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tamara_joy's review against another edition
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic friendship
Moderate: Classism, Sexual assault, Bullying, and Alcoholism
Minor: Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Car accident, Injury/Injury detail, Abandonment, Infidelity, and Chronic illness
julesghouls27's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Meche was a little shit who did not deserve her ending. This story spans from 1988 to 2009 and yet despite all that time, our main character barely grows as a person. I spent the entire time wondering when Meche was finally going to realize what a terror she had been back at 15 and genuinely apologize for her mistakes, but was left wanting. Despite my dislike for Meche, I really enjoyed the rest of this book. It was fun getting to slowly watching the friend group unravel while also dealing with the aftermath 2 decades later.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Alcoholism, Car accident, and Sexual assault
Minor: Homophobia
caidyn's review against another edition
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Not my favorite by this author, but it was a heartfelt coming of age story that includes magic. It was enjoyable, but probably not one I'd hold onto.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death of parent, Alcoholism, and Adult/minor relationship
displacedcactus's review against another edition
dark
emotional
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
This is marketed as being for fans of Stranger Things, but I think this is bad marketing. Yes, it's about teens in the 80s and involves some supernatural elements, but it's a lot less adventurous than Stranger Things, the kids aren't gamers, and it has a split timeline between the characters as teens and as adults, and then some POV chapters from the main character's dad in the 80s. Although I see some people and sites tagging it as YA, it didn't read as such to me, more like a book for adults about teenagers. I know I would not have enjoyed it as a teen because I would have found there wasn't enough magic to balance the angst and drama. Which is not to say it was a bad book, but I'd say of the books I've read from this author, it's my least favorite.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Chronic illness, Alcoholism, Death of parent, Cursing, and Bullying
emtees's review
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Signal to Noise feels a bit like a Mexican take on The Craft, but with lowered stakes and more naturalistic characterization. It’s a story where magic is both central to the plot and beside the point, filled with difficult, often unlikeable, but very real characters who you want to root for anyway.
In 1988 Mexico City, Meche Vega is a unhappy, outcast teenager, getting through a life of dysfunctional parents and high school bullies thanks to her obsessive love of music and her two best friends, Sebastian and Daniela. After she accidentally uses music to cast a spell that injures one of her bullies, Meche goads her friends into studying magic, writing their own grimoire and amassing a collection of records that will allow them to cast spells. At first, the trio use their magic for the kinds of things fifteen-year olds might dream of: extra cash or a dance with the right boy at a party. But as their control over their magic grows, Meche begins to think magic has a different purpose - to get her revenge on all the people who are the target of her considerable anger. And once romantic drama and personal grudges are in the mix, the anger Meche has always directed at the outside world begins to turn on her friends.
Twenty years later, Meche returns to Mexico City for the first time since high school to attend funeral services for her father. Her goal is to pay the limited respect required, clean up her father’s apartment, and get back to her peaceful life in Norway. But being back in Mexico means encountering her old friends and the memories of how their last spells drove them apart, and wondering if there might be something there to salvage after all.
There was so much that I liked about this book. The handling of magic in it is very interesting. It felt like it sat on the line between fantasy and magical realism. The magic is absolutely real, but it feels very natural within the regular world of 1980’s Mexico City. There isn’t a lot of time spent defining the rules; instead, magic seems to be a natural force that different characters can access through the things they are passionate about. In the case of Meche and her friends, that means music, and the “spells” they cast while dancing to their favorite songs are some of the best scenes. The magical realism aspect fits in the way that magic seems to be mostly a teenage thing; though we see that other people can control magic, it is the teenagers who are powerful with it, and once they grow into adulthood, it doesn’t seem to fade so much as they move past it. Magic in this world seems to be part of the particular teenage period where emotions are heightened and even small things matter intensely.
The characters are the other big strength of this story. Meche is the POV character for the parts set in 2009, as well as the main POV for the 1980s scenes (Sebastian and Daniela also get POVs, as does Meche’s grandmother, Dolores, and her father, Vicente.) She is a great character because Moreno-Garcia doesn’t stint on showing us her unlikeable traits. As a teenager, Meche is sharp-tongued, angry, often rude and cruel, and deeply uncomfortable with expressing or receiving affection. As an adult she’s… honestly, kind of the same. She’s a prickly, difficult character to follow, but being in her head you see the ways that no one is harmed more by her anger than Meche herself, and root for her to fight her way past her instinct to lash out and instead make connections. The other characters are also complex and distinct. I appreciated that, unlike in some novels focused on teenagers, there is no glamorizing of teenage life here. Meche and her friends are outsiders, not in the cool, misunderstood way, but in the awkward, pimply, badly dressed and often embarrassing way. Their relationships are both intense and uncomfortable, full of stupid misunderstandings, overreactions and petty, intentional cruelties but also the unique bonds that maybe can only form at that age.
What worked less for me in this book was the balancing of some of the storylines and themes, and the pacing. A large part of the 2009-timeline plot focused on Meche cleaning out her late, estranged father’s apartment, trying to reconnect with a man she’d long ago cut out of her life. The importance of her father’s death and her mixed feelings about their relationship in this storyline felt like it should have been balanced by some kind of focus on their relationship in the 1980’s storyline, but that wasn’t really there. Vincente is a POV character in the 1980’s storyline, but his story is slight and feels disconnected from Meche’s. The emotional drive of her story as a teenager is much more focused on her relationships with her friends and with magic than it is on her father until very late in the book, and by then it felt like the author was suddenly trying to give weight to that relationship to justify it mattering so much in the future. Meanwhile, the whole book seemed to be building to a confrontation between Meche and her friend Sebastian in 1989 that was still reverberating twenty years later, but it took so long getting to that confrontation, and then kind of rushed through it, that I didn’t feel there was time to really weigh its importance to the story. The end then wrapped up pretty quickly.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia was a new author to me and I’m looking forward to reading more of her work.
In 1988 Mexico City, Meche Vega is a unhappy, outcast teenager, getting through a life of dysfunctional parents and high school bullies thanks to her obsessive love of music and her two best friends, Sebastian and Daniela. After she accidentally uses music to cast a spell that injures one of her bullies, Meche goads her friends into studying magic, writing their own grimoire and amassing a collection of records that will allow them to cast spells. At first, the trio use their magic for the kinds of things fifteen-year olds might dream of: extra cash or a dance with the right boy at a party. But as their control over their magic grows, Meche begins to think magic has a different purpose - to get her revenge on all the people who are the target of her considerable anger. And once romantic drama and personal grudges are in the mix, the anger Meche has always directed at the outside world begins to turn on her friends.
Twenty years later, Meche returns to Mexico City for the first time since high school to attend funeral services for her father. Her goal is to pay the limited respect required, clean up her father’s apartment, and get back to her peaceful life in Norway. But being back in Mexico means encountering her old friends and the memories of how their last spells drove them apart, and wondering if there might be something there to salvage after all.
There was so much that I liked about this book. The handling of magic in it is very interesting. It felt like it sat on the line between fantasy and magical realism. The magic is absolutely real, but it feels very natural within the regular world of 1980’s Mexico City. There isn’t a lot of time spent defining the rules; instead, magic seems to be a natural force that different characters can access through the things they are passionate about. In the case of Meche and her friends, that means music, and the “spells” they cast while dancing to their favorite songs are some of the best scenes. The magical realism aspect fits in the way that magic seems to be mostly a teenage thing; though we see that other people can control magic, it is the teenagers who are powerful with it, and once they grow into adulthood, it doesn’t seem to fade so much as they move past it. Magic in this world seems to be part of the particular teenage period where emotions are heightened and even small things matter intensely.
The characters are the other big strength of this story. Meche is the POV character for the parts set in 2009, as well as the main POV for the 1980s scenes (Sebastian and Daniela also get POVs, as does Meche’s grandmother, Dolores, and her father, Vicente.) She is a great character because Moreno-Garcia doesn’t stint on showing us her unlikeable traits. As a teenager, Meche is sharp-tongued, angry, often rude and cruel, and deeply uncomfortable with expressing or receiving affection. As an adult she’s… honestly, kind of the same. She’s a prickly, difficult character to follow, but being in her head you see the ways that no one is harmed more by her anger than Meche herself, and root for her to fight her way past her instinct to lash out and instead make connections. The other characters are also complex and distinct. I appreciated that, unlike in some novels focused on teenagers, there is no glamorizing of teenage life here. Meche and her friends are outsiders, not in the cool, misunderstood way, but in the awkward, pimply, badly dressed and often embarrassing way. Their relationships are both intense and uncomfortable, full of stupid misunderstandings, overreactions and petty, intentional cruelties but also the unique bonds that maybe can only form at that age.
What worked less for me in this book was the balancing of some of the storylines and themes, and the pacing. A large part of the 2009-timeline plot focused on Meche cleaning out her late, estranged father’s apartment, trying to reconnect with a man she’d long ago cut out of her life. The importance of her father’s death and her mixed feelings about their relationship in this storyline felt like it should have been balanced by some kind of focus on their relationship in the 1980’s storyline, but that wasn’t really there. Vincente is a POV character in the 1980’s storyline, but his story is slight and feels disconnected from Meche’s. The emotional drive of her story as a teenager is much more focused on her relationships with her friends and with magic than it is on her father until very late in the book, and by then it felt like the author was suddenly trying to give weight to that relationship to justify it mattering so much in the future. Meanwhile, the whole book seemed to be building to a confrontation between Meche and her friend Sebastian in 1989 that was still reverberating twenty years later, but it took so long getting to that confrontation, and then kind of rushed through it, that I didn’t feel there was time to really weigh its importance to the story. The end then wrapped up pretty quickly.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia was a new author to me and I’m looking forward to reading more of her work.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Gaslighting, Sexual assault, and Bullying
Minor: Alcoholism
There is an incident of pretty violent assault by bullies against a teenager. Another incident involves an adult attempting to sexually assault a teenager, who is then not believed by authorities when she reports it. There is a background storyline involving alcoholism.elizlizabeth's review
adventurous
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I usually like SMG's protagonists but I couldn't sympathize with this one at all. There's little to no character development for anyone else too.
It was a good premise but the plot took a very convoluted turn and the singer/song name dropping was exhausting. I don't wanna be too harsh because SMG did grow up as a writer overtime and there are much worse books in this genre but I wouldn't re-read unless I could drag someone along.
It was a good premise but the plot took a very convoluted turn and the singer/song name dropping was exhausting. I don't wanna be too harsh because SMG did grow up as a writer overtime and there are much worse books in this genre but I wouldn't re-read unless I could drag someone along.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Bullying, Sexual assault, and Pedophilia
Moderate: Alcoholism
anxiousnachos's review
emotional
3.5
3.5 stars? You can definitely tell it’s one of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s earlier works, I thought the writing was a little wooden at times, particularly the dialogue. But it is also has an undercurrent of nostalgia and young love and the kind of friendship that makes the room sparkle with magic.
Content warnings: death of parent, grief, homophobia, f-slur, bullying, poverty, sexual assault (teacher attempts to assault student), alcoholism, brief mentions of physical child abuse
Content warnings: death of parent, grief, homophobia, f-slur, bullying, poverty, sexual assault (teacher attempts to assault student), alcoholism, brief mentions of physical child abuse
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying, Alcoholism, Death of parent, and Homophobia
Moderate: Sexual assault
Minor: Child abuse
wenwanzhao's review
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
I love a female protagonist who makes horrible decisions. I love magical realism. I love two people with a fucked up relationship that works for them. Great book.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Medical content, Alcoholism, Homophobia, Infidelity, and Sexual assault
taylorjayne's review
emotional
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Signal to Noise weaves together a love of music and the magic and misadventures of being young, dumb, and in love.
“Guys, I just want to remind you I have to be home by seven,” Daniela said. “I’m also not allowed to do any Satanic stuff.”
At times hilarious, this book reminded me of a goofy and more caring The Craft, as three friends form a magic circle and let lose some magic without realising the consequences.
But that's where the comparison ends. Signal to Noise confronts past hurts and broken families, the reconstruction of damaged relationships and finding peace with the past.
Moreno-Garcia again writes a fantastic unlikeable and prickly main character who you can't help but love.
Signal to Noise is another fantastic book from this author and I'm so glad that it's getting an updated version and a second chance.
Come for the music magic, stay for the healing of past hurts.
Thank you Rebellion, Solaria and NetGalley for the arc. All opinions are my own.
“Guys, I just want to remind you I have to be home by seven,” Daniela said. “I’m also not allowed to do any Satanic stuff.”
At times hilarious, this book reminded me of a goofy and more caring The Craft, as three friends form a magic circle and let lose some magic without realising the consequences.
But that's where the comparison ends. Signal to Noise confronts past hurts and broken families, the reconstruction of damaged relationships and finding peace with the past.
Moreno-Garcia again writes a fantastic unlikeable and prickly main character who you can't help but love.
Signal to Noise is another fantastic book from this author and I'm so glad that it's getting an updated version and a second chance.
Come for the music magic, stay for the healing of past hurts.
Thank you Rebellion, Solaria and NetGalley for the arc. All opinions are my own.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Alcoholism and Bullying
Minor: Domestic abuse, Car accident, Classism, Emotional abuse, Grief, Infidelity, Medical content, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, and Toxic friendship
emiliebowles's review
adventurous
mysterious
medium-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
4.0
I really enjoyed this book! It's a great read, especially for music fans and lovers of all things 80s, but it also has YA angst, magic, and romance to boot.
This is the second book that I've read by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. My main criticism of Mexican Gothic (2020) was that I couldn't get a feel for the main character (Noemí), but that is absolutely not the case for Signal to Noise. The book is written in the 3rd person and mainly follows Meche (our MC) but Moreno-Garcia gives us little snippets from at least four other characters to flesh out their perspectives as well.
The story is told in a dual timeline: 1988 and 2009. I love this structure because we get to see the trio of friends (Meche, Sebastián, and Daniela) as they were at 15, where they've ended up in their mid-thirties, and we're putting the pieces of the story together as we go.
You should definitely listen to the music as you're reading this book, so check out this public playlist on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/64UhZuibxl4FBep1FpWwrZ?si=ca8bd8ccc67944bc
Thanks to Rebellion for sending me an e-arc on NetGalley in advance of the reprint! Glad this book is getting the love it deserves.
This is the second book that I've read by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. My main criticism of Mexican Gothic (2020) was that I couldn't get a feel for the main character (Noemí), but that is absolutely not the case for Signal to Noise. The book is written in the 3rd person and mainly follows Meche (our MC) but Moreno-Garcia gives us little snippets from at least four other characters to flesh out their perspectives as well.
The story is told in a dual timeline: 1988 and 2009. I love this structure because we get to see the trio of friends (Meche, Sebastián, and Daniela) as they were at 15, where they've ended up in their mid-thirties, and we're putting the pieces of the story together as we go.
You should definitely listen to the music as you're reading this book, so check out this public playlist on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/64UhZuibxl4FBep1FpWwrZ?si=ca8bd8ccc67944bc
Thanks to Rebellion for sending me an e-arc on NetGalley in advance of the reprint! Glad this book is getting the love it deserves.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Bullying, Alcoholism, and Sexual assault