A review by iellv
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

It took a while for me to get into the author’s writing style, but everything flows better over time. The heroine was lovely; I definitely would not have enjoyed this book nearly as much if it weren’t for her. The author certainly had fun with the themes and the setting, so it was really disappointing when they all weren’t tied together as well as I hoped they’d be, especially considering a lot of the motifs involve cycles and roots. I would think the same of other aspects of the book. It would touch on all the social issues popular reviews said it would, and it did so effectively… (the book was not so heavy handed that it would go in a different direction—which I would have appreciated just as much, but they were addressed enough that one would expect more, thematically speaking) only to almost completely drop them by the end. By then it would have been easy to effectively integrate them into the themes when everything was starting to unravel, but it just… didn’t happen, so it was a waste, because at one point the book convinced me (not that I needed much convincing) that the casual eugenics and the colonialism were the true horrors, and that they would be the focus. The book may have had a slight identity crisis in that sense, but the actual horrors were still horrific and the author never missed the mark with the exploitation of the working class and the Doyles’ white supremacy (everything about the Doyles that was not even supernatural, really), so I’m not mad. I also might have just been kinda misled by some of the reviews I read prior to picking this up.  

All that aside I really enjoyed this book. There are mixed reviews on it, but considering I didn’t have high hopes for Mexican Gothic and was pleasantly surprised, I would highly suggest that you still give it a try as well if you’re still on the fence. Do heed the content warnings, though. Even the casual comments about eugenics can make anyone feel physically ill.