I consider myself a huge Silvia Moreno Garcia fan. I've got one more novel to read from her backlist, then I've read it all. Most of her books get a full 5 stars from me. I jive with her writing style, genre hopping, lush settings, and heart filled main characters. I love the cocktail recipes and playlists she shares. I'm a BIG fan.

The Bewitching is way too long for not much to happen. Her MC's entire personality is "poor lesbian." I haven't yet read Paul Tremblay's Disappearance at Devil's Rock, but between a character named Tremblay who is an author and the plot of a disappearance at Devil's Rock, Massachussetts---like, did SMG rip off his book? Or is it a nod to his book, like an expansion of that mystery?

The spooky parts aren't spooky. You can see the bad guys from a million miles away. The shifting POVs--one of my favorite set ups--didn't feel cohesive at all. I didn't find the characters believable nor were most of them likeable.

This book has me worried that her publisher has her chained to a desk to crank out a book Every. Single. Year. without fail. I truly adore her writing and stories, but she's been a workhorse pumping out novels every year, and I hope she hasn't fallen victim to the machine. Silvia, if you're in trouble, tap out an SOS on your next podcast interview!

#gifted Del Rey & NetGalley

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a very popular author in my shop, with Mexican Gothic a particular favorite of my customers, and I expect The Bewitching to sell well also. It's a very nicely constructed, gripping, enjoyable novel of magic, evil witches, and women's persistence in the face of what seem to be impossible odds.

A haunting, atmospheric masterpiece that skillfully weaves together three women’s stories across different eras (1908, 1934 and 1998) to gradually reveal a chilling network of witchcraft, trauma, and mystery.

I was bewitched by Silvia Moreno Garcia's most recent novel, The Bewitching.

It is both impressive and unsurprising how much research and care goes into each of her novels.

The Bewitching follows the narratives of three women, separated by time and place but united by magic and danger.

In her signature style, one of these narratives takes place in Mexico. We are transported to a small village in the early 1900s, where a young girl must learn how to survive an evil that is plaguing her home.

The other two narratives unfold at a small college in Massachusetts. In the 1930s, a girl dabbling in witchcraft goes missing. Decades later, in the 1990s, a graduate student researching the manuscripts of a horror author begins to experience a similar haunting.

I could not put this book down. It was full of tension, rich folklore, and compelling narratives.

Thank you to Del Rey , Penguin Random House and Netgalley for an advanced reader's copy of one of my most anticipated books of my life.

The Bewitching was a beautifully written, atmospheric read with some of my favorite elements like witches, history, and academia. It was definitely slow to get going in the beginning but once the mysteries start unfolding it went faster. I enjoyed the different timelines although some were more interesting than others. I'm not going into too much detail intentionally and why I'm not providing a detailed plot summary. I also thought this was a new and unique depiction of witches different from what I usually read.

I would definitely recommend to fans of Moreno-Garcia or anyone who is looking for a scary (rather than cozy or romantic) witchy book.

I was unfortunately kind of let down by this one. I adored Mexican Gothic, but unfortunately I just found this one boring and there wasn't really anything for me to sink my teeth into

I need more generations of witches please. This book grabs you in the beginning and pulls through to the end. It was eerie and creepy and all of the things I wanted it to be. Loved.

It says something about current literature trends that I found it very odd to read a book about witches where they aren’t determined women struggling against the patriarchy, but rather vindictive beings cursing people and blighting crops. It’s a strain of horror story with a lot of history in a lot of different cultures, which Moreno-Garcia is able to use to great effect.


This book alternates between two POVs. The main character is Minerva, a grad student at a small Massachusetts liberal arts college researching the life of an obscure horror writer who had attended the same college in the 1930s. The other is her great-grandmother Alba, living on a farm in rural Mexico in the early 20th century when “there were still witches.” A bit into the book Minerva gets her hands on an unpublished manuscript of the horror writer, and we get a 3rd POV: the writer’s recounting of the events surrounding the disappearance of her college roommate.


In Minerva’s time, she gets caught up in the mystery of what happened to this disappeared girl. As she does so, strange things start happening and she finds herself remembering her great-grandmother’s stories of her dealings with witches from her youth.


Alba’s chapters are those stories: her family farm encounters misfortune after misfortune after her the death of her father. Her uncle (a cultured poet who had left the farm for Mexico City) encourages them to sell, but her brother who has taken over the farm will not hear of it. And the locals, whom her uncle dismisses as ignorant peasants, are all whispering about a curse on the family and the nearby village of witches up in the mountains.


Part of what made this book so good, as I alluded to earlier, was the different folk traditions Moreno-Gracia calls upon. Most of us Americans are aware of the New England legends of witches (Salem and all). The Mexican folklore is very different; the witches there have a healthy measure of vampire mixed in.


Tense & spooky. This would be a great thing to read come October.


Content warnings: Sexual assault, incest, animal death

This really suffered from pacing issues and the fact that the main character’s storyline was the least compelling felt like a big miss. Ultimately this felt like it repeated too many moments as it tries to show us just how common / overlapping the haunting events are, but instead of adding tension, it felt really monotonous.

This also took much too long to get to the haunting bits (30% on and were mostly just with a Minerva droning in about her research goals) and the 3 timelines felt line they often blended together instead of feeling like connected stories.

SMG is an auto-read author for me! Slow to start, the pace of this story really picks up towards the latter half of the book. I appreciate how the different timelines come together and how past and present relate to each other.

The Bewitching is a creepy, slow-burning horror novel that follows three women in three different time periods (1908, 1934, and 1998) as they face strange disappearances, eerie signs, and possible witchcraft. Each timeline centers on a different woman, but all are connected through blood, books, and something dark lurking in the shadows.

In 1998, Minerva is a grad student researching an obscure horror writer, Beatrice Tremblay, whose only novel, The Vanishing, might not be entirely fictional. As she digs deeper into the mystery of Beatrice’s vanished college roommate, she starts noticing strange things happening around her. Interestingly, some of them echo the ghost stories her great-grandmother Alba used to tell. Alba’s story from 1908 is another key piece of this puzzle, where curses, disappearances, and eerie nighttime happenings plague her family’s Mexican farm.

If that sounds like a lot to juggle, well, it is. Happily, Moreno-Garcia handles it with ease. Each storyline has a different mood: Gothic academia in the 1990s New England, haunted romance in the 1930s college life, and Mexican folklore-laced horror in the early 20th century. The three timelines work as separate (but connected) stories, even though similar events take place in each.

Minerva is an enjoyable lead - bookish, guarded, and determined. Beatrice’s chapters are bittersweet and melancholic, filled with old-school spiritualism and unrequited love. And Alba’s storyline explains the roots of the curse and brings in elements of Mexican folklore - teyolloquani witches, protective amulets, and more.

That said, not every timeline is equally gripping. Minerva’s story has the most momentum, while Alba’s is quieter and more atmospheric. Beatrice’s voice is beautifully written, but since we already know how parts of her story end, the suspense there is a little muted. The final reveal also wasn’t jaw-dropping after all the buildup. Honestly, you’ll probably guess the villain a few chapters early, but the payoff is still satisfying. It ties the timelines together well.

A few pacing hiccups pop up, especially in the middle when the story slows down to repeat a few clues one too many times. And some of the side characters, particularly in Minerva’s timeline, felt like they were there to serve the plot more than to truly matter. Still, these are minor issues in a book that’s otherwise smart, spooky, and immersive. The Bewitching is an atmospheric novel that takes elements of Gothic horror, Mexican folklore, and academic mystery and turns them into one eerie, intergenerational story.

I would like to thank Penguin Random House for a digital copy of this novel. This story follows Minerva who is working on her thesis on little known horror author Beatrice Tremblay. She tracks down a friend of the author and seeks access to Beatrice's old writings. She wants material for her thesis and soon becomes committed to researching the disappearance of Virginia, who was part of Beatrice’s friend group. Her disappearance remained unsolved for over 60 years. The novel alternates between chapters set in Minerva’s timeline as well and two other POVs: Minerva’s grandmother Alba, set 90 years before and Beatrice’s POV, set 64 years ago and set around the time of Virginia’s disappearance. The back and forth between timelines is well done. There is one moment in the story towards the end where the POV alternates between Alba and Minerva’s timeline in the same chapter. This was executed very well and enhanced the storytelling at a pivotal, climactic point in the story. The author did a solid job of building tension and providing clues to the story’s mysteries over the three POVs. The final climax was satisfying and the story wrapped really well. I highly recommend this read.

I absolutely devoured The Bewitching. I love Silvia Moreno-Garcia's novels and this was no exception. She's a master of atmosphere, and she brought 1920s Mexico to life with such sharp, sensory detail. I was completely captivated by the toxic, fascinating dynamic between Inés and Yalxi. The story begins as a gothic family mystery and expertly spirals into a tense supernatural thriller grounded in authentic folk magic. It’s a mesmerizing, unsettling, and brilliantly paced novel that I couldn't put down.

The blurb of this book was very appealing but ultimately did not work for me. The pacing with 3 different perspectives and 3 different timelines was way too slow and made it hard to feel connected to any of the characters.

The writing is beautiful and the different timelines are well done. The characters are fully fleshed out. I enjoyed the horrors author references as well.

3.5 and I'm having a hard time deciding which way to round. This is an objectively good book that I really struggled with - it took me over a month to read, and if I'm being honest, I'm relieved to be done with it.

I love Silvia Moreno-Garcia. And the premise for this book had me completely sold: everything about it, from the slow-burn folkloric horror elements to the interwoven stories across generations, sounded exactly up my alley. All of those things are present, and fairly well-executed. And yet. This just didn't WORK for me for some reason.

First, I'll say: the three interwoven stories are much less interwoven than I expected. They are, in fact, really only very loosely related at all. I also think I found it jarring how they switched every single chapter - compare with V. E. Schwab's Bury our Bones in the Midnight Soil, which pulls off a similar trick, and I much prefer the way Schwab paced her multiple timelines, giving you a lot more time to settle into each one, and gradually integrating them. The Bewitching switches too often and too abruptly, which makes it hard in the beginning to feel really emotionally invested. It took at least half of the book before I was keeping the various casts of secondary characters straight.

I was also a bit disappointed because Betty's story was the one I was most interested in by far, and it wasn't really a proper third thread - it was really more of a story within the story, much briefer than the other two, and only very thinly built out. I did eventually come around to both Alba and Minerva, but it was a SLOW slow burn for things to ramp up, and Alba's story in particular felt tedious to get through in the beginning.

However: I loved the vibes and both settings, and I loved the genuinely ancient and dread-inducing supernatural elements. And once the action and intrigue began ramping up, I was definitely glued to the book until the end.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

Summer has hit me hard and my reading has taken a hit, so this book took me longer to read than I wanted it to (I was trying so hard to have it read before the publication date). I really enjoyed <emphasis>Mexican Gothic</emphasis> and found this one to be pretty enjoyable, too. I liked the differing timelines and how some things intersected. I wasn't surprised at the end (I had figured a lot of things out before they were revealed, and I don't know if that was intentional or not), so that's probably why I didn't rate it higher. Also, it wasn't as spooky or icky as <emphasis>Mexican Gothic</emphasis>. Still, I liked it.

I swear, the only author who will make me willing pick up a horror novel is Silvia MG. I adore her, so despite my squeamish, scaredy cat heart I picked this one up. Spooky and atmospheric, unsettling and eerie, SMG is so good at dropping you totally into the setting. Remarkably, she does that three times here with three different timelines. One set in the 1990s at a college in New England with Minerva, one set in Mexico 80 years before with Alba, and another in the early 1930s at the same college in New England with Betty. The stories are of course connected though you don't pull all the threads together until much later in the book.There are some aspects of the plot that are a tad predictable and I did find myself most drawn to Alba's story, but all stood well on their own. The horror here is not super gory or intense, but instead more unsettling. There are some grotesque moments, but nothing too awful. This would be the perfect spooky fall read. I'm a little surprised it came out midsummer instead of in the fall.
One note that I am sure many reviewers will point out, there is a significant plot line in Alba's story that features grooming and incest. It goes pretty far and if that is something you cannot abide you may want to steer clear of this read. It was very challenging for me.

Not your typical story of witches and warlocks. Three main characters: Alba, Beatrice and Minerva, each with her own timeline, which can be a little confusing. Overall creepy, dark, and atmospheric. I am not a huge horror fan (although I read more horror than I think I do) but really enjoy Moreno-Garcia's modern gothic fiction. I could not put this one down. Will appeal to readers who enjoy horror mixed with folklore and multigenerational stories. 4.5 stars.

I was a little disappointed. In previous books Moreno-Garcia excelled at creating atmosphere and immersive experiences. It's one of her strengths. So I expected The Bewitching to be spooky and pull me into a story filled with dread and horror. But it just seemed so... normal. The story was fine. All three timelines had interesting characters and stories, but nothing really stood out or seemed special.