I was originally really excited to read this book, there was alot of hype surrounding it's release but honestly there isnt a great deal to say about the book.
I enjoyed the general feel and eery vibes. But non of the characters were very likeable norrealistic.
I listened on audio and unfortunately this didnt work for me. I had real troubles following the plot.
That being said, I really enjoyed the resolution and thought it was very clever.
Overall I was disappointed by the read. I think I expected more, but there were some redeeming factors.

[Gifted]
A deeply unsettling, mushroom-filled story, about a woman effectively trapped in a mansion on the top of a mountain with a very weird family. Her cousin is sick, and seems to be dying slowly under the pressure of living in this strange place. This reminded me of so many classics I love: Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, of course, but also The Secret History and We Were Liars and We Have Always Lived in the Castle - books where the place is just as much a character as the people.
The writing was particularly beautiful in this. Often I found myself rereading the writing, just because it so beautifully captured the setting. There were some lovely turns of phrase.
This is exactly what I want adult fiction to be: it's like a YA novel, all grown up. Dark and female-focused and utterly modern in everything except the time period.
Wonderful!

I am...a bit perplexed and don't really know what to say about this book because there was objectively nothing wrong with it and I was even really enjoying it in the first half but then something happened along the road that made me disengage from the story. Maybe it was the fact that it took me so long to read/listen to, or maybe it's because although the reveals were smart and intricate, they somehow fell flat for me. I was just very detached from the story even though I could see its merits.

One thing that I really appreciated though is how eugenics, racism and colorism were an integral part of the horror, as well as colonialism, since the "antagonists" are English folks who came to Mexico, settled, profited off of its people and bled the land dry. That as well as the gaslighting and making women think they're losing their minds for having real concerns about things that are actually happening, that was the creepiest and scariest part for me. How these women were made to think that everything happening is in their heads and that they should stop being "hysterical" and "dramatic" and just get with the program, even more so when a woman is one of the people also inflicting these wounds.

Overall, I wouldn't stop anyone from reading this book but I think it either wasn't a book for me or I read it at the wrong time.

I’ve been meaning to read this forever, and in fact I originally had an advance copy of this. As often happens when I get a much-anticipated book as an advance copy, I actually bought it as soon as it came out, since it didn’t feel fair to read the ARC anymore. So… Mexican Gothic follows Noemí Taboada, a girl from a rich Mexican family, living in the city and hoping to go on to study more, enjoying her life as a socialite. Her cousin recently married, but it seems that something odd has happened to her — she sent home an almost incoherent letter, raving about the awful things happening to her — and Noemí’s father decides to send her to see what’s happening.

Noemí goes, partly out of affection for her cousin, partly out of curiosity, and partly to prove herself. She immediately finds that Catalina’s new family are rather odd, with oppressive rules and a rather awful house. And Catalina is ill: tuberculosis, the doctor says, and yet Noemí doesn’t think it seems to fit. When she snatches a moment along with Catalina, her cousin sends her to get a remedy from a local woman, and yet it seems to make her even more ill…

I won’t say too much more about the plot: it settles in to be nicely Gothic and weird. I don’t know if it was because of the books I’ve been reading lately (I shouldn’t name them, in case it’s too much of a spoiler), but I figured a good chunk of the plot out through noticing a recurring motif. I found that I wasn’t as riveted as I’d hoped to be, because it took me time to really connect with Noemí — – her confidence in her own intelligence, beauty and charm was a bit too much toward overconfidence, and though I can’t say that I’d fall in with the traditions of Catalina’s new family(!), it also seemed weird that she was so unwilling to respect simple things that are asked of her as a good guest, like not smoking in the bedroom. (Sure, different era and all, but… being a good guest hasn’t changed that much.) She just seems quite entitled.

However, as we got to see more of Francis, and as Noemí worked things out, it started to work a lot better for me — and the last third/quarter of the book, ish, is pretty nail-biting. Naturally, it doesn’t end in a terribly comfortable way, leaving a few questions and horrible possibilities hanging…

Really enjoyable, all in all, though I didn’t get into it as much as I’d expected to until later.

I really enjoyed it. So atmospheric. Not sure I can look at mushrooms the same. I don't understand why some people are saying this isn't a horror. It's definitely a horror, just not the most gross or terrifying, though it is still those things. I love the agency given to the Taboada women. Though Doyles except one were very unsettling and upsetting.

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘭, 𝘪𝘵 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵, 𝘷𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴, 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘥.
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Noemí receives a frantic letter from her cousin, claiming her new husband is poisoning her and that the house they live in is full of ghosts😱
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Add this book to your Halloween TBR immediately, it is one wild ride. During the first half, I thought I was just in for your classic gothic horror story in a stately home...oh was I wrong. Things take a weird turn halfway through, and I just couldn't devour it quick enough. It is gory and gross and so unnerving, everything you want from a spooky read. The main protagonist Noemí is incredible, she wears amazing gowns just to pop to the shops and gives sassy comebacks to anyone who crosses her. She doesn't take crap from anybody💃🏻
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𝘚𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘪𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘦𝘯. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘧𝘭𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘳.
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I loved Gods of Jade and Shadow but this was so different. Silvia Moreno-Garcia is showing so much range as an author already, and I truly can't wait to see what she releases in the future.

So I have changed my rating for this book about four times now as it left me feeling SO many different things, but I have finally decided that it is a solid four-star book.

When Noemi's recently married cousin sends an odd letter pleading for someone to save her, she agrees to go visit and see what the problem is. Upon her arrival, Noemi finds that the situation is far direr than she could have ever imagined. Her cousin's new husband is both menacing and alluring; his father is an ancient patriarch with an obsession with Noemi and the lavish estate that begins to invade Noemi's dreams with visions of blood and doom.

If you're looking for a creepy book that is beautifully atmospheric then this would be a good match for you. I'll admit that I was expecting something a tad scarier seeing as this is considered a horror, but it was still wonderfully creepy! A lot of people complained about the slower pacing at the beginning, and I would largely agree with these comments, however, the pacing definitely picks up at the 50% mark. I absolutely adored Noemi. She was outspoken and not afraid to share her thoughts. Her love for her family really shone through and made her easy to root for. My main complaint with this book has to be the romance. It came across as being quite weak and it almost felt like a convenient thing to happen with regards to the story.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and feel very lucky to have been provided a copy for review. However, I'll definitely be avoiding mushrooms for the foreseeable future!!

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

An incredible gothic horror book that horrifies and shocks the reader, while intriguing us with beautiful details.
An instant classic that is definitely one of my favourite books read this year!

This extraordinary and thrilling book is like a mix of Daphne du Maurier’s, Stephen King’s and Edgar Allan Poe’s books, add some latest horror/black humor movies/tv-shows to the mix. This haunting house, family mysteries, toxic environment, surprising allies - all of it makes a fairly fascinating read. But it’s not horror (for me at least), but it is interesting (even if I figured out the evil spawn fairly quickly :) ) and it was hard to put down.

Good read, but not horror, for me at least!

I'm not really into Horror Books but the synopsis got me interested and i'm happy to say that i really enjoyed this book. especially the atmosphere!

Mexican Gothic is a completely immersive story that hooks you right in before you have much of a chance to get your bearings. A lot of people have compared it to Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, and to that I'd add The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and a hint of We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. It begins in 1950 in Mexico City, when a charming and headstrong socialite called Noemi is instructed to visit her beloved cousin, who sent an alarming letter saying that her husband was trying to poison her. No one had seen her since she married into a wealthy English family far from the city, and Noemi's father is keen to both protect his family and avoid a scandal. Once Noemi gets to the huge yet claustrophobic home of the would-be aristocratic Doyle's she soon realises something suspicious is happening.

The family and the house have a lot of secrets to hide and despite herself Noemi finds herself drawn in by the powers of the house, by something that seems to be lurking in it's very walls. The language is rich with description that seems at first beautiful and then more sinister, and it's so atmospheric it feels like you're being put under a spell, waking too late to discover what danger you've sleepwalked into. I highlighted so many sections where the feeling of dread in the house is almost given corporeal form, as Noemi feels a heartbeat along the walls and it seems ti push her from one room to the next. It makes sense then that that body horror is such a feature, where evil and growth in the walls of the house are mirrored by disfigurements and wounds on bodies.

The Doyle family are English, seemingly having settled there during the English Victorian era and having brought their customs and style with them. The grandfather of the family is obsessed with eugenics, phrenology and openly comments on Noemi's "dark beauty" while presiding over the dinner table. The house and the mine next to it, where local people were exploited and eventually were killed in an accident, and a young woman forced into marriage shot her family and herself, are a site of trauma, and any evil Noemi senses feels like it was born of the exploitation of women and the native people the family employed.

In many ways, the horror of the patriarchy and of colonialism is the true rot at the heart of the novel, but the plot is in no way predictive despite this clear theme. I loved that Noemi was stubborn and resourceful, and didn't back down from the face of real danger: sometimes supernatural, sometimes the threat of very real sexual violence. She isn't made a victim, despite all efforts to the contrary, but is able to defy people who traditionally hold so much power over him and not bend to their will. This is the kind of book to read with a book club or a friend, as you'll want to discuss each and every turn.

A review copy was provided by netgalley and Random House Books in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

Content warnings: Body horror, abuse, incest, gaslighting, attempted assault, blood, mentions of cannibalism

My Rating: 5 Books out of 5

Highlights:
Noemí is the fabulous heroine we all need.
Seriously this woman could face down Satan himself and she would do it in a gorgeous dress and full makeup, she is my idol.
Never trust suspiciously isolated rich people
Especially if everyone they hang out with or employ DIES
The writing is just stunning
It has A Spotify Playlist!

She recalled, rather grimly, that certain fairy tales end in blood. In Cinderella, the sisters cut off their feet, and Sleeping Beauty’s stepmother was pushed into a barrel full of snakes. That particular illustration on the last page of one of the books Catalina used to read to them suddenly came back to her, in all its vivid colors . Green and yellow serpents, the tails poking out of a barrel as the stepmother was stuffed into it.

This is one of those books that I saw everywhere before it came out, and those can be a double-edged sword. Will they live up to the hype? This one absolutely did. A beautifully atmospheric and deeply haunting book, it’s not just a pretty cover (but my GOD what a cover, isn’t it stunning?).

Inspired by Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, Mexican Gothic follows Mexican socialite Noemí Taboada as she travels to visit her cousin Catalina following a concerning and mysterious letter. Catalina claims her new husband is poisoning her, her ramblings about the family home - the secluded and aptly named High Place - and its happenings tinged with hysteria. Stepping outside her comfort zone, a world of glittering parties and suitors, where the expectations that Noemí marry well clash with her desire to study at the National University, she casts aside the bustling city for a lonely mansion atop a treacherous hill.

I love gothic literature, with its moody atmosphere and crumbling ancestrals homes, and this book was just a gorgeous homage to the genre - and one that calls to attention the string of silently abused and forgotten women that it leaves in its wake. Catalina represents the madwoman in the attic, the wife locked in her room for her own safety, the powerlessness of the gothic bride against the insanity that surrounds and threatens to consume her at every turn. She dreamt of fairy tales and forgot the blood that flows through them. With her mysterious high-born groom whisking her away to his estate in the country, Catalina speaks not a word to the cousin she adores until a letter of her ramblings shows up on the doorstep. Noemí expects a brief trip, intending to bring Catalina home to Mexico City for psychiatric help, but High Place seems unwilling to let them go. Standing in the shadow of tragedy after tragedy, the house is a place of silence and decay. The Doyle family are clinging to the remnants of a dying era - and to a country they left long ago. In an extract that just screams Dracula and his boxes of Transyvalian dirt, we see the following exchange:

“High Place?”
“That’s what we call it , our home. And behind it, the English cemetery.”
“Is it really very English?” she said, smiling.
“Yes,” he said, gripping the wheel with both hands with a strength she would have not imagined from his limp handshake.
“Oh?” she said, waiting for more.
“You’ll see it. It’s all very English. Um, that’s what Uncle Howard wanted , a little piece of England. He even brought European earth here.”

It does beg the question, if you love England that much then why did you move to Mexico but that is rather the point. The theme of colonialism in gothic literature is impossible to avoid, and nowhere more so than in Mexican Gothic. Catalina is forbidden from speaking her own language in her new home, entering an existence where her husband’s language and culture take precedence over her own. That and his family Patriarch’s unhealthy obsession in Eugenics make for a highly uncomfortable living environment.

Even without everything that follows, that alone is a substantial reason for Catalina’s melancholy fading.

The writing in this book is just gorgeous, often dreamlike and unnerving to the extreme. It is so easy to picture High Place and its graveyard, the mist that creeps in and feeds the mould growing up the walls, such a cold, damp, desolate place clinging to the remnants of ‘greatness’. The Doyle’s are menacing and standoffish - does Virgil truly not care for his wife’s madness? Is Noemí correct when she thinks him distant, even cruel in the face of Catalina’s decline? In a house where words carry, how is Noemí to find answers and help her cousin before it is too late?

Mexican Gothic is one of those books that will stay with me, it is horrifying and hauntingly beautiful and the perfect piece of modern gothic literature for those of you also fascinated by old houses and the secrets they keep, by noises in the night, figures in the cemetery and women tired of taking shit from a world trying to devalue and dismiss them.

this book is getting four stars purely based on atmosphere alone, i just loved the setting so much. the plot was sorta slow but pretty original as far as “horror” plots go so i appreciated that all in all i really enjoyed this and i can’t wait to read more from this author.

I read this book in 2 days, because it was impossible to put down. Silvia Moreno-Garcia's writing is so enticing and so accessible, you never want to stop reading. It's creepy, haunting and then downright chilling once you get to the end of the novel and the pieces begin to fit together.

Mexican Gothic follows a young indigenous Mexican woman called Noemí, who has been sent to High Place, a decrepit old castle, to ensure the safety of her just-married cousin who sent Noemi and her father a worrying letter. When Noemí arrives at High Place, she's met by the enticing yet intimidating Virgil, her cousin Catalina's husband, Virgil's horrible father Howard, and the sweet Francis and his rude mother. Once there, Noemí tries to investigate the weird happenings at High Place, and she soon finds out the horror that is living right beneath them.

What I loved most about this book is the Gothic atmosphere which both creeped me out and intrigued me. But by far the creepiest part of the house is Howard, a eugenics obsessed scientist who constantly debates with Noemí about "master races". And that's a big part of this novel -- the overt and dangerous racism Mexican people experience at the hands of white people (during the 1950s, this was English people immigrating to Mexico). And not only does Noemí fight back against Howard in this respect, but she's also quite a feminist who criticises the ways in which Mexican women are treated by society, especially the women who are flirtatious and feminine and who society completely writes off.

I highly recommend this book! But once you've finished it, you probably won't be eating mushrooms for a while.

This goes in the 'so good I can't face writing a review' category. It's taken me months to be able to sit down and try to do this justice.

Pitch perfect in everything it does, creepy, atmospheric and genuinely scary with a super satisfying ending.

Main character Noemí is an outgoing, and outspoken socialite with a large circle of friends who could marry well if she wanted to. What Noemí really wants though, is to be able to go to university.

Noemí is also kind and caring and leaves her cosy life in the city to travel to the middle of nowhere to help out her cousin. Despite all this she's not so perfect she's irritating and I found her a likeable person and she carried the book really well.

The side characters are well rounded and interesting and as their backstories came out I became more and more invested in the present-day story.

There's nothing I didn't like about this book. The atmosphere at High Place is cold and creepy and makes the big old house into almost another character in the book. I found the story genuinely scary and at one point I was so worried for Noemí I had to put the book down and walk away for a break. I liked the ending too, it finished strong and lived up to the build-up, something I find I can rarely say about horror stories.

It's a perfect book for reading as we're going into the Autumn and Winter months and I highly recommend to anyone that likes creepy, atmospheric stories.

If you are looking for a creepy autumnal read, this one is perfect. Noemi receives a letter from her newly-wed cousin begging her to rescue her. Her husband is poisoning her and there are ghost hunting the old mansion. Noemi immediately heads to the remote mansion in the Mexican countryside to find out what is going on. Very well written, lots of atmosphere. Really creepy house with some creepy people living in it. Reccomend this!

I will say that the genre of Horror isn't necessarily my "go to" genre. Whilst I do enjoy authors such as Stephen King I don't feel like I appreciate them enough and therefore don't read them as often as I feel I should. I had heard so many good things about this book I just couldn't resist it and decided that it was something I needed to read. I absolutely loved the premise, the idea of this book felt so unique and exciting, I just could not wait to dive in. For the first 100 pages, I would say it more or less lived up to my expectations. I did struggle slightly with the writing style, but the premise kept me going, it kept me intrigued. However after the first 100 pages, I felt lost. I didn't really understand what was going on and I feel like the plot when in a direction that didn't make too much sense. I feel like he author wrote what she did and executed the plot in the way that she did to add to the effect, when actually it took the horror aspect away from me. I went from feeling fairly spooked to not at all. I didn't like any of the characters apart from Francis, and I don't feel like we had enough of him until the crucial parts at the end. I am definitely in the minority, but this book was just not for me.

My thanks to Quercus and NetGalley for the digital ARC of this novel.

This is actually the first novel from Moreno-Garcia that I have read, although I own Gods of Jade and Shadow, I haven’t read it yet. I was really excited to get stuck into her work, I have heard so many good things about her writing! This novel sounded like a super intriguing and eerie horror novel, and I was really in the mood for a novel like this when I picked it up. This worked out really well, because I absolutely loved this read, and it was exactly what I was looking for!

This novel has such a menacing and creeping evil feel to it, every single page was filled with this sense of menace, and I loved it! The author’s ability to create this feeling was very impressive, and I really liked being totally absorbed while reading this novel!

It is set in the 1950s in Mexico City, and the move to the mansion in its misty isolation was so well juxtaposed with this bustling city, it made it seem so much more extreme. The glow and shine of Mexico City was heightened by the gloom and darkness of High Place in the countryside.

This novel reminded me strongly of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. It has a similar atmospheric feeling, and both authors handle the setting and the sense of menace with deftness. Rebecca is one of my favourite novels so I was more than happy to be reminded of it!

There is a very nice slow burn romance within this novel which was very tenderly created. I liked how the characters found each other in such a bleak house. It is a very soft, gentle romance, and I appreciated this, I liked that it wasn’t an important and prominent element of the story. It didn’t force itself to the front, it was allowed to grow and develop in the background.

The main character of the novel is Noemi, a rather spoiled city girl who travels to High Place to help her cousins who has recently married one of the residents of the house. I really liked Noemi a lot, yes she was spoiled and entitled but she was endearing and I couldn’t help but root for her against the malevolence of the house and its other occupiers. She was so fierce and cheeky. The descriptions of her clothing were so glamorous too!

Overall I loved this Mexican Gothic. It was eerie and gothic, and an excellent haunted house novel. The sumptuous writing style of the author only added to the enrapturing nature of the story!

It has been a long time since I received this arc, but god I'm glad I finally got around to it. I was expecting something completely different but this book absolutely blew me away. It was so atmospheric and unsettling, just what I wanted in a horror story. I wish the ending had been a little darker, perhaps, but it really is a small qualm and overall this book is fantastic!

Mexican Gothic is a gothic horror novel set in 1950s Mexico. Noemí Taboada, a twenty-two-year-old socialite from Mexico City, is sent to the remote town of El Triunfo by her father after receiving a concerning letter from her cousin Catalina. Her newly-wed cousin claims that she is being poisoned by her husband and that the house is haunted by ghosts. So under the promise of being allowed to study a master’s degree in anthropology, Noemí accepts to go to El Triunfo to find out if there is any truth in Catalina’s words or if the young woman just needs psychiatrist care.

I was really excited about reading this ownvoices novel despite not being a fan of the horror genre. Something about the synopsis caught my attention and the gorgeous cover didn’t hurt either. Whatever it was, I was right. I found a compelling story between the pages of Mexican Gothic and Silvia Moreno-García definitely got to creep me out with some of the scenes that takes places in the haunted house of High Place.

The book focuses on the haunted house trope while delving into the horrors of eugenics, colonialism and misogyny. There are some disturbing scenes and characters in this book. The Doyle family definitely unnerved me with their obsession about maintaining the bloodline and the thing just gets worse as their secrets and past begins to be unfolded.

I have to recognise I didn’t enjoy the last part of the book as much as the rest. I was more into the story when I didn’t know what to expect, when Noemí was in the dark about what was really happening in the house. I really liked how she tries to connect the dots through the book and the stetting of High Place and the rest of El Triunfo. Unfortunately, once the truth is revealed, I found myself not enjoying the story as much. Nevertheless, my overall impression of this story is quite positive.

Summing up, I enjoyed the spooky atmosphere, the main character and the important themes that the author discusses through Mexican Gothic. I think this is a recommendable read for Halloween if you like to delve into scary and dark books during that time of the year. But honestly, if you’re a fan of the genre, just pick it up no matter the season.