From the Bookshelf of Challenge Corner…

Mexican Gothic

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Start date: December 1, 2020

Finish date: December 31, 2020

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What Members Thought

Oct 18, 2020 Jamie (TheRebelliousReader) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: suspense, read-on-my-kindle, adult, for-a-challenge, 3-stars, 2020, was-expecting-more, would-rather-watch-paint-dry, e-book, horror

3 stars. I thought I was going to love this but it was just…fine. Not terrible, not that great just okay. I think the plot was very interesting but the execution was lackluster. While there were definitely some cool moments where the body horror was pretty good, the rest of this book was just really boring. I did like the writing though. The characters were pretty bland though. Noemí was okay, I didn’t care about her one way or another and that’s the biggest issue of all. I could take or leave t ...more

7 likes · Like · see review

Jan 13, 2021 Aly rated it liked it

Shelves: 2021, historical, audiobook, fantasy, horror, kindle-ebooks

I can definitely say this did not go how I thought it would. If anyone could have predicted what happened, I'd ask them for lottery numbers because they must be psychic. It was so out there that I didn't really like it, I hoped it would be a twist but one that made sense.

At first, I thought I knew where this was going. Noemi was starting to have strange dreams, hallucinations, and learning about the terrible history of High Place. It thought it was a bit slow giving us clues, but it's not a lon ...more

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Oct 20, 2020 ❀ Crystal ✿ - PEACE ☮ LOVE ♥ BOOKS rated it liked it

Shelves: 2020-read-list

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. 2.5 Stars
For weeks I had been looking forward to this book. The cover. The concept. I mean 😲 I had friend recommendations for this and was completely intrigued. For around 9 chapters I was pretty committed. I was invested and into trying to figure out where the story would go. Until suddenly everything just became predictable and annoying. I actually had to anger pause this a few times!!! My problems with the book mostly just stem with the detail. The author does a great job of sinking a hook in 2.5 Stars
For weeks I had been looking forward to this book. The cover. The concept. I mean 😲 I had friend recommendations for this and was completely intrigued. For around 9 chapters I was pretty committed. I was invested and into trying to figure out where the story would go. Until suddenly everything just became predictable and annoying. I actually had to anger pause this a few times!!! My problems with the book mostly just stem with the detail. The author does a great job of sinking a hook into you, only in my case, the hook didn’t sink in deep enough and instead it tore some skin straight off, became infected and will leave a jagged scar. If this wasn’t for points I don’t know if I could have made it through.
This book was so painful to me the more it went on. It started so good so I kept thinking ‘what is going on can’t be this simple and obvious...Can it....?’ But yes. It indeed can be. All the signs were there not hidden in the least. For years this family has essentially used/killed/assaulted/lied to people and treated them with less thought than cattle-all for their own betterment and personal gain. Gain in the form of some gross sense of immortality. And why? Because this old f*ck’s family money dried up and they felt entitled and had to be the best of everything at the expense of everyone else. Let’s not talk about the incest 🤮 The things rich or ex-rich people do will never surprise me. The book was like an odd blend of the films Crimson Peaks and the Skeleton Key.
The heroine Naomi annoyed me so much and soooooo often. She came off as this brazen outspoken and independent woman. In many ways she is don’t get me wrong, but damn if she didn’t immediately change once arriving at her cousins. I won’t deny she still had some fire and she let it out at times, but I can’t believe how many signs of things wrong that were smacking her in the face. Yet it’s crazy because for someone so suspicious and worried she doesn’t catch a single one. Many times she’s being drugged, forced or shall I say insisted upon to drink this tea or wine. Odd. She’s barely allowed time with her cousin at all which leaves her with days upon days and hours upon hours with nothing to do. Naomi’s told Catalina has tuberculosis but shows no signs of it and even a local Dr. sees nothing wrong with her aside from mentally. Her cousin wants a special but secret medicine from a local healer. Catalina tells her that they are always listening and conveniently is always resting or just took her meds when Naomi is allowed to visit. Not until the end do I even recall an instance where Catalina and her husband are in the same room together, NAOMI NEVER QUESTIONS THIS. Naomi basically becomes a prisoner in this shitty delapidated old mansion and doesn’t find it that odd. Honestly I could go on but I won’t. I understand a lot of the times she was ‘drugged’ and more easily manipulated but come on already 🥵😡🥵. Naomi really gave Virgil (her cousins hubby) and Florence so much power over her and let herself be an easy target to them. I can’t even say it was decency given the era and her being a woman/guest in their home. No, she was just so blind and naive I wanted to smack her. She questioned all the wrong things and gave in to them so easily, allowed herself to be fed this false guilt. Not to mention she was horrible at not sharing with people in the house or being discreet. When she was so frank with Virgil demanding she was leaving it was one of many real facepalm moments. Why does she even bother with this? Why piss this psycho off when you know there’s some bad sh*t going down? Even without the facts she knew enough and finally had been there long enough to listen to the bad vibes. I would have just left, screw the rain, mud and whatever else BS they told her was outside. I woulda turned that damn road into my own mudslide to get outta that place.
Not everything was obvious though. What I didn’t see coming and could have done without was this magical fungus. 😳 Do magic mushrooms sound better? 🤷🏼‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️ Either way it really is a magical fungus that’s the reason behind all of this. A fungus that makes peoples eyes golden and also controls this sort of alternate realm called the Gloom. Even beyond all that it was the old man and his huge black body covering pustules, boils, cysts (none sound good) that were basically mushroom magic filled sacks of goo. The forcing of this pus juice down the heroines throat killed something inside of me. I will literally never recover from this, so in many ways this book will haunt me for life.
It wasn’t all bad to me mind you. The only saving grace for me was a semi decent ending where the heroine and her cousin get their revenge and escape. They kill these horrible human shitstains, some rather viciously yet not enough and she burns their garbage heap of a home down. Which hopefully destroys all traces of the fungus. Personally, I could have done with a more prolonged death for a few, particularly Florence and Virgi... but hey, they’re gone so I’m happy about that at least. The setting, the time period and even the authors writing style does a lot to draw you in. Even drawn in it was the storyline itself that I absolutely hated and could not stand. Maybe I read too much and watch too much tv but it was just so damn predictable to me. Predictable and at times grosser than I ever expected. ##Says the person who watches pimple popping videos 😂## I’d probably read something else by the author but I’d really like to forget this one.

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