pages quickly.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group and Netgalley for the eARC!

I love Silvia Moreno-Garcia and was so happy to have this as an ARC. There are three timelines, one that takes place in Mexico, the other two taking place in Massachusetts. I definitely connected with the 1908 and 1998 timelines the most, even though I did like all three characters.

The book is slow but has a creeping dread that builds. It's really impressive that with how much was going on across timelines, they all were interwoven together so well, and each timeline had its own atmosphere that fit perfectly. I was never confused as to which character I was following.

I loved the little nods to other horror writers that Garcia gives with a lot of the side character names.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia does it again. An excellent mixture of historical fiction, mystery and horror, The Bewitching had me enthralled. I was at the edge of my seat to uncover the mystery and enjoyed how the 3 POV's wove together and yet were still their own self contained perspectives. One of my favourites of SGM's titles.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is an auto-read author for me. I am usually a huge fan of her work. This one was fine, but it didn't wow me the way some others have. I felt like two of the plot lines were highly compelling, while the third was a little lackluster. I understand that the 3rd was what tied them all together, but it just felt a little like an afterthought to me. I loved the witch lore and learning about what that looks like in traditional stories from a culture other than the Western European traditions we often hear about. I just wanted more. I felt like the description of the book set it up to be SO much eerier and creepier than it ended up being. I can't really put my finger on what it was missing for me, but if I had to boil it down, I think it was too mundane for me. I wanted MORE creep and MORE spook than I got.

I love Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and The Bewitching might be one of her best yet. The gothic atmosphere is entrancing - spooky, moody, and immersive. I was hooked from the beginning, and each of the three timelines felt rich and compelling in its own way. The characters were likable and well-written (I especially loved Minerva), and there were moments that genuinely creeped me out. If you're into slow-burn horror/fantasy with a strong sense of place and the perfect blend of mystery and supernatural, definitely pick this up. Highly recommend for a spooky season read!

Thank you to Del Rey Books for sending an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

(ARC courtesy of Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group and ALC courtesy of Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and the libro.fm <a href="https://www.libro.fm/alc-program" target="_blank">Audiobook Listening Copy Program</a>.)

<b>A Book Club-Worthy 5⭐️</b>
This was my first read by Moreno-Garcia, and all the hype? VERY earned. She blew me away by brilliantly blending literary/historical fiction and horror into something genuinely unnerving and wholly discussable. I loved the structure of the three interrelated eras and found myself deeply invested in the main figures of each.
I figured out one piece of the plot early on, and found myself trying to unravel the rest of the mystery based on the parallels I saw between 1908 and 1934. It was the best kind of mystery—one that kept me guessing until the very end and still managed to surprise me, even when I was certain I had it all unraveled.
The prose is masterfully written—beautiful, tense, and eerie without ever losing its literary depth. This would definitely make a great book club read. It doesn't even need to be a horror-focused book club. In fact, I think it would be interesting to present it to a group that doesn't normally read horror and see what they thought.
The witchcraft horror here is spooky in the best way—quiet, creeping, and unsettling. I’ve read a lot of horror, but not much focused on witchcraft, and this landed beautifully. It’s rich with folklore and strange truths, and even though I didn’t know the history behind some of the tales and practices, the story felt deeply authentic. The author's note at the end only confirmed my suspicions and was utterly delightful.
As an aside, I can’t stop laughing about another reviewer’s comment: “Girl. That’s your uncle.” I thought about that the ENTIRE time I read Alba’s sections because… GIRL. THAT’S YOUR UNCLE.
<b>Content Warning</b>
This story contains violence against animals, including the violent death of a cat (aftermath described) and the on-page slaughter of a rabbit. These scenes are brief and the author doesn’t linger, but they are graphic and may be upsetting, especially for readers who are sensitive to this sort of thing, like I am.
<b>🎧 AUDIO-SPECIFIC</b>
As for the audio? Oh my God, I don’t think I’ve had a better narrator experience. Gisela Chipe absolutely <i>makes</i> these characters. The accents, the tone, the nuance—she breathes life into Moreno-Garcia’s already fascinating cast. Each character is so distinct. For example, Alba’s mother has this slightly affected, almost bored tone that feels so perfect. She vibes city-girl-who-married-country-boy (which she is). Virginia’s sweet and timid tone; Minerva's beautiful Mexican accent; and the affected voice of the obscenely wealthy New Englander, Carolyn. The voices she uses paint a portrait of each character every bit as much as the prose.

<b>TL;DR</b> —
A book club-worthy witchcraft horror, perfect for those who like their historical fiction to have <i>teeth.</i>. If you can get the audio, do! It elevates the already 5⭐ story to a whole other level.