Alejandra’s heartbreaking story is a mother dealing with depression, feeling incapable, forgotten, taken advantage of, yearning for love she never felt in her marriage or from adoptive parents. The start of this book was depressing and a little slow, but I think V. Castro really set the scene. I struggled to stay with this novel after about 150 pages in, but I pushed through and I am glad I did.

Alejandra is in deep mental pain: She feels empty, after moving to another city for her husband’s job, saying goodbye to her birth mother she recently met after years of not knowing her. As a stay-at-home mom after resigning from a data analyst job to take care of three kids: nine years old Catrina, four years old Will and their little baby girl Elodia who is only eighteen months old.

Alejandra didn’t want to give birth to the third child and she didn’t want to stop working, but she felt as if she had to sacrifice her life to take care of her family. Her choice for financial security over love makes her question her marriage. She’s not sure she loves her husband.

She starts seeing a shadow of a woman in white dress just like La Llorona: a Mexican folklore figure and a vengeful spirit of a woman who drowned her own children, still mourning them by hunting the delicate souls of women who have been scorned.

Alejandra thinks about taking her life after hearing whispers encouraging her to end her misery. But she decides to be strong for her children. She decides to find a psychiatrist which is also a curandera who can help her with her healing powers. When she starts seeing Melani, it forces her to dig deeper into the history of her ancestors and where the haunting is coming from.

Alejandra finally realizes an ancient curse is ruining the women’s lives in her family for centuries! One of her ancestors had made an agreement with the vengeful spirit: La Llorona. The vengeful spirit gets fed by their sorrow, anger and after a long time of misery the women take their lives.

I LOVE stories about family and this story has such a gorgeous plot and characters. It explains the true trials of being a mother and being forgotten, and forgetting who you are. Stories that delve into family history and where a person comes from are such an interesting read.

While this is a horror book, it's a different type of horror. Yes, there are scary elements, but overall, I would say it's more of a social horror novel rather than a Stephen King-esque horror.

With the folklore element, this book gives all kinds of interesting vibes. I can't wait to do more research on La Llorona.

First, thank you Netgalley & Random House - Ballentine for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I was so excited to get a look at this because La Llorna is a tale I am very familiar with. And growing up in San Antonio, TX, I was surrounded by Mexican culture. And a haunting? It sounded right up my alley.

Unfortunately, it felt flat. I started quickly losing interest. This shouldn't be marketed as a thriller. It's mostly a look at generational trauma and how it affects you.

I also couldn't connect to the writing styles. And where I did connect A LOT with the MC, every time jump/pov changed I got quickly uninterested.

I'm sorry, but this one wasn't for me!

Thy synopsis sounded amazing but this one was ended up not for me. Too graphic for my taste. I thank the publisher and NetGalley for this e-arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

I wanted to completely love this book due to my heritage but I just felt let down. The story over all is modernized Llorona retelling. I just went in with more thriller in mind. Now that I think back on the story maybe it had enough of its own mental thriller but I really wanted that goosebumps on my arm, keeping me awake at night thriller.

This book was a beautiful look at generational trauma and Mexican folklore - I enjoyed it for the most part but at the end of the day, I didn't love this as much as I wanted to. I don't think it should've been marketed as a thriller, either, since the plot was kind of predictable so it took me much longer than I would've expected it to given that it's not overly long.
I had high hopes for this but unfortunately it wasn't for me.

Maybe I just don't know wnough about the cultural references in this book but I didn't really care for this book. I unfortunately had to DNF this book.

I gave this book 2/5 stars.
I think it should not be marketed as a thriller, it’s very predictable, and more of a generational saga. There weren’t many surprises or twists that you would expect in a thriller.
I didn’t like the long drawn out paragraphs from the POV of the creature. I also didn’t like the POV of Flor and didn’t find it to be pertinent to the story.

I’m a sucker for Hispanic folklore so when I saw that this book was centered around the tale of La Llorona I was eager to snatch this up and review it.
Alejandra is a young mother of three children who is married to a fourth child. Alejandra has come to find her husband to be volatile and demanding and dismissive of her feelings of being a shell of her former self. Feeding off of her despair La Llorona or the “weeping woman” shows up sporadically to feed off of her anguish.
We follow Alejandra and the women in her lineage as they battle with their demons. La Llorona being one demon, postpartum depression being the other.
I felt that the authors writing style in this book was not for me. She embellished some things to the point where it would lose my attention. It took me about three months to finish Alejandra. About 2/3 of the way through the book does pick up however. If one is looking to read horror there are brief moments in the book where it is scary, but to me this is more a take of a woman being reborn and finding herself.
My profuse thanks to NetGalley and Random House for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Mexican folklore always intrigues me. I don’t believe in the supernatural, yet I temporarily believe when I read something like this. Add to that the fact that this was a bit of a woman-finding-her-power story and I truly loved it. It changed POVs throughout from a few people in the current day to people from the past, but it never got confusing, just very well put together.

Alejandra has the kind of life many people dream of; a devoted husband, three beautiful and healthy kids, and a home in a prosperous community.
The slow creep of the haunting that starts off sounding like the malaise a lot of women feel in their 30s as they struggle to reconcile their personhood with their motherhood but we soon find out that it is more of a slow boil that will take Alejandra and her eldest daughter down if she doesn't fight for them and for herself.
This is an old-fashioned, spooky, atmospheric read more than a jump scare and I love that about it; Alejandra's frame of mind is so richly painted that she feels like a friend we become very, very invested in.
I love how the author addressed multigenerational trauma, masterfully weaving it in with the story instead of hitting the reader over the head with it like a PSA; V. Castro's writing is sheer brilliance.

Alejandra is young mother stuck in an unfulfilling marriage when she begins to have visions threatening her and her children's lives. She must dive deep into her personal and ancestral history to find the power to protect her loved ones.

This story is incredible. It's inspired by the La Llorana myth. This was my first time reading a V. Castro book, and I’m blown away. The beginning of this novel lulls you into a sense of complacency that you’ll be reading about a broken marriage - and then you’re quickly thrown into a gorgeous plot that navigates an intergenerational curse that stems from when colonizers arrived in the Americas. There are women revolutionaries, queer identities, and a centering of curandera practices. The latter was particularly powerful - and actually essential - because in any other healthcare setting in the US, Alejandra likely would have been institutionalized for the symptoms she was reporting. From a political perspective, this book is subtly but importantly quite radical - and I unsurprisingly adored this.

I have little to critique here but can consider what other reviewers have written. Yes, there are multiple POVs and flashbacks. While I’m generally cautious about these narrative techniques, I thought that V. Castro used them masterfully. They were peppered into sections that appropriately moved the plot forward. I do agree that there are brief periods where the writing is more choppy or the pace is a little slow, but I didn’t find this to be unusual for a book of this length. Though a significant portion of this book takes place in Philadelphia (my favorite US city and home for four years), I don’t know that the geography ended up being central to the narrative. Alejandra could have been living in any other city outside of Texas, so the lack of Philly characteristics was a little underwhelming. Ultimately, none of these critiques are enough to dim the overarching beauty of the story for me. I can’t wait to have my hardback copy once the book is published.

A huge thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for approving this e-ARC. It’s my favorite NetGalley read yet!

This book was very interesting. I am Mexican so I am quite familiar with the various tales of La Llorona and her origins, this was an interesting and different take on a well known story and I enjoyed it.

This book uses the supernatural to address generational trauma, which was really interesting to see and read. It also stresses the importance of therapy and healing, connecting with yourself and your heritage. Some scenes were perfectly creepy and genuinely terrifying, but I'd say the main focus is the growth and exploration of the different women in Alejandra's lineage, including her.

I wouldn't consider it historical fiction, although it has a lot of flashbacks to Alejandra's ancestors and the time periods are accurately described, creative liberties are also taken, I still think they were included in a good way and added to the plot.

Something I didn't like very much were the dialogues, sometimes they felt forced and almost unbelievable. Also, the fact that the creature was described to us every time someone saw it, I understand it's a shock to the character, but I don't think it's necessary to describe it to us that many times.

Overall, I think I really enjoyed this book, it started off slow but picked up eventually and addressed important themes in a unique way.

cw: suicide thoughts, blood, colonization, death, gaslighting, gore.

Immediately engaging! The writing is so emotional and real, the characters so relatable. I love the discussion on connecting to culture, and reclaiming identity. This book is great for fans of Nightbitch (Yoder), with a touch a of creature horror similar to Slewfoot (Brom). Also, fans of Sylvia Moreno-Garcia will feel at home in this book.

I would include content warnings for suicide and suicidal ideation, as well as for emotional abuse/gaslighting/grooming.

There is potentially problematic messaging in mental health (depression) being linked to supernatural causes, but I think in this book the author sidesteps that by making the creature attracted to the mental anguish and generational trauma in the first place. The problem is that there is a family curse and the women's symptoms are exacerbated by being haunted by this creature, which toes a fine line as far as the portrayal of mental health as a real vs supernatural issue. The inclusion of counseling/therapy in the story is great.

The book ended up losing my interest so that I couldn't even finish the last 20%. My biggest problem was with the dialogue. Not believable at all.

This was everything and more. I will read anything by V. Castro, and have yet to be disappointed.

Alejandra's story is a story most can relate to - until the supernatural happenings begin, at least. She is a daughter, mother, wife: but is dissatisfied with her current life. While her relationship with her newly found bio-mother is going well, her husband moved the whole family states away, making Alejandra feel alone. Her relationship with her husband and kids is... complicated.

To top it all off, weird things have been happening to Alejandra.

Weaved into Alejandra's story are the stories of other women in the past with similar struggles. And the story of La Llorona.

This is a fantastic story drawing on both emotional and supernatural elements to build the torment and horror. I fully recommend this to everyone.

Thanks to Netgally for a copy in exchange for an unbiased review.

the Haunting of Alejandra is a wonderful that follows a strong mother, trying to protect her children, as well as tracing the folk story of La Llorona. The writing just seemed to flow and was easy to read.

Well this book packed a punch. We follow 30 something year old Alejandra. Recently moved from Texas to Philadelphia with her husband and three children, she feels adrift. You initially think that maybe Alejandra is suffering from post-partum depression. However, the book quickly moves that something seems to be haunting Alejandra. Telling her that she's a bad mother, that her children would be better off with her, and that in the end she may take a road many of her ancestors did, and allows whatever is haunting to take her and then her eldest daughter.

The book characters were great IMHO. I loved how we get to see Alejandra wake all the way up by the end of the book. She's indifferent to her husband and her children at first. But you feel the love she has for her children starting to break through. When she realizes something may be haunting her and could hurt them, she decides to do whatever it takes to kill the thing that stalks them. And I thought it was interesting that Castro shows how Alejandra being adopted (even though by a half Mexican woman and white man) ended up harming her and many of the children they raised because of the hyper religious parents she had. Because of them many roads that Alejandra would have taken she did not, it seems she was afraid of disappointing two people she didn't even really like. When Alejandra meets her birth mother Cathy though, you start to see she part of her started to wake up before she departed Texas for Philadelphia. Her husband just seems to be there. He's not a a good guy, and not bad, just someone that always pushes his needs first and doesn't really seem to care about Alejandra unless it is going to mess up his schedule. 

Castro takes us back at some points in time to a time when the Spanish came to Mexico and a woman who was left with nothing after being repeatedly raped agrees to a bargain that has repercussions for all of her descendants. The book not only follows Alejandra, but her mother Cathy, her grandmother, and others. I loved how Castro loops in the Mexican folklore of La Llorona, a spirit of a vengeful woman who drowned her own children and still searches for them but also hunts women as well. I think I honestly felt for Cathy's mother. She was in love with someone who did not love her and when the "curse" starts to come for her she really doesn't have a sense of how to get out, but wants to keep her children safe. The thread through all of these stories was the love a mother has for her children, and how these mothers would do anything for them. 

The writing was really good and so was the flow. 

The ending was a bit gory, but I liked how the big turns the events into just one more chapter and we can begin to see how the future may be shaped now.

Alejandra is all of us who've tried to do it all and be it all. She's dissatisfied with her current situation, and wondering how to fix it, or if she deserves to fix it - is this her lot in life, and is she a bad mother/woman/person for not being satisfied? Whether Alejandra's list heritage arrives to liberate her or doom her... well, that's a matter of perception. Every person who reads this will take something different from it, and this makes the story even richer. This is on the best non-required reading list in YA imo, and I want my kids & students to read it.

The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro
Before I begin my review, I would like to extend a “thank you” to Random House Publishing Group and to V. Castro for giving me access to this eARC via NetGalley. This is my honest review of The Haunting of Alejandra.

Synopsis: (No Spoilers)
Alejandra is a mother of three young children and a devoted wife. Like many women who have devoted their lives to their family, Alejandra feels that she has given so much of herself to her spoils every and children that she has lost herself. The more she extracts to give to them, the emptier she feels. She lives her day-to-day chasing after her beautiful children and spends her nights feeling lonely while her husband is on business trips. She feels even longer when he is home. This is a story that women often tell and Alejandra is just one among many. However, what makes Alejandra’s journey unique is that her emptiness is being filled with a haunting reality. Her loneliness turns into a terrifying reality that proves to her that she is never alone. Her depression has taken the shape of an ancient entity that is set on using Alejandra’s mental condition to feed it’s hunger for life force. This entity has followed the women in Alejandra’s ancestral line and is never satisfied. It feeds their sadness until they can no longer endure life and the entity takes it for it’s own. Alejandra has to dig deep into her family history and find the courage from her ancestors to find the answers she needs so she can defeat this curse.

Review:
V. Castro did an extraordinary thing when she wrote this novel. She created a memory for me. I would like to start by explaining that this book reached out and clutched my attention from the very first page. Castro introduces us to Alejandra, who is struggling with her present. This character’s relatability was through the roof for me, Like Alejandra, I am a mother of three, Xicana and face struggles with depression occasionally. Alejandra wants to connect with her past and her life depends on it. I loved the connection Castro made with Alejandra and her ancestors, from Meso-American life to the Mexican Revolution (Viva Zapata!) we take a journey in to a past that can be shared by some and captivating to many. We learn about reconnecting to our roots and the special connection that women have with one another on an ancestral plane.
I found this to be quite easy to dive into, the writing was engaging and her descriptions were extremely vivid. I had no issues keeping up with any part of the book. I recommend this book to anyone who struggles with things such as generational trauma or displacement. I find that this book had me appreciate my own ancestors a million times more and was happy to be able to relate with the main character so much.

The Haunting of Alejandra stands apart from other domestic thriller type literature through interwoven elements of horror and Mexican folklore. Mother to three and unhappy in her marriage, Alejandra starts to experience terrifying hallucinations. As she discovers more about her heritage, she grapples with how to break a generational curse before it devours the ones she loves most.

The Haunting of Alejandra is vibrant with modern family issues, historical badass women, and interesting cultural references. There is a lot to intrigue the reader, but I almost felt that we didn't get enough of each to truly click. Alejandra's ancestry seemed promising, but it was hard to become attached to any one person. The horror aspects were disturbing but nothing that would keep you up at night, and the marital issues could have been juicier. Nothing to prevent me from reading another book by the author, however.

Note: I received a free ebook copy of The Haunting of Alejandra from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review