This was such a slow read for me that I almost gave up reading. I did not care for the relationship between one of the main characters and her uncle. I did enjoy the witchy parts, the lore, and the Mexican culture within the story. I found Minerva’s character to be boring and pretty annoying; she lacked personality and wasn’t relatable at all.

4.5 stars, rounded up.

I was drawn into this book, and thought each of the storylines intriguing, especially Minerva and Alba’s. I thought the author really invited the reader into each world, and the book was hard to put down. Scary enough that I wanted to finish it quickly so I wouldn’t be too freaked out, but no grisly horror.

The timelines and settings were seamless, and you can feel the author’s deep understanding of each place, which made the storytelling evocative and enveloping.

Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for the ARC. We’ll be adding this to our “witchy fiction” collection at my bookstore as soon as it’s released!

Thank you Del Rey and NetGalley for allowing me to read this early! I thoroughly enjoyed this book, especially the intertwining of 3 narratives that paint the overall picture! The ending was worth the long read!
My only gripe was Minerva; I felt like I didn’t get to read much of her personality. It was hidden most of the time, and I felt there were numerous opportunities for the reader to see more of who she was but never got the chance.

Alba, Betty and Minerva grew up in different times though consumed with the same haunt in this mystery thriller that still has me with goosebumps.

Each girl has some of my favorite historic backdrops over the past century. Alba’s story in told more as folklore while Betty’s holds that ideal mid century atmosphere where a mystery insists on a logical explanation. In the 90s, Minerva’s background on witches is very much the Salem stories we grow up with, quite a bit removed for Mexican folklore stories and yet the terror remains for each of the girls and their circumstances.

I too had a spell on me while reading and could not put it down. The more information I absorbed, the scarier the circumstances.

Told across nine decades, this novel weaves together the stories of three women who all encountered strange magical phenomena involving a particular type of witchcraft. These are not the conventional witches we are all familiar with, but a type of Mexican witch called teyolloquani, who are vampiric, drinking the blood of their victims and eating their hearts and also capable of shapeshifting to hunt prey.

We first encounter these beings in 1908 in Mexico where a young woman, Alba lives on a farm with her recently widowed mother, older brother Tadeo, younger siblings and her Uncle, who has recently come to try to talk them into selling the farm. Strange occurrences start to happen on the farm. Strange lights in the trees, the feeling of a presence watching Alba, animals dying and then her brother vanishes without a trace.

In 1998 Alba’s great-granddaughter Minerva is a graduate student at a college in Maine researching the life of her favourite horror writer Beatrice Tremblay who was also a student at the college. Her novel ‘The Vanishing’ was based on the disappearance in 1938 of Virginia Jackson, a fellow student and Minerva hopes to find out more about what happened to her. With the college all but empty for the summer, Minerva also starts to experience strange phenomena and feelings and remembers the stories her Nana Alba used to tell her.

The novel builds pace and tension gradually, introducing us to the three women and their encounters with the malignant phenonema causing their bewitching. By the middle of the book, I was invested in to wanting to know what would happen to them and gripped by the unfolding tale of powerful warlocks and witches (although I was left wondering how the teyolloquani had arrived in Maine). With gothic vibes and some graphic scenes, this is an intriguing read which will appeal to fans of horror and paranormal fiction.

A Journey Through Folklore & Fright

It is a multigenerational horror saga where danger and bewitching magic intertwine. Yes please!
Three women—spanning eras—are mysteriously bound by a dark force lurking in the shadows, creating a tapestry of terror that’s as eerie as it is exciting, as intriguing as it is unpredictable

Horror and Folklore Collide

With a title like Bewitching, I was all set for a cauldron brimming with classic witchery—potions, herbs, and timeworn incantations. Instead, I found myself immersed in a world where witches draw their power from the rich traditions of Mexican folklore, offering a refreshing break from the norm. At first, the unconventional take threw me off balance, but as the story’s eerie horror elements—steeped in folklore and an unsettling atmosphere—slowly crept in, I couldn’t help but be drawn into its thrilling, otherworldly allure.

A Haunting Rhythm: Uneven Pacing Disrupts the Spell

For me, pacing is the skeleton that holds any story together. I appreciate a slow build when it has an engaging structure that keeps me eagerly clicking through each page. Unfortunately, the pacing here felt uneven—flashes of action, only to be swallowed by a sluggish rhythm that sometimes breaks the spell. This imbalance makes the pacing feel like a ghostly waltz, where moments of tension build beautifully—only to slow down again.

You’ve Been Warned

One part of the story left me utterly stunned—the kind of twist that makes you gasp and think, ‘Don’t go there!’—only to be left completely astonished when it does. Consider this your friendly warning: prepare for the unexpected, because this narrative isn’t afraid to push boundaries

More Than Spells and Potions

Despite a few pacing hiccups and one particularly shocking moment or two…, the daring blend of Mexican folklore with spine-tingling horror is both refreshing and deeply engaging, challenging everything you thought you knew about witches. In the end, it left me delightfully bewitched!
Take this journey if you're eager to explore the darker side of legends.

Oh the author is Mexican Canadian!!

A Witches Words buddy read with some of my favorite witches. Debra and Carolyn

This was a triumph of a novel. Moreno-Garcia weaves together family secrets with spellbinding supernatural tales to create an utterly exquisite novel.

I have been looking for a good creepy witchy book for a while, and this ticked all my boxes. I loved the movement through timelines and people’s perspective, and how it all linked together! This was a fantastic read! The folklore and witch stories were brilliant.

This is not your usual witch tale - not by a long shot! Told in three timelines, The Bewitching is mesmerizing, intriguing, bizarre, mysterious, and thought provoking. Three women are told “Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches.” These are not Disney witches, nor are that what will be found when you follow the yellow brick road. These witches are way beyond that.

Alba, Minerva, and Beatrice are three women connected with interesting tales and fates. Each has an interesting backstory, and each has a distinct personality. Each has a connection to witchcraft and beyond.

The first half of the book was a slow burn for me, but I stuck with it as the premise was intriguing. The second half of the book picks up and I was fully invested and wanted answers. I never knew where this book was going or where Silvia Moreno-Garcia was going to take me. The aspect of witches and warlocks was intriguing and piqued my interest. There was one part of the book which was a bit cringe-worthy and other parts that were a bit graphic but otherwise, I found this to be an interesting albeit different book.

Intriguing, dark, well written, and mysterious.

Absolutely great read, not only for horror fans. Brilliant story telling here. I do like the way the author take as through lives of 3 people from 3 different generations to one definite ending.
Are witches and warlocks only silly folks talks? Read this story and think about it.

This was my first book by this author but it definitely won’t be my last! It kept me enthralled from beginning to end.

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a multi-protagonist gothic horror set across three different eras. Alba, a young woman in 1908 Mexico, finds her family under attack from a supernatural entity. Beatrice, a scholarship student at a New England college in 1934, recounts the mysterious disappearance of a close friend who believed she was being persecuted by witches. Minerva, Alba's great granddaughter, is at the same college in 1998 and writing her thesis on Beatrice's fiction and noticing similarities between her and Alba's accounts of witchcraft.

I went into this book with high expectations and yet Moreno-Garcia still managed to surpass them. Much like Minerva, Moreno-Garcia was inspired by her own family's stories of witches from Mexican folklore. The witches in this novel are almost vampiric, drinking blood and eating hearts, as well as practicing a visceral form of folk magic. Moreno-Garcia weaves Mexican and New England folklore together into a coherent whole, finding points of similarity. This was exactly the type of magic I like to read about: an ambiguous, half-understood force that retains some mystery from the reader. This is a must read for fans of Mexican Gothic.

Thanks to Del Rey, Random House Worlds, Inklore | Del Rey and NetGalley for this ARC in return for my honest review.

Three women experience the impact of a haunting entity lurking and influencing lives that might prove to be more than simple superstition in The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
Growing up with stories of witches told by her great-grandmother Alba, Minerva has been fascinated by stories of that ilk ever since, which has guided her to pursue graduate studies focused on horror literature. As Minerva researches for her thesis on a lesser-known author of macabre stories, Beatrice Tremblay, she begins to uncover details that reveal that Tremblay’s most prominent novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story of her friend’s mysterious disappearance from the very same university that Minerva’s studying at now and that has eerie echoes of tales her Nana Alba told her over the years of events that happened in her life when she was young. With frayed nerves and filled with suspicion that a specter of what haunted both Nana Alba and Trembley is now haunting her, Minerva carefully and craftily navigates the hallowed halls of knowledge relying on the insight gained from the women who came before her recognizing that witchcraft is sometimes more than mere superstition.
Thoroughly developing a convincing sense of the uncanny and eerie to underscore the unsettling paranoia and suspicion present within the three women who serve as the narrative focus of the interwoven story pulling surreal experiences from their respective time periods spanning different eras across the 1900s to depict and demonstrate the enduring nature, power, and reach of witchcraft, and the associated stories that detail how to defeat witches, an intriguing narrative is pieced together with gradually building tension. The behavior of two witches intricately involved in events was so overtly suspect throughout the scenes where they were present or discussed to such an extent that it took more effort to try to ascribe them innocent explanations rather than place the blame of witchcraft at their feet, though there is another character whose witchy status was left in flux and with a reasonably hefty sense of wariness within Minerva, perhaps as a counter of greater subtly to the more obvious that dominated in the other threads. The narrative offers a commentary on the dynamic where those with power and wealth seek to extend their reach and influence, always wanting more, aiming to attain that which they want through whatever means necessary, including supernatural means of witchcraft in this specific instance.
Overall, I’d give it a 4 out of 5 stars.
*I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Bewitching is a delightful combination of Mexican and New England folklore involving witchcraft. I loved the intertwining stories of the three women and how each story was very different but informed and played off of each others. Moreno-Garcia is so skilled at weaving together familiar folklore and the propensity for purely human evil, each new iteration creeps me out more.

I would also say this is Moreno-Garcia's spookiest work to date, there were multiple scenes where I could feel myself tensing and the hair on the back of my neck rising. Overall a very fun and surprisingly emotional read.

Thanks to Del Rey, Random House Worlds, Inklore | Del Rey and NetGalley for this ARC of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's 'The Bewitching.'

Very few horror writers can capture a sense of place and time as Silvia Moreno-Garcia and in this case she's capturing those qualities for three different timelines - 1908, 1934, and 1998 - and she does it with aplomb.

A young graduate Mexican student in a posh Massachusetts liberal arts college who starts off researching a neglected but inspirational female horror author but finds herself enmeshed in a battle of magic and witchery (and we're not talking stereotypical witches' here) that's spanned generation. She expertly weaves a tale of family, witchcraft, magic, and otherness with great skill. Early 1900s central Mexico and great depression-era and end of millennium New England are the settings for this story of the supernatural, disappearances, poverty and privilege, friendship and fear.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia does it again, congratulations.

The atmosphere all round was disgustingly creepy, with every chapter that passed it felt like the hairs on my body were standing on end. The incest was …. Something, but it made sense for the themes and That Scene was soo Nosferatu it made everything click

Woooow. I absolutely love Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s writing. This story had me hooked from beginning to end.

Make sure to add The Bewitching to your 2025 reading list because you don’t want to miss it.

Thank you NetGalley and to the publishers for this wonderful ARC!

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a multi-generational fantasy horror that explores three timelines of women and their encounters of witchcraft. Moreno-Garcia did a fantastic job of spinning three different but connected stories simultaneously, and making all three equally as gripping and tense. We watched as these women struggled with the same things in different ways, each step learning enough to keep us interested to come back for more, but not so much that it ruined all anticipation. Each of our three point of view characters were strong and interesting in different ways, showcasing how three different people can react and cope with similar problems. I felt the least connected to the Betty and Ginny chapters, but they had so much importance for the overall plot and were still gripping enough that this didn't hold back my enjoyment very much.
The writing is something that really stood out to me - there were beautiful quotes about life struggles and mental health, but I mostly loved the quotes about writing, classical stories, and the connection that Minerva felt to Ginny and Betty through reading their stories.
As is the case with good horror, through the scary and spooky moments we explore poignant themes relating to humanity and society. Without trying to spoil too much of anything, the way the women struggled with issues that people would not believe them about, and the threat of what would happen if they were too open about their struggle with something that other people do not understand really felt true to the experiences as a woman navigating mental and physical health struggles in our world.

I am such a fan of Moreno-Garcia and was thrilled to get a chance to read this book!
It is told from the perspective of three different women in three different time periods.
I absolutely loved how this story came together!

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Bewitching is a compelling blend of horror and historical fiction, weaving together three timelines—1998 and 1934 Massachusetts, and early 1900s Mexico—into a gripping multigenerational saga. While steeped in supernatural folklore, the novel leans more toward eerie suspense than outright horror, making it an excellent choice for those who enjoy the occult but shy away from intense scares. Alba’s 1908 storyline is particularly haunting, as her encounters with witchcraft ripple through generations.

The novel’s villains intensify the suspense, making it impossible to put down. Each timeline’s ending is a mix of twisted and tragic, yet all are deeply satisfying. Moreno-Garcia also weaves in subtle nods to classic horror literature—an engaging touch for genre fans without distracting from the story.

For readers drawn to witchcraft, multigenerational sagas, and atmospheric New England settings, The Bewitching is an enthralling read. As a Boston native, I especially enjoyed the novel’s setting and historical depth. I highly recommend this as an addition to personal and public libraries.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group | Del Rey and NetGalley for this eARC! Look for this on the shelves on July 15, 2025.