A review by esterie
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

was expecting a haunted house type of story, but instead it was
the horrors of colonialism, incest, and hivemind fungi
. was not expecting 2 of those 3 things, but i liked it!

the only 2 glaring issues for me:
- the timeline is confusing.
howard sought out this cult (where? idk), integrated into it, married a woman from the cult, took over & subsequently killed everyone else in the cult, and left with this woman, now pregnant. later we see who i am ASSUMING is this woman being guided through birth by howard's sisters (agnes and alice). she's then buried alive to become the "seed" under the foundation of the house through which the fungus spreads. but THEN at the end, the woman buried under the house was agnes? wtf am i missing here? as howard is leaving the cult with this woman he thinks of his two sisters back home, so we KNOW this woman isn't agnes. did he burry alive TWO women? different locations, as in the first wife was buried in england (hence the dirt being brought over), then the events in mexico?
i feel like that makes the most sense, but even reading subtext does not make that clear enough for me to feel confident about it being the author's intention.

- also with timeline confusion,
francis mentions that howard has "lived many lives in many bodies" but as far as we know he only ever had 2 living children (well.... before ruth.... you know). so..... whose body was he in during the present pov of the story? it seemed like it was his original body, so why francis' statement about that?
i feel that needed to be explained further.

i could handwave the second point as
howard being so desperate to hold out for a proper male "heir" that he clung to his original body out of spite. but then francis' statement doesn't make sense.
the first point though really confuses me. like i kept having to go back and reread to make sure i wasn't misplacing characters lmao

so much of the rest of this book was an absolute hit for me, but these two points (especially the first one) degrades it a least half to three-quarters of a star imo.
the mushroom visuals were so good! i really loved noemi and francis! the mystery was compelling! the doyle family was absolutely horrendous like oh my god extremely fucked up!
just needed that last lil bit of tightening up and it would have been a 5, but alas. :(
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