I received a free ARC ebook of <i>Mayra</i> from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.
This Gothic novel is set in swampy Florida, so there is a built-in in otherworldly atmosphere. Ingrid has grown up in Hialeah, Florida, works an unimportant, boring job, and has few things in her life that could bring a smile. Memories of her best friend, Mayra, and their silly, sometimes dangerous adventures make her think of better times. But Mayra left for college; her few visits since them were awkward.
An unexpected invitation to visit Mayra at a friend's house causes Ingrid to wonder. She hesitates but eventually goes. Mayra and Benji are delighted to see her. The house is unexpectedly unique, the food is sublime, and Ingrid's friendship with Mayra slowly repairs.
It takes a long time for Gonzalez to get to this point. The sense of unease grows very slowly, both for Ingrid and this reader. The first clear image that something is truly amiss is a very short scene that rarely gets mentioned again. Time and space distort; much like Silvia Moreno-Garcia's <iMexican Gothic</i>, the house reflects and transmits rot and disease. It is a labyrinth of horror.

Like any true Gothic story, the house becomes a character, along with the humans living within it. Two childhood friends, Ingrid and Mayra, reunite for a weekend in the Florida Everglades, along with Mayra's boyfriend, Benji. What begins as an indulgent weekend dev0lves into disagreements, secret doors and traps. A haunted, and haunting, read.

Thank you to Net Galley and Random House Publishing for the advanced copy of this title.

I'm still trying to understand what this story is about, other than two friends reconnecting after a long separation. There is unfinished business and hurt feelings between Mayra and Ingrid. My first impression is that Mayra seems complicated to love and be around. Most of this story is about rehashing their relationship, in which Mayra has some gaps in her memory.

They seem to do things that make no sense (yes, I understand they are teenagers, so that’s a given), and there's no accountability for things even at 15 (or 16). That age is such a critical development stage, but one should still have the good sense to know not to poke the bear, don't ask strange men dumb things, because not everyone thinks it's a joke. My apprehension toward this story was that they didn’t realize how dangerous what they were doing was; however, I’m a parent, so I’m biased.

I can say that their relationship, in general, started wonderfully, but then turned toxic for them both. In one instance, Mayra tells Ingrid her plans to attend an out-of-state college. The girls had planned to go to college together close to home, but Mayra had other dreams and aspirations. She wanted to thrive in new surroundings. When she tells Ingrid her plans of wanting to go to Vermont, Ingrid becomes a killjoy and doesn't support her friend. In the heat of the moment, she didn’t realize those actions had consequences.

The story focuses on the weekend for these estranged friends and vividly describes the tranquility of the home, which is very secluded in the swamp. Ingrid saw this as a getaway from her current environment. However, the house has a sinister history of keeping its occupants docile and quiet.

Benji enters the story as Mayra’s boyfriend. He has inherited this home and is obsessed with its upkeep and caring for his guests' every want and need.

At this point, Ingrid doesn't know how long she's been in the house as days spill into one another with her friend, eating great food, and reminiscing. Benji makes sure they never have to leave. Ingrid is also intrigued by the design of the house and that it doesn’t make sense, so she spends her time exploring and, in doing so, finds a journal. This journal would be critical as the story goes on.

Will Ingrid and Mayra ever leave this tranquility? Or is that the house masking another dark, insidious secret?

I found this story to be a lot more than what I expected. Yes, it's about friendship and love, but also family. We learn why Mayra is a wild child because she doesn’t have the same support as Ingrid, which would make anyone jealous of her relationships with them.

It's a strange novel, but one I can't appreciate for what it is to understand life and your place in it. It’s to "know thyself" regardless of the obstacles in front of you.

Ingrid, a Cuban woman, is invited to visit her childhood best friend in a secluded home in the Everglades of Florida.

Mayra has changed a lot from the “chonga” she was in high school, and Ingrid is trying to make sense of the person she is now. She always had a strong personality that Ingrid admired when they were close, but she also envied her. She never felt as cool or as confident as Mayra was.

Ingrid plans to only stay for the weekend but finds herself staying day after day, an escape from reality, and liking who she is away from her normal routine and stressors.

She finds an old diary under the guest room bed from Elizabeth (Lizzie), and becomes enraptured by her accounts of the past.

Things start to get weird and inconsistent. Ingrid doesn’t know quite what is real or if her mind is playing tricks on her. Her memories are distorted.

Lizzie’s diary entries end in an odd way. Mayra’s boyfriend Benji (an eccentric, slightly uptight do-gooder) loves to cook elaborate healthy meals, and is obsessive about taking care of this historical labyrinth of a house that is his family’s. He has some odd moments that are quickly covered up by him returning to “normal” behavior.

The story felt like “Women’s Fiction” for the first part of the book, but an ominous feeling grows as the story progresses. I wasn’t sure what to make of it at first, but by the end I understood.

Nicky Gonzalez writes with a poetic tone, and beautifully descriptive chapters. Ingrid has a lot of introspective thought, and you really learn to understand her innermost feelings. I was intrigued and engaged the whole time!

Thank you Random House for the ARC via NetGalley! All opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for the E-ARC. 2.5 stars rounded up.

I really thought I'd like this one more. The first half of the book, if I could rate it separately, would probably be closer to 4 stars. I really enjoyed the sort of uneasy journey that led to the remote home the titular Mayra summons to the protagonist's existence.

The parts that really worked for me were the parts where the focus was on memory. How two people who've known each other since childhood can remember things the other did, while they themselves had no recollection of having done it. Or a vague sense, but like the version of them that did it was a stranger. I also thought that the dynamic between Mayra and Ingrid was believable (even if it was super toxic).

What didn't work for me was how the plot sort of fell apart with the introduction of Benji and, more specifically, the diary. By the end I felt sort of dumb, like I didn't know why Ingrid suddenly realized the severity of her situation. It just sort of came out of nowhere. I feel like there was supposed to be some sort of time warping pocket-hell type thing happening, but unfortunately I think this asked a bit too much of the reader in terms of assuming they'd be able to read between the lines.

I thought the prose was easy to read, and I'll keep an eye out for future books by this author, but this wasn't my favorite.

Truthfully I’m confused. I feel like I have no idea what j read. I was expecting a psych thriller about two reunited ex bffs but it turned out to be a gothic horror with those ex bffs as a side order? I’m still not sure. 3 stars for the imagery and poetic writing. Definitely a complex read but not in a good way. Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read and review this ARC.

South Florida is a rich backdrop for a mysterious, moody, surreal novel like this one. While I think I got lost in the mangroves a few times, it was a fun place to sink into.

Oof wanted to like this but for the life of me I couldn’t stay interested. the setting and descriptions of scenes and especially food were great but I didn’t care for either character. also journal entries in a story always feel like a cop out to me

dnfed around the 40% mark


thank you to the publisher and netgalley for an early copy for my review!

Such an excellent new horror novel! Suspenseful and disturbing in the best way! A new horror favorite for sure!

3.5 stars. Fantastic details, from the foods to the land and setting and clothing. The writer excels at inviting the reader into the world and making sure we see everything around us. It could easily to handed to a set director to build the scene. But pace seemed to be mixed, and some parts were redundant. I’m appreciative to Penguin Random House for the Advanced Reader Copy.

This book revolves mostly around a teenage friendship, which is not what I originally expected but ended up liking in the end. I am always interested in female friendships and the way that both conflict and fierce loyalty can coexist. I’m also a fan of the journal woven throughout and the way it adds a layer of mystery to the story. I would recommend this book for anyone who has a haunting friendship in their lives, one that seems to follow the despite their best efforts to leave it behind.

This was boring :( I really liked the idea of it but found it to be way too slow & kind of a mess. The most interesting parts were the flashbacks to Mayra & Ingrid’s childhood friendship. I also hate when a character finds a journal & reads like 1 page a week. Who finds a journal & doesn’t read the whole thing in one sitting?! I didn’t connect to any of the characters & had a hard time picturing a lot of the scenes.

Thank you to Random House & NetGalley for the ARC.

Nothing was really going on in this book. It felt more like literary fiction than horror. The horror element was hardly there at all. For being such a short book, it felt really long.

Mayra was an interesting book. I'm not sure if I would classify it as "gothic" but it did have some eerie elements. A lot of the story was comprised of flashbacks to Ingrid and Mayra's teenage friendship. Some parts of this were interesting and other parts were lackluster. I feel as though I spent most of the book waiting for something enthralling or shocking to happen. The ending was meh.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for allowing me the opportunity to review this ARC!

This was such a strange and unexpected book. I think I loved it. I know, having finished it about 10 minutes ago, that it devastated me. This is a book where the plot is the relationship. I kept saying, “I’m at the halfway point and I still don’t know what this book is about” because it really unfolds in such a unique way. The writing was beautiful. I can’t think of any other reason why I read it so quickly and never really put it down despite what I thought was a lack of plot.

I dislike the idea that this is a book about toxic female friendship. I feel like it’s about complex, human female friendship. How people hurt each other without meaning to, how they desperately want to be loved by the person they love. There’s a moment where the ‘toxic ex best friend’ reflects on moments where the narrator really hurt her in the past and it serves as a reminder, I think, that sometimes the way we see ourselves is not the way others see us. How we perceive people wrong. I feel like insecurity is the real monster of this book rather than “toxic female friendship”.

Honestly, I only finished this book because I had received an ARC and felt obligated to complete it and provide a review. My initial rating is 3 stars, but I didn't really like the book and certainly don't feel that it did a good job of living up to the summary from the publisher. The writing is fine, but with only 240 pages this book leaves a lot unexplored and would have been better if it was expanded upon.
Mayra and Ingrid were childhood best friends, who had an unhealthy co-dependent relationship, until Mayra moves north from FL to NY for college and rarely returns. Ingrid is left to live her life, until one day Mayra calls to invite her to a house in the middle of the FL wetlands to "disconnect" and Ingrid spontaneously agrees. We as the reader are given glimpses of their past in little vignettes as Ingrid reminisces about their childhood as she explores the house and loses herself as well. The book is sold as a Southern horror, but the horror is only about the last 8-10% of the book and is so quickly resolved I felt like I had whiplash. I am rounding up from 2.5 stars, the premise could be good, but the execution did not live up to my expectations.
Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for the electronic ARC of this review.

Okay, so "Mayra" by Nicky Gonzalez. this book was a trip, dude. I approached it thinking it'd be this creepy haunted house deal, and sure, it was kind of that, but it devolved into something totally stranger. Like, for the most part it was this weird, kinda poisonous friendship between Mayra and Ingrid, and then the end just went into full-on fever dream.

The first half of the book, I was loving it. So many flashbacks to when Mayra and Ingrid were teens, and this creepy old house out in the Florida Everglades? So atmospheric and creepy. It was a slow-moving book, but I thought that it was building up to something gigantic. Then it just turned into. repetition. Like, oh, yeah, they're still stuck in the house. Yes, more flashbacks. Yes, teenage Mayra was a brat. You know.

And then the ending just happened. Seriously, what the heck? Where did that even happen from? Why on earth are we suddenly in a swamp and everything's all. psychedelic? I have just so many conflicting emotions about it. The premise of the book was great to begin with, but I just wasn't fond of the whole hallucinatory prose thing. If I wanted to imagine like I was stoned, I'd, you know, do drugs. Not read about doing drugs.

Also, can we talk about the discovered journal trope for a moment? It drives me nuts when characters come across these ancient journals and then read them at a glacial pace. Like, "Ooh, this person is so enigmatic, I'll read one entry per day." Who does that?! No one. And to be honest, the journal entries themselves weren't really doing it for me. This Elizabeth girl was just so bland until the eleventh hour when she proceeded and made this really stupid decision. Seriously, how was she thinking that was going to end well?

The writing style also felt kind of jump-y, especially towards the end when things got really weird. They're talking about one thing, and then BAM, we're suddenly later and they're talking about something else entirely, and I'm sitting there wondering what the heck did I miss. It felt like the timeline was fast-forwarding unexpectedly, which just made things more confusing.

Yeah, okay, but I will say that Mayra's boyfriend Benji was freaky in the absolute best way possible. He was sort of normal, but you just knew that something was off. The whole "cleaning the windows" scene? Complete and utter WTF and I loved it, though I still don't entirely get what was going on there.

So, yeah. Part of this book I enjoyed, and part of it I just didn't. I'm sure some are going to totally get the whole fever-dream thing, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. The concept, though? Honestly fantastic. I'd be more than happy to read more by Nicky Gonzalez in the future, even if this one only got a 3.25 from me.

Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez is a gothic psychological novel about Ingrid, who reunites with her estranged childhood friend Mayra at a remote house in the Florida Everglades. As they revisit their past, the eerie setting and emotional tension blur reality, revealing the dark complexities of their friendship.

I didn’t quite connect with this one. The first 75% of the story explored the complexities of Ingrid and Mayra’s friendship in depth - but Ingrid’s constant shifts between love and resentment toward Mayra (both in the past and present day) became a bit exhausting to follow. Additionally the plot development toward the end didn’t quite deliver the payoff I was hoping for. That said, readers who enjoy gothic, eerie, psychologically driven narratives may find a lot to appreciate here.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and author for granting me a complimentary advanced reader copy of the ebook. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own and based off of this draft; the final publication may be different. Expected publication date is July 22, 2025.

Mayra and Ingrid are childhood friends that haven’t spoken in years. Out of the blue, Ingrid gets a call from Mayra inviting her to visit her at a home deep in the Florida Everglades.
The book goes back and forth between memories of the girls as teenagers to present day in the vacation home.
What starts out as a pretty normal read takes a turn and suddenly I had no clue what was going on. It wasn’t bad, it was just odd. I think a bit of confusion was what the author was trying to evoke, similar to the house itself. Generally speaking I liked the book but describing it leaves me at a loss.
Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for access to this ARC.

Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for an eARC of Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez, which I really enjoyed. The novel's creepy gothic atmosphere was its most interesting feature, even if it got slightly lost by the end. Ingrid and Mayra were both engaging characters that kept the plot propelling forwards. The novel is an easy recommendation for thriller fans who love a breezy read.