This was good but don’t know if I would read it again. It deserves 3/5 stars, thank you to NetGalley for a copy of this book to read!

Mayra had me saying wtf. It’s a wild, hypnotic trip like getting lost in a dream where everything feels slightly off, but you can’t look away. Ingrid, a relatable but frustrating MC, drops everything when her chaotic, magnetic childhood best friend Mayra resurfaces, inviting her to a surreal house deep in the Everglades. At first, I wasn’t sure I even liked these characters. Ingrid’s devotion to Mayra and Mayra’s recklessness had me side eyeing them both, but the deeper I got, the more the story swallowed me whole, just like that eerie swamp house swallowing them.

Gonzalez’s writing was atmospheric, disorienting, and impossible to shake. I had to reread a few sections to make sure I read that correctly. The book feels like being on shrooms in the best way. time stretches, reality warps, and you’re just as trapped in the weird, beautiful nightmare as Ingrid is. The tension is as thick as the Florida swamp in the book. It creeps up on you, making your skin prickle, but you can’t stop reading because you NEED to know what’s lurking beneath the surface. Reading it feels like being in a waking dream, strange, beautiful, and disorienting. Just as the characters lose themselves in the house, I found myself completely immersed, questioning what was real and what was imagined. The book stays in your mind long after the last page, like the remnants of a vivid, unsettling trip.

If you like psychological suspense with a side of surrealism and messy, toxic friendships, this one’s for you ✨

Mayra is one of those books that creeps under your skin. The prose is lyrical and haunting, perfectly capturing the humid, mysterious Florida landscape. It’s not a plot-driven story but more an immersive emotional journey with themes of memory and identity. I found it beautifully unsettling and thought-provoking, though it requires patience. Definitely a book to savor if you enjoy atmospheric literary fiction.
Rating: ★★★★☆

Gonzalez's debut is both fantastical and terribly grounded in the emotion and chaos of young friendship. Told in both the present and flashbacks, it's the story of Ingrid and her childhood friend Mayra, and the house they find themselves in as adults after Mayra left their small hometown years previously. The two reconnect in a strange house in the Everglades, where things begin to unravel. There's a very Southern Gothic feel to this story, and while I think the ending was a little too telegraphed for me to be truly effective, I loved the characterization and the relationship between these two women, going from being inseparable as they stumble through their teen years to their tentative steps to reacquaint themselves with each other.

Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez follows Ingrid, a young woman living in Florida. When an old friend invites her to come stay in the swamplands with her, Ingrid is hesitant at first but eventually decides to go. When she gets there, she finds that things aren’t exactly as she thought they would be.

This was an interesting one. I think the first half was extremely solid. Atmospheric and a little bit strange, it kept me very engaged. I loved reading the flashbacks and learning about Ingrid and Mayra’s friendship. The house was creepy and cool to read about. The last quarter felt a little disjointed and abrupt. It kind of took me out of the story.

I would recommend this one to a certain type of reader. I think people who don’t mind feeling like a book is going in a wild direction will enjoy this one.

Title: Mayra
Author: Nicky Gonzalez
Genre: Horror
Format: eARC
Series: NA
Star Rating: 3.5 stars

A special thank you goes to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group for providing me with a copy of this book. Please know that this does not influence my rating or thoughts on the book itself.

tw: underage smoking, infidelity, drugs (weed), drugging of animals, death

This book was not what I expected, and I’m kind of disappointed with it. I expected a lot more from it. The ending threw me off, and it did not fit with what the book was about. It just went in such a wildly different direction. It let you believe it was about one thing, and then it turned around and it was about something else entirely. While there were a lot of positives to this book, overall, it was the ending that disappointed me and brought the rating down a lot.

I’ll start with the positives because there are some positives to the book. Ingrid was a great main character, and I enjoyed how complex she was. Her anxiety was done so well, and it was some of the best I’ve seen. The descriptions of anxiety and how it feels were so spot on to how I feel with anxiety. I also enjoyed the flashbacks of the friendship between Ingrid and Mayra throughout the years. It reminded me of my time in high school. It was my favorite part of the book. When the friends you had weren’t always the greatest, but they were yours through it all. Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn't add Ingrid’s bisexuality. A girl after my own heart.

The real downer of this book was the ending, as I have mentioned above. It went in such a wild direction. The book had taken its time with the pacing. It was incredibly slow, but it had taken its time, building up to something. But something that happened was so weird. It wasn’t what I expected, and I was really let down. While working on this review, I read the synopsis, and I guess it did what it was supposed to, but I don’t know. The book itself built up to something different then what the synopsis said.

Overall, despite the ending, this was a good book, and I enjoyed my time while reading it. It had excellent bisexual and anxiety rep. It will take you back to the time of high school as you remember the good times and the bad times with friends who may or may not have been your friends. But overall, this book was good and creepy. I still recommend it, even if the ending was not for me.

This is a strange, trippy book that makes you question your senses and find it hard to know what to trust. I read an eARC of this book on Net Galley so thank you to the author and the publisher.

This book is gothic, certainly. The atmosphere, the strange feeling of something not quite being right, the isolation, the house. However it’s labelled as horror which didn’t feel quite right. It’s unnerving, it’s atmospheric, but it doesn’t feel frightening.

This is a slow burn novel about two friends reconnecting in an isolated house in the forest in the Florida Everglades. Our main character hasn’t seen her former best friend Mayra for many years, until she gets a phone call inviting her to stay at a house a couple of hours from where she lives. Her journey down, does set hairs running a little, with encounters that have just a touch of menace. Upon reaching the house she unexpectedly finds her friend’s boyfriend is also there. A man with prowess in the kitchen, but who seems quite controlling and lacking respect for personal space.

Our main character starts to have unusual encounters, memories seem blurred, the house full of endless discoveries. She starts to behave strangely, as do her companions in the house.

Ultimately this book focuses on female friendship. We recollect frequently on the events of their youth, the experiences that shaped them and why they are where they are now and why they grew apart.

The atmosphere was fantastic, the gothic elements exquisitely applied, the story compelling and surreal. This was an interesting book but don’t expect a traditional/ violent horror. This is one to lean more into the gothic nature of the book.

I was granted a free copy of Myra by Nikki Gonzalez through netgate for review. All opinions and thoughts written here are my own. I received no compensation whatsoever
I just finished reading. Myra by Nikki Gonzalez. I found this book to be a little bit creepy story, a little bit Twilight zone a little ,bit telling about how some of us navigate relationships and the change between childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
We might find ourselves not being the people we once thought we were or that other people one stop we were..I would recommend this book to other readers that like this type of story. Although I tend to enjoy. This is on raymore at a movie than in a book cuz I found myself drifting a little bit as I was reading and I found myself having to backtrack a lot because of that. That's not a bad thing. In fact, it's kind of nice when the author can get so much in the realm of the book that we almost feel like we are one of the characters in the book.,But in this case it gave me a little bit of feeling of vertigo or uneasiness somehow., also enjoyable at the same time. Well done Nikki Gonzalez I look forward to your next body of work.

This book sounded so promising to me - I have been into books set in Florida for the last couple of years (which is lucky for me because it seems like so have authors; it has been popular) and the Florida swamp immediately hooked me. A book exploring the evolution of a fraught female friendship? Count me in. I also really love books where the house is a character/factors heavily into the story. Unfortunately I think this book was too short to really make use of the house the way it could have, and overall, nothing much happened. I was left wanting more than the book delivered.

+ I am not the right audience for this book. But I still found myself intrigued with the story.

+ My favorite part of the book is the atmosphere, the Florida swamp, and how isolated and lost you can get. I think the author did such a great job setting the scene. Also I liked Ingrid’s voice – she’s a very fleshed out character so even though nothing much was happening for half way into the book, I liked her stories about her early years with Mayra.

+ The friendship between Ingrid and Mayra is a big part of this story and actually it seemed like that’s all this story was about. How a close friendship can change, what the person means to you and other themes of friendship. I like how that was explored, especially with both girls being Cuban and how they were raised was very different from, Mayra’s boyfriend-Benji’s upbringing.

+ This is a short book, under 300 pages and nothing much happens in it until near the end when some of the secret of the house they are staying at is revealed.

~ I wanted to learn more about the sentient house, but once we find out what’s happening the story ends.

~ I don’t think I grasped what the book was about – except for Ingrid and Mayra’s relationship and how they were when they were younger, to now together in the house where things are happening, like making them forget, keeping them there without them really noticing.

~ Ingrid finding a journal halfway through the book? It didn’t interest me and I couldn’t see how that connected with what was happening at first. Until of course the secret of the house is kind of revealed but by then the story was over.



Final Thoughts:

This wasn’t for me but I did enjoy the atmosphere, Ingrid and Mayra. I do wish we learned about what was happening in the house much earlier in the story but I guess there were subtle hints that went totally over my head since Ingrid and Mayra’s friendship was the focus. Would have loved more horror but there wasn’t any really. I think if you like atmospheric mystery and suspense you might enjoy this one.

The premise of this book hooked me right in, but I think that there's a bit of mismarketing going on with Nicky Gonzalez's debut novel, MAYRA.

Years after losing touch, Ingrid gets a surprise call from her childhood best friend, Mayra, inviting her to a mysterious weekend in the Everglades. Intrigued and a little nostalgic, Ingrid agrees, even though she’s not sure that so much has changed between them that there may be some uncomfortability or awkwardness. When she arrives, Mayra is still the friend Ingrid knew her to be, but things are a bit off. Mayra’s boyfriend, Benji is already there and the house turns out to be his strange, inherited estate. As the trio eats, drinks, and drifts through the sprawling, estate, Ingrid begins to feel uncomfortable. The book dives mainly into flashbacks between Mayra and Ingrid's friendship and I do believe this book to be more about their friendship than anything that would be deemed a horror novel. Flashbacks blur with the present, but I felt the payoff to be underwhelming. I am objectively giving this book 3 stars because I do believe that there's a reader market for this book, but maybe along the lines of suspense rather than horror/mystery/thriller.

Thank you to Random House Publishing for providing this ARC for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez is an eerie and often disorienting horror novel. Set in the swamplands of Florida, the main character reunites with her childhood best friend in an enigmatic and labyrinthine house. As she and Mayra reconnect she can’t shake the feeling that she’s losing grip on who she is and why she’s there.

There is a lot of recommend this book. Mayra is atmospheric, uncanny, and off-putting. The way the author describes the isolation and disorientation of the house and the swamp is immersive. The author also creates a taut sense of dread they gradually builds. There are hints that something isn’t right, but they start so mildly and build to a fever pitch. The boyfriend character, Benji, too has a really well done ‘uncanny valley’ characterization that sets the reader at unease.

What was also great was the description and deconstruction of Ingrid and Mayra’s friendship. Even without the horror elements, the elements of the faded friendship are great. The way that the main character reflects on the memories she has of Mayra—which blend admiration, jealousy, and desire are very well constructed. Additionally, Mayra’s reactions and ways of remembering similar events in different ways shows how friendships can grow apart and die. I think almost everyone has a friendship that has died a slow death like this, and it’s painfully relatable. This is arguably the stronger element of the book than the horror moments.

Unfortunately, the horror story did not deliver the way I hoped it would. While it has a long eerie buildup, there is no real spike in the fear or terror towards the climax. The revelation of what’s been going on is brief and somewhat lackluster. The hallucinatory, fever dream like elements actually take away from the payoff. Pacing in general is not amazingly fast during this book. There are large sections where the characters just nap, sit around, or read very slowly introduced journal entries. This is not great for an impatient reader, especially as one gets to chapter 19 with almost no promise of resolution.

I would have loved to hear more about Mayra and Ingrid. I actually think a version of this story could work as contemporary fiction without the horror elements. 3/5 stars.

Mayra left me wanting more. The atmospheric swamp setting created a very oppressive mysterious vibe throughout the whole story, Nicky Gonzalez is quite good at painting a vivid picture as far as setting. The characters and plot fell a little flatter for me, and ultimately made this a tough one for me to finish. I did slog through, but it was not my favorite.

3.5 Stars

“Mayra” by Nicky Gonzalez follows Ingrid as she receives an invention to stay with her estranged high-school best friend, Mayra, in a mansion of sorts in the secluded everglades. Unexpectedly, Mayra’s partner, Benji, is there as well, and is always ready to cook them a beautifully delicious meal and keep the house in pristine condition. However, the weekend getaway quickly turns into a claustrophobic, labyrinthian, haunted house nightmare that confronts some of their darkest thoughts (mainly… Mayra and Ingrid’s falling out as friends).

While this novel is pitched as a “haunted house” story of sorts (which was probably my favorite part of the book, despite not making up much of the book) the primary focus is on Ingrid and Mayra’s friendship. Gonzales captures the nuances of drifted friendships, the ones that in your youth will seemingly last forever. They confront each other about what led them astray, but an ongoing love for one another never left. Someone play, “Girl, So Confusing” by Charli XCX. There are several flashbacks that perfectly showcased their friendship as well, that also sucker-punched me in the gut with a wave of nostalgia.

Maybe I’m biased, but I absolutely adore the setting of a haunted house. The mansion in this story reminded me a lot of the Winchester Mansion with all of its quirks: angled hallways, themed rooms, hidden windows, doors to no where. Even though there was seemingly endless space, it was still easy to feel trapped, lost, and on edge. But, it took a long time to get to see the mansion in its full glory. I was hoping at least for some more breadcrumbs to the quirks earlier on before the “full send” into the bizarreness of the haunted house aspect. The house as a “character” was explained in a few lines at the end, rather than showed to us throughout the book.

It did take me awhile to get into the book, the first quarter of it or so, I was slumping. Once, I got past that point though, I was sucked in and couldn’t stop reading. So, if you are okay with a slow-burn, you’ll be alright. I adored the descriptions of scenery, this book felt sticky with humidity from its swampy surroundings. The friendship was tackled beautifully, even when discussing the more painful moments.

Overall, I felt that there was a good skeleton, I was just hoping there was more meat to sink my teeth into. But, I had a very fun time reading this!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for sending me a free e-ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review! A full review has already been posted to Goodreads. A full review to Instagram will be posted on or around June 22, a month before publication.

Ingrid and Mayra are two friends, raised in Hialeah, who were always seeking a better life until Mayra left to attend Cornell, way north of Miami. As the two grew apart, hidden grievances kept them from staying friends until one day Mayra calls and invites Ingrid to join her at a vacation home in the heart of the Everglades. While Ingrid is happy to reconnect things turn strange as she spends more time in the house. Atmospheric and creepy!

The imagery is phenomenal and I dug the setting and overall descriptions. The story was a good one that kept me interested, but I’m not quite sure I appreciate the ending.

I feel like reading chapter 26 on hallucinatory drugs is probably an *experience.*

There was an element of mystery and creepiness to it, but I wanted a little more understanding at the end of it. I’m still left a little confused but would give this a 3.5.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Mayra is an odd, unsettling little novel that got under my skin in all the right ways. From the opening pages, there’s a strange atmosphere that never really lets up, casting everything in a slightly off-kilter light. The house at the center of the story is mysterious and compelling and learning its secrets bit by bit gave the book a creeping sense of dread that reminded me a lot of Shirley Jackson’s work. Though the pacing sometimes felt slow, especially given the book’s short length, it actually worked in the story’s favor, letting that eerie tension simmer just beneath the surface.

What really stuck with me, though, was the portrayal of Mayra and Ingrid’s toxic friendship. The flashbacks added so much depth and realism to their dynamic, and they brought back memories of similarly intense and fraught friendships from my own high school years. Gonzalez captures that volatile emotional intensity so well, without over-explaining or moralizing. The friendship felt raw, intimate, and sometimes cruel, which made the book’s psychological layers even more fascinating.

The writing itself was another highlight. It shifts subtly throughout the novel, echoing the characters’ unraveling and the shifting tone of the story. At times it’s spare and sharp, other times more lyrical and dreamlike—always serving the story’s mood. I’m genuinely impressed by how much Gonzalez managed to do in such a compact novel. Mayra is strange, haunting, and stylish in a way that lingers after the final page.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the chance to review this eARC.

Mayra is a presence that has loomed over Ingrid's life. She's someone Ingrid loves, hates, wants to be, and scoffs at. And when she extends an invitation to spend a weekend at a secluded cabin, Ingrid accepts, not knowing what to expect. When she gets there she finds her childhood best friend along with her new boyfriend. There's a sense of foreboding throughout this novel that nothing is at it seems and I felt it the more I read. There's tension between Mayra and Ingrid as they recall their memories, each one having their own version of events. The author did a great job describing the setting - the oppressive heat of the swamp and the house itself felt like their very own characters in the story. While the buildup was slow, I found the reveal at the end to be very interesting. Although I wish it came sooner and more could've been done with it. Still a book I would recommend for the eerie atmosphere.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for providing an advanced copy for review.

DNF @ 45% - I really enjoyed the way the author wrote the setting, it felt like I was really there. I liked the storyline of the toxic friendship as well. Unfortunately, this story was extremely slow moving and repetitive and I got a little bored. I did like the premise of the story and enjoyed the writing, so maybe this book just wasn’t for me and I’ll try out another book by this author in the future. Thank you netgalley for an early copy!

I loved the creepy, swampy Florida setting! To me, this particular story moved a bit too slowly, but I enjoyed Nicky Gonzalez's writing, which was evocative and unsettling. Reading and reviewing is so subjective, so if you like Gothic stories and Florida settings, give this one a try!