Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey, 2020)

★★★☆☆

A pampered debutante must unravel the secrets of a mysterious and menacing countryside estate in this Gothic horror novel set in 1950s Mexico and influenced by The Yellow Wallpaper.

Despite an infodumpy start, I soon became invested in this story, which meshes together a compelling set of influences:

• Eugenics / white supremacy / physiognomy
• Teonanácatl / “you cannot kill me in a way that matters” but make it horror
• Bloody fables and fairy tales
• Hallucinations and waking nightmares
• Silencing / manipulation / gaslighting
• The Garden of Eden
• You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave

(content warning: sexual assault, cannibalism, incest)

Though I enjoyed the various flavors of psychological horror Moreno-Garcia produced, some plot threads (such as the introduction of local saints/brujería) felt a bit underexplored. I also had a hard time connecting to the main character—even if I found her challenges compelling and timely—and to the narrative voice, which I found hobbled by bland dialogue.

Still, delightfully atmospheric and tense.

The serpent does not devour its tail, it devours everything around it, voracious, its appetite never quenched.

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

Wilder Girls by Rory Power (Delacorte Press, 2019)

★★☆☆☆

Sapphic horror continues, but this one missed me.

Things I thought were scary or good:

• Not being able to trust an authority figure(s).

• I appreciated that Hetty, Byatt, and Reese’s relationships were messy, and somewhere between friends-sisters-lovers.

• The girls’ (and particularly Byatt’s) relationship with the Tox: that despite the Tox being horrifying, it might be something you want, or something that makes you truer to yourself. The metaphor for queerness.

Things I was bored by:

• Infected animals.

• Body horror so unrealistic as to feel random.

• Sentences missing punctuation for effect

• I never cared about any of the other students or the nameless Headmistress, so emotional moments that hinged on those characters’ motivations didn’t connect.

• And honestly, I didn’t really care about the main characters either.

I think I need a break from YA.

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling (Harper Voyager, 2019)

★★★★☆

Horror/sci-fi psychological thriller, in which a solo caver who’s locked into an exoskeleton-suit must navigate the motivations of her remote handler as much as the cave.

Interesting to read this after just taking a horror workshop with Nino Cipri (where this title got bumped up on my list). It hits a lot of my personal fears re: bodily autonomy, rock climbing mishaps, and not at all related to the current crisis losing my mind in a small, confined space. I most appreciated how many types of fear and psychological distress Starling was able to explore given the setting, and how deeply. Beyond that, I find this book a tightly-drawn character study, but I did wish the main character was a bit more competent/complex, even if the motive is (as in The Vanished Birds) to tell a story about queer resilience.

Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge

Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge (Pan MacMillan, 2014)

★★★☆☆

In mid-1920s England, a young girl, Triss, wakes up from a near-drowning. She barely recognizes her mom and dad, she’s infernally hungry, and her little sister keeps screaming at their parents: “Can’t you see she’s a fake?”

Another “hard to believe this is a YA book,” because it’s awfully creepy, in a way that leaves even adult me wrecked. But the kernel of that is something glorious. As Triss discovers all the ways that things are wrong and she is not normal, her parents try to fix her problems with strained smiles and bed rest. It was easy to see how Triss’s situation might mirror that of any real-world child whose authentic character did not align with their parents’ expectations.

The story veers into many unexpected places, sometimes feeling like an excuse for Hardinge to play with the details of the historical era in which the book is set. Though I never minded those explorations, they also didn’t grab me. I did appreciate the complexity of the sisters’ relationship, and their moments of alternating tenderness and animosity, but on the whole, I didn’t enjoy this as much as Fly by Night.