A review by carinakastano
The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

adventurous dark mysterious 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

2.5

it's definitely a book.

overall, this book isn't offensive and it's not bad by any means: either i went into this book with different expectations or the execution could've been better.

CONS:
  • the author focused way too much on the Romance, and I wasn't expecting that but maybe that's on me if I didn't read the synopsis correctly. Beatriz and Andres are kind of cute but also they basically just trauma bonded and they don't know much about each other so i couldn't root for them and i didn't care about them until the very end

  • as for the 'horror' part of this book, we kept hearing how bad all these people were but we didn't see any of it until the end. we were told the Solorzanos are so bad but we're not shown much of it, and what we are shown goes by in a flash and it doesn't leave a lasting impression. it is also shown right at the very end, which would've been fine if we were taken along for the ride and didn't know they were bad from literally day 1. 

  • sure some dark stuff happens before our story
    Catalina and Mariana's death, and the assaults from Rodolfo
    but with the descriptions given by the author, I didn't feel the creepiness or the eeriness of what Beatriz was feeling in the Hacienda and while reading it was hard to feel like she was in any real danger.

  • if it was all in her head, she was letting the entity in and she had the power to not experience all the hallucinations then what was the point ??? the only thing she had to do was grow a pair ??? some confidence could've solved all our problems, lol ok

  •  
    how am i supposed to care that she wants to be with her mom at the end over her hunky man if we didn't see that relationship? I have no emotional tie to Beatriz's love for her mom, and sure it kinda made sense, but I just didn't care

  • there were parts that felt like they dragged on and it would've worked better with 100 less pages

PROS:
  • the final 1/3 was definitely the best part for me: it was finally fun, we finally saw more of people's dark side, it felt like we were getting somewhere and this is when i started to feel tense and oh my gosh is she going to be okay? I did like Beatriz's friendship with Paloma: honestly that was the best thing about this book for me and I was definitely more scared for Paloma than for our MC
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