Bochica had all the right ingredients to be the perfect gothic suspense but the execution did not do it justice. Atmospheric, chilling, cultural lore, a haunted house/hotel, but the flimsy characters and overly dramatic writing kept me from enjoying this one.

I have been deeply let down by this book. One of my most anticipated and now I wonder why I even bothered because this was very dull. You can't comp this to Mexican Gothic or The Shining and not give even an ounce of horror or creepiness. There is very little action to do with the house or even just in general, and much of what happens seems to be resolved in internal dialogue. Add a shoe-horned in romance that added nothing, and I'm just left very disappointed.

What started out as a piece of paradise turned into a nightmare…

It’s the early 1920’s, & in Colombia women don’t have much power over their own lives. Antonia’s doing her best to teach the girls at the Catholic school, but is still haunted by the beautiful waterfall-adjacent mansion she used to live in with her parents (until her mother died mysteriously & her father tried to burn the place down). But now someone has converted the monstrous house into a hotel & invited her to the opening celebration - & not everyone will be leaving alive…

The writing was not as polished as what you’ll find in similarly creepy & atmospheric works like Mexican Gothic, but this is a debut author & I did really enjoy the way she built the legends & history of the sacred land this story is set on. Antonia’s fight to banish the demons of her past is hard fought, & the terrifying experiences she has ultimately result in what I considered a very satisfying conclusion.

Thank you to NetGalley & Atria/Primero Sueno Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro’s debut had so much potential! I loved the gothic cover, the haunting 1920s Colombian setting, and the cultural details like cheese in hot chocolate. I loved learning about that. The plot was compelling, a haunted mansion on a waterfall, a daughter trying to save her father and solve the mystery of her mother’s murder, and the subtle romance between Antonia and Alejandro was sweet.

However, the pacing felt off. Even though the novel is less than 300 pages some parts dragged, and the ending felt rushed and disconnected from the rest of the story. The final chapters didn’t fit the characters, and the dialogue got a bit too telenovela for my taste.

I wanted to love it, and there were things I truly did but overall, it just didn’t quite land for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the eARC. All opinions are my own.

Thank you for the advanced readers copy of Bochica. I loved the premise of this book and was so excited for it. Unfortunately, it was a hard read for me. I did not connect well with the characters and the story moved around in a choppy and confusing way. I am sure a ton of people will find that this story resonates with them, it was just not for me.

2.75 stars

While the set-up and backdrop had all the makings of a creepy horror story, this ended up falling short of its potential.

Its strength was in its descriptions of the setting and Colombian architecture and landscapes. I came to find out that the hotel is based off of a real place, and I thought the author did a beautiful job of describing it on page!

However, the feelings I ultimately experienced reading this were apathy and boredom. The plot meandered, the characterizations were inconsistent, and the romantic chemistry forced. I hope to see the author find her footing more and plan to check out her future works!

Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro does a fantastic job in writing this Gothic horror novel, it had that element that I enjoyed from other books like this. The elements were everything that I was wanting and enjoyed from the genre. The characters were everything that I wanting and enjoyed about this world. I loved the use of Latin America and how the haunted mansion worked overall. It was engaging and didn't let go from the first page.

✨ Review ✨ Bochica by Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro; Narrated by Frankie Corzo & Cynthia Farrell

Thanks to Primero Sueño Press, Simon and Schuster Audio, and #netgalley for the gifted advanced copy/ies of this book!

This could have been named Colombian Gothic, because it hits many similar notes to Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic. And, yet it was so different and distinct. I loved that it featured Colombian history and culture. It features traditions and art of the Muisca, the Indigenous people of this region, and I learned a lot!

The book features a creepy giant haunted mansion, La Casona, next to a huge waterfall, Salto del Tequendama, and it has all the spooky vibes. Antonia's family had once lived there, but the family eventually fled after the death of Antonia's mother when she falls into the waterfall. The house, which had been built by her father, continues to haunt Antonia, even after they've left.

The book is filled with themes relevant in 1923 Colombia and still in our world today. The book weaves in between the worlds of Catholicism and traditional religious and spritiual practices, and Antonia struggles to navigate her own sense of feminism against the expectations of 1920s female submission. Possession and haunted spaces feature predominantly in this book, and haunted house gothic horror lovers will be delighted by this.

There are places where the tempo flags a bit, or is uneven, in a way not uncommon to debut books (or slow burn gothic novels), and I'm really excited to see what she writes next. This was one of my most anticipated books of the year and it did NOT disappoint!

🎧 The audio brought all of the ambience of this book to life for me, and when the tempo slowed a bit, the audio made a great addition to get hooked back in again. The narrators do a fantastic job!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: gothic horror
Setting: 1923 Colombia
Length: 8 hours 18 minutes
Reminds me of: Mexican Gothic
Pub Date: May 2025

Read this if you like:
⭕️ haunted houses
⭕️ gothic horror
⭕️ possession and religious themes
⭕️ spookiness with a side of romance and family drama

I was really excited to dive into Bochica, but unfortunately, I ended up DNF'ing it as I felt it was really slow paced. I'm typically not into gothic horror type books, but the premise of this one really intrigued me since the moment I saw it announced on the Primero Sueño Press Instagram, but unfortunately It just wasn’t the right fit for me at the time.

I would definitely give the authors future books a try.

Thank you to NetGalley and Primero Sueño Press for the opportunity to read in exchange for my honest review.

DNF at 34%.

Premise was incredible, but execution fell so flat. The author's writing style is stilted and very "tell, don't show." Too many things happened "suddenly" and events were convoluted and repetitive. Antonia's opinions and feelings also change on a whim; she'll be terrified and overwhelmed with love for her father and two pages later she will be completely calm and full of anger and disgust that she wasted her life caring for him. 34% in and nothing major had happened yet to grab my attention.

Since I DNFed this book, I will refrain from posting a review on social media.

Actual rating 2.5 stars

Bochica had an intriguing premise with its promise of gothic elements, but unfortunately it is excruciatingly slow that it left me yawning and eventually falling asleep.

The setting was eerie with description that flooded my senses. I was on high alert, anticipating the creepiness to be tuned to like an 8, but I quickly learned that it was not going to be THAT kind of suspense.

I struggled the most with Antonia's character who ruminated SO MUCH and delivered little to no action behind all her theories. I also feel like the author didn't know what kind of horror to incorporate as the subject. Is it demons? Is it a cult? Is it a haunting? I was confused, looking for clues as to what I'd encounter next. There's also a bit of romance woven in, but Alejandro as the mmc leaves much to be desired. I didn't like how he was used as a vehicle to reveal the mystery regarding the murders surrounding El Salto. The information being handed to Antonia this way is lazy and disappointing.

My favorite part was reading her mom's journal entries. I think they offered interesting insight to their familial line, and what potential darkness has lurked in their lives.

I am not an expert in gothic literature, but this one just ... didn't hit the mark.

Bochica definitely had a lot going for it, but the execution fell flat for me. Despite a haunted atmosphere, creepy things that go bump in the night, secrets galore, a haunted mansion, ghosts, cryptic journals, and a mystery, nothing really happened. Nothing. I really wanted to like this one, but the whole thing fell flat, from beginning to end.

What I did like and appreciate were the legends and discussions about the Muisca people as I didn't really know a lot about them. Learning about the different figures that play an important role in the spiritual life of the Muisca people was fascinating, and I really wish the author had used that a bit more in the story. There was also some discussion about the impact of the Spanish colonization and how it affected the people and some of the steps they took to protect the land. However, that being said, there were also a lot of tropes being used as well to depict Indigenous peoples, some of them discombobulated and contrary to what was originally mentioned, and I did have a problem with that. If you are going to use something to be a red herring, don't use these misconceptions as that is not very impressive. There was also a lot of discussion about women and their role in Colombian society during the 1930s and how frustrating it could be for a woman who wanted to do something different than be a wife and mother. Women's roles were very limited during this time period and I empathized with a FC who wanted to do something more with her life and felt constrained by the men around her. The idea that a woman has to become evil in order to get what she wants in society should have been discussed more in the novel as I think that was an important theme in this book.

Antonia herself is a strong-willed character, but she is pretty one-dimensional in nature and we don't really get to know her very well. We don't learn very much about her time in the mansion, something I thought would have been important to the story. Despite the theme of women's rights running through the book, the author chose to have Antonia in a relationship for her to get out of her situation rather than on her own merits, something I did not appreciate. The story itself was pretty formulaic and predictable, and despite all the elements available to give one the creeps, there was actually nothing to the story. There were many plot holes and so many things were just glossed over in such a way that the reader was supposed to just accept them. Not this reader.

Bochica had a lot of potential, but more emphasis on creating a plot that the reader has to figure out rather than a reader just accepting how things are would be beneficial. I had high hopes for this book, but this definitely could have used some editing to make it more powerful. Overall, I think this suffered from a plot full of holes, a story that had potential but essentially was more in the nature of telling you what was happening rather than letting you figure it out, and little suspense.

A haunting tale of a daughter seeking to find out what really happened to her mother. The mansion sits at El Salto, abandoned for the past three years following the tragic death of Estela. Antonia and her father wanted nothing to do with it, trying to escape the sadness that has surrounded them, until a family friend decides to rent it out as a hotel. Thus, Antonia and her father are drawn back to the house and its secrets.

A tragic and suspenseful story steeped with Colombian history, this was a quick read - frightening with a dash of romance.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a digital ARC of this title!

I'm a bit disappointed with Bochica. I was so excited to find a Latin American gothic horror that incorporated Colombian legends into the storytelling. The editing definitely still needed to be finalized. I even bought the published ebook to see if the glaring spelling errors had been fixed before publishing. They hadn't. The story moved a bit too slowly and musings were repeated (many times on the same page mere lines apart) as well, which could have been helped in another round of editing. Overall, this book could have been reduced by a good chunk of pages to keep tension from being overco.e by boredom.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Comparing any book to Mexican Gothic is a very high pedestal to start on. I did enjoy the gothic qualities to this book, but I did have a hard time in places to follow along with the storyline. However, the setting was gorgeous, atmospheric and gothic, and considering this was a debut, I know the author is going to create amazing works in the future.

Thank you to Atria Books | Atria/Primero Sueno Press and NetGalley for an E-ARC copy of this book.

Bochica by Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro is a mesmerizing, witchy tale that wraps you in its eerie atmosphere and doesn’t let go. With lush prose and a creeping sense of dread, the story builds slowly—but trust me, the payoff is so worth it.

I loved the haunting, folklore-infused world and the subtle, simmering romance woven into the narrative. This is the perfect read for those who love dark magic, atmospheric horror, and stories where the supernatural feels deeply rooted in something primal and real. If you enjoy slow-burn tension, rich mythology, and things that go bump in the night, Bochica will cast its spell on you too.

Highly recommended for fans of witchy tales and gothic folklore—just don’t read it alone in the dark!

Antonia’s life seemed like a fairy tale growing up. She lived in a beautiful mansion her father built for her mother and all of the gothic novels she could ever want. When her mother dies, Antonia and her father are devastated. And when her father tries to burn down their home, Antonia begins to question whether her mother’s death was really an accident or if something more sinister happened. When Antonia and her father return to their home to celebrate its reopening as a hotel, tragedy strikes and the mystery surrounding the house and the land pulls Antonia back in.

I enjoyed reading Bochica, but I think I let my hopes get too high based on comparisons to Mexican Gothic and The Shining. Not much happens during the first 30% and I wish things would have gotten spookier faster. The author did a great job of creating an atmospheric setting and using it to create tension. I enjoyed the creepy imagery and really loved the supernatural elements and the lore we got about Bochica and the Muisca people. I definitely think this author is for me and I look forward to reading from her again in the future.

…no one ask me how my “DNF more books” resolution is going.

when antonia was a child, her father built a beautiful mansion for her mother—but the family’s dream quickly became a waking nightmare. now a young woman, she finds herself drawn back to the childhood home where her mother died mysteriously years earlier, and caught up in a deeper conspiracy involving a murder cult and a power struggle over sacred land.

i was really disappointed by bochica. the almost-YA writing style, tendency to tell rather than show, and stilted, passionless romantic subplot bog down what could be a haunting story about the cost of colonialism, muisca culture, and the lengths women will go to for power in a society that denies them. i realize i read an ARC, but it reads like an early draft.

✨Bochica by Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro is Brilliantly Haunting! ✨

I loved every single second of this horrifying tale! Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro has truly outdone herself with this brilliantly haunting debut! Full of Indigenous Colombian mythology, supernatural suspense and family secrets waiting to be unearthed - Bochica 100% had me on the edge of my seat!

✨ Indigenous Colombian Mythology
✨ Family Secrets
✨ Historical Fiction
✨ Gothic Horror
✨ Mystery & Madness
✨ Family Secrets
✨ Haunted Mansion

Bochica was such a beautifully disturbing read and I cannot wait to see what tales Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro will tell next!

PS. Reading Bochica has sent me down a rabbit hole of the history of The Hotel Del Salto and I’m so excited to learn more!

Thank you so much Atria Books for sending a copy my way!

This historical horror novel masterfully blends chilling suspense with powerful themes of colonization and feminism. Reminiscent of Mexican Gothic and The Hacienda, it invites readers back into a hauntingly atmospheric setting where the past refuses to stay buried. Fans of gothic horror with a socially conscious edge will find much to admire in this gripping, thought-provoking tale.