A review by rat_fairy
Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

3.5

solid vampire urban fantasy but definitely has its issues.
firstly i adored the worldbuilding and the different types of vampires, and the setting of this gritty noir Mexico City was awesome.
i do think this book had too many POVs (5), especially as Rodrigo and Ana’s POVs rarely showed up and i kinda just didn’t give a fuck about them. Nick’s POV chapters were pretty fun, they didn’t need to be there but i enjoyed them. i like Domingo and Atl’s dynamic a lot :D
this book did try and tackle a lot of vampire politics, and i think it could’ve been balanced better. some ideas i had while reading were: if the book were entirely from Domingo’s POV and focused mostly on the setting and the vampire politics (would’ve made sense as he’s such a little fanboy lmao), or been dual POV between Domingo and Atl and focused moreso on their bond together.
also if anyone is worried about if Atl’s dog dies, the answer is…

kind of? he is shot on-page and the characters assume later that he died (off-page), but Domingo finds him alive later and it isn’t confirmed whether the dog survives or just dies after the story ends