Reviews with content warning for Religious bigotry - The Haunting of Alejandra

Generational trauma, healing, La Llorna, queer rep. This book is AMAZING and feels made for me. I was apprehensive at first since motherhood was a main theme but I am sooo glad I stuck with it

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jessreadreceipts's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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megandherbook's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is my favorite book of 2023 so far.

Alejandra is a wife and a mother and is seriously struggling. She feels as though she has no identity other than those two things and she isn't even good at them. As her depression gets deeper she starts to see a ghostly figure of a woman in white - La Llorona. After deciding to get therapy this entity starts wreaking havoc on not only her but her children. This leads Alejandra to connect more with her birth mother who gave her up at birth and to learn more about her family history. She wants to learn more about this woman in white and how she can get rid of her for good.

This book is the epitome of how much heart horror can have. To start, Alejandra is such a beautiful, flawed character. I am not married and have no children but as someone who has depression I felt her agony. I have many friends who have felt the way she felt about their own partners and children and I know that Alejandra's struggle will resonate with so many. Yet the strength and love she has for her children will have you cheering for her the whole way through the book.

I also loved the exploration of her family history and heritage. Alejandra is a woman that was adopted and raised by people that had no ties to her heritage which made her feel even more lost in her identity. Getting to go with her has she learned and connected with her family and the strength it gave her had me crying. It was truly beautiful seeing her and the women of her family line experience the very real emotions that come with being human but specifically Mexican American women.

Finally, La Llorona is terrifying. I know enough about this legend and this take on it was so unique. The way that the moments of horror were paced seriously left me on edge. This book is told through multiple POV's and multiple timelines that made the story unfold in a way that made it hard to put the book down. I highly recommend this book!

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bookishbrenbren's review

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This beautiful story takes the very real premise of inherited trauma and generational curses and paints a supernatural portrait: what if your family's curse was an actual haunting, a malevolent something feeding from and encouraging the suffering of your people? What would it take to stop something like that? Jumping between Alejandra's present-day attempts to work through her depression with therapy and her ancestors' past stories and struggles with the same curse, this book reminds us that we are not just the products of women who have suffered, but of women who have survived.

This book was fabulous! I loved the Mexican culture that is integral to this story and the very honest portrayal of someone who has been adopted out of their community and the struggles to reclaim a heritage or identity that was taken from them. I love that Alejandra's story is so thoroughly mapped to her therapy and takes readers through real therapeutic approaches to handling overwhelmingly negative emotions. I hope to see more books published that showcase the benefits of therapy in the future. Even as someone who is not a fan of historical fiction, I enjoyed jumping back into Alejandra's ancestor's stories (with one notable exception - more on that later). These are much shorter narratives, almost vignettes, and provide some action-packed breaks from Alejandra's emotion-heavy chapters.

There was much to love about this book but I also don't think it's going to be good for everyone. Most importantly, there is a lot of potentially triggering content with regards to suicidal ideation and deeply depressive though processes. There is graphic violence, emotional abuse from a partner, violence against children and the book touches on adoption trauma as well. Please check any other CWs I may have forgotten about.

Secondly, the book is very plot-driven - we only really get to know one character (the MC Alejandra) and even then her character is mostly sketched out through emotional episodes where she is at her lowest, and there is not much depth to the character's thoughts. Beyond that, the other characters are largely interchangeable in voice, although not in circumstance, and can read flat at times. So, if you are mostly into books for character dev, maybe this isn't your cup of tea.
As well, if you are not a fan of historical fiction, those parts of the books may drag for you. I typically do not like hist fic but in this book they were short and entertaining snippets that kept me engaged in the story at crucial points. However, I must complain about Flor's chapter - perhaps it's because the Mexican Revolution is much more recent history than the other chapters, or because I personally know a little bit about that time period, but ugh this chapter was SO BAD. It was incredibly cheesy and completely unrealistic and didn't fit in with the concept of generational curses at all.

Did she really have to get with Emiliano Zapata? Did the author have to include a trans fighter in her story only to have that trans character reveal his transness to her upon their first meeting & BY UNBUTTONING HIS SHIRT???? I get it, you learned a fun fact about a trans revolutionary and wanted to put it in your story; but just by the way it was written, it is obvious that it is not your story to tell (as it was not handled with due care), and doubly obvious that it did not go through sensitivity readers before being published. In fact, if I may digress for a moment, that scene seems to me to be a case of self-insert, with the author jumping to show her readers that she is queer friendly (especially since the curse appears suspiciously heterosexual) than actually adding to the story or bringing attention to Amelio Robles Avila's story with the respect he deserved.

Anyways. Right around that chapter I felt the quality of the plotting fell off quite a bit. What was that ending? We were not given an explanation before or after as to the logic behind this resolution. Also, as far as the haunting being a metaphor for generational curses, that ending is pretty awful... I also felt like more could have been done with the analysis of generational trauma in general (no mention of poverty as the main cause of such an inescapable cycle?). BUT ALAS, I still enjoyed it and thought it was a good idea and decently executed. Maybe a stronger editor could have pushed it over the edge into great.

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