Silvia Moreno-Garcia once again delivers a mesmerizing, gothic tale with The Bewitching, blending horror, history, and witchcraft across three haunting timelines. Minerva’s search for the truth behind an eerie novel leads her deep into a web of dark academia, generational secrets, and supernatural terror.

Moreno-Garcia’s signature atmospheric storytelling makes every page feel immersive and unsettling. The novel masterfully weaves together folklore, obsession, and the lingering power of the past, keeping readers spellbound until the chilling conclusion. A must-read for fans of gothic horror and witchy mysteries!

An atmospheric tale about witchcraft told from three perspectives in three different timelines, The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia unfolds introducing us to different strong women forging their own paths. In 1908, we meet Alba the eldest of seven children living in Mexico trying to help out her family. 1934 introduces us to Beatrice Tremblay, a college student at Stoneridge where she will begin her career as a horror novelist. And 1998 it is Minerva who is the great granddaughter of Alba, also studying at Stoneridge, writing her senior thesis on Beatrice Tremblay and looking into the disappearance of Beatrice’s friend Virginia Somerset who went missing without a trace. Each of these women are affected by mysterious circumstances, events that could be paranormal in nature. Is witchcraft to blame?

I really wanted to like this story as I have always been fascinated by witchcraft and the happenings in Salem Massachusetts, but I had a hard time with parts of this book. I definitely favored certain of the women’s stories over others and it made it harder to slog through the other chapters. Still an interesting plot, but a little slower paced than I like. Three stars.

I received this advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review and feedback.

While the premise was nice, the writing was... not what I expected. I wanted more from the characters because I felt that what was on the front cover and the front flap was not what we were given.

THIS IS THE EPITOME OF GOTHIC HORROR!! Oh my, I am still dizzy from this novel. The Betwitching is a gothic horror with three POVs and three time intervals about three women slowly becoming tormented by a witch.
Minerva is a graduate student at Stoneridge University, completing her thesis on her favorite horror author Beverly Tremblay. Throughout her journey, the stuff of horror novels slinks into her own life, mirroring the stories she studies.
Beverly Tremblay wrote a novel about a women who goes missing, inspired by her best friend’s disappearance. Her unique first person POV recounts the event leading up to her best friend Ginny’s vanishing, a mystery that haunted he the rest of her life
Alba is Minerva’s grandmother and in her childhood, witches roamed the small towns of Mexico. When her brother vanishes without a trace, she begins to investigate the possibility of witches and vows to protect the rest of her family.

Now normally I do not enjoy multiple POV. One is typically boring. The pacing often gets disrupted….but this was not my experience with the Bewitching. Silvia Moreno Garcia continues to be one of the most talented horror authors in the business and one of my favorite authors. SHE DOES NOT LET DOWN. And this story had me gripped from the first page. Every POV was unique and interesting. The pacing never slowed, perpetuated by an increasing ache of dread that the reader experiences with the characters.

The Bewitching is a phenomenal read with delicately written prose, a gripping plot, and immersive, realistic characters. Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to ARC read The Betwitching by Silvia Moreno Garcia. This novel gets the first 5/5 stars from me in 2025

Another great horror book by Silvia Moreno=Garcia. When I read Mexican Gothic I knew this author would be a force to reckon with and I was not wrong. No one is writing like them and they make it seem so effortless. Congrats on another great book.

Absolutely stunning take on several generations of witches! Literal chef’s kiss! The changing of the timelines blended seamlessly, and each story was vivid & intriguing! Loved, loved, LOVED this!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book. I have enjoyed Moreno-Garcia's past works. I loved the premise and creepy story but if you hate following multiple timelines this one is not for you. I can never get enough of how atmospheric her books are! I love it.

Okay this was different than I was expecting, but in the most amazing way possible. I can't decide if this is horror or suspense, but whatever it is I ate it up. Curses, dangerous witches, Told in three timelines about remarkable women all tied together. This was incredible and such a fun read. Thank you NetGalley for the arc! 5 stars!!!

This was my first, but definitely not my last read from Moreno-Garcia. The atmosphere of Bewitching is incredibly strong, and the cast of characters is bold yet lovable and easy to picture.

It’s by no means a fast-paced read—the story unfolds slowly across multiple timelines, always knowing exactly where to end a chapter. Minerva’s timeline didn’t surprise me much; around 60% in, I started to suspect the twist, though I couldn’t quite figure out the reason. Alba’s story, however, caught me off guard.

A little piece of advice for readers: don’t get too attached to the characters—the author doesn’t handle them with gentleness.

Overall, it’s a very powerful book. I’m curious to see how the general audience will receive it.

I would like to thank the publisher, Moreno-Garcia, and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

SMG always delivers a fresh read. This one was no different, unique and unexpected there was a twist and turn around every corner. There were a couple unfinished storylines that didn’t quite fit into the whole story but otherwise a solid entry in her catalog.

What a wonderful book! My family and I are already fans of Moreno-Garcia, and this is a nice improvement beyond her already existing novels. It is creepy, compelling, and get better the further along you read.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Del Rey, Random House Worlds, Inklore for providing this ARC for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

The Bewitching by Silvia-Moreno Garcia is a horror title in the spirit of her other books; not overly gory or violent, but deeply reliant on supernatural and uncanny terror. Fans of the author’s previous works will be very pleased with this new addition to her published portfolio. I also got the impression that those who enjoyed Emilia Hart’s Weyward. While the two books are fundamentally different they both have a structure of three parallel stories about magic that converge.

The book is an exemplary title for those who enjoy dark academia settings. The story, set at a tiny private college in New England has the dark woods, historic buildings, and iconic tense scenes in the library stacks. This contrasts with the hot, bright, Mexican farmstead in the storyline in the early 1900s. The book is richly atmospheric, full of wonderful details that make the setting come alive from the page.

The pacing of this book is not always even, but it works in the favor of a spooky, tense narrative. At times the scenes are long and seemingly every detail is drawn out, only to quickly expose more twists or exposition. To me the pacing follows a cinematic horror pattern—moments of calm, stretches of suspense and tension and sudden surprises and releases.

Something that I will comment on in a somewhat neutral manner is that the first chapter, one set in 1998, contains a long and somewhat unrelated information regurgitation about HP Lovecraft. While reading this I thought that this was a portent of some sort of dense and unpleasant book to come. However on reflection later in the book, I came to the understanding that this was actually a great characterization of Minerva by the author. Minerva is a true academic, pedantic and unconcerned with being totally socially aware. It’s a somewhat gummy start to the book, but on a reflection it really creates a great framework of who Minerva is going to be.

For me, this was another home run from Moreno-Garcia. It’s a wonderful and fresh take on the creepy New England horror cannon that decentralizes it from the Puritans and long-dead Europeans.

5/5 emphatic stars.

This is part horror, part a story of witches and being bewitched, and part mystery novel. It is compulsively readable and although set in three different time periods, it is easy to follow, and the three stories are interconnected.

The story really centers around Minerva in 1998, a graduate student in an upper Northwest college who decides to write her thesis on a deceased horror writer, Beatrice Tremblay. Beatrice’s good friend and unrequited love, Virginia, disappears one night in the mid-1930’s. Virigina talked to ghosts and was having weird experiences before she vanished.

The earliest timeline is 1908 when Minerva’s great-grandmother also encounters strange portents then her brother vanishes, and her friend Valentin is murdered in a gruesome fashion. She suspects the paranormal and eventually discovers the truth behind the evil lurking around her. This timeline is the most intricate in many ways. And the fact Minerva’s great-grandmother survived a bewitching does much for Beatrice uncovering the strange goings on in the 1930’s and in her own time.

I loved how the story around the witches became intricate by the end of the novel and how both Alba and Minerva learned how to combat it. I did figure out who the evil people were by the middle of the book, but that didn’t spoil anything at all.

This was a very interesting and entertaining novel.

Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches."
This eerie historical fiction is all consuming, Minerva pulls you and Alba and Beatrice help keep you. This is entrancing witch tale follows 3 woman and their connection to the supernatural. Would be the best fall time read you'll only wish you've read it sooner.

Thank you to NetGalley for sharing an arc with me.

Many people are waiting to read “The Bewitching” after falling in love with Silvia Moreno-Garcia with “Mexican Gothic”, one of her most famous works.
Instead, “The Bewitching” was my first time reading a book of hers, and I can surely say it won’t be the last: I already added her other books on my TBR, and I can’t wait to start them.

“The Bewitching” was the most fascinating surprise: I started it while having breakfast -a habit of mine, since it takes me at least half an hour to sip my coffee-, but fast forward many, many hours later, it’s dark outside and I’ve reached the acknowledgments without even realizing it.
That alone is nothing new, as I often read a book in one sitting…the thing is, tomorrow I have a REALLY IMPORTANT EXAM.
Now, did I study and revise what I had to? No.
But did I find a 5-star book and a potentially new favourite author? Yes.
So I guess all's well that ends well.
That should help you understand how captured I was with Moreno-Garcia’s work.

Writing a multigenerational book isn’t the easiest task, because most of the time one of the timeline is more important than the other/s, resulting in one timeline being the focus of the story, and the other being the one the reader gets bored with.
“The Bewitching” follows three different women, all somehow intertwined with each other, and I loved every single one of them. I was never bored or waiting for the other timeline to come, as it sometimes happens to me.

The writing style was descriptive but smooth, whimsical and suspenseful, making it impossible to put the book down. The atmosphere was so vivid, and the tension was tangible throughout all the 300+ pages. There was something dangerous lurking in the shadows, the reader could feel it at all times, it was both fascinating and scary.
I appreciated the characters, well written and characterized, I won’t forget them easily.
The dialogues were perfect!! and that’s not something granted lately, I almost always find dialogues unrealistic and forced, but that was not the case.

The plot was slow-paced, but that just made me appreciate it even more. Despite it not being full of plot twists, I was completely captured. I think everything happened at the right time.
I anticipated the ending, but that didn’t make me love it less.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for access to this advanced reader copy. "The Bewitching" was an absolute pleasure to read, and in all honestly, I could not put it down. All timelines and characters are engaging, interesting and the end of every chapter leaves you wanting more. The pacing is perfect, you're more likely than not to fall in love with the characters, the story is very original, and the worldbuilding is exquisite. I'd highly recommend this book to readers who enjoy folk horror, the supernatural, mysteries, and timelines that intertwine the past and the present.

Some content warnings I can think of from the top of my head: Blood, mutilation, animal death, self-harm, child abuse, classism, incest.

The Bewitching is the sort of story that makes you want to simultaneously read it in one sitting and slowly wade through the pages to stay in those worlds as long as possible ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Bewitching is absolutely mesmerizing. Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a master of historical fiction and magical-realism In The Bewitching she seamlessly adds multiple perspectives, telling three separate stories from three different times. .

A curse from the 1890s, a missing woman from the 1930s and a grad student in the 1990s weave their experiences as separate stories until an amazing realization crashes all three together to stop a sinister being.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Del Rey for the ARC. I greatly appreciate it!

As someone who studies H.P. Lovecraft (as a profession) and who actually knows the person this book is dedicated to, I had some difficulty unwinding and enjoying the story for its entertainment value. My mind kept veering toward “work mode”. With that being said, I really enjoyed the story, and thought it was uniquely presented.

Several instances the three POVs felt a bit excessive, and sometimes I even forgot whose POV I was on when I took extended breaks from the book. Yet, once the suspense began to build, it got a whole lot easier following along. “The Bewitching” has all the hallmarks of a typical Silvia Moreno-Garcia book, and it’s worth checking out!

Pure magic—dark, seductive, and completely unputdownable. It’s the best book I’ve read in a while. The mystery surrounding the disappearances kept me enthralled. If longing and heartbreak had a voice, it would sing through these pages. I was enchanted from start to finish.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7191526094

Loved this - spooky, atmospheric, a page turner. The suspense built up brilliantly across the three interwoven timelines and I wanted to find out what happened in each of them. My third book by this author and all have been great.

Thanks to her, the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.