Truthfully I’m confused. I feel like I have no idea what j read. I was expecting a psych thriller about two reunited ex bffs but it turned out to be a gothic horror with those ex bffs as a side order? I’m still not sure. 3 stars for the imagery and poetic writing. Definitely a complex read but not in a good way. Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read and review this ARC.

South Florida is a rich backdrop for a mysterious, moody, surreal novel like this one. While I think I got lost in the mangroves a few times, it was a fun place to sink into.

Oof wanted to like this but for the life of me I couldn’t stay interested. the setting and descriptions of scenes and especially food were great but I didn’t care for either character. also journal entries in a story always feel like a cop out to me

dnfed around the 40% mark


thank you to the publisher and netgalley for an early copy for my review!

Such an excellent new horror novel! Suspenseful and disturbing in the best way! A new horror favorite for sure!

3.5 stars. Fantastic details, from the foods to the land and setting and clothing. The writer excels at inviting the reader into the world and making sure we see everything around us. It could easily to handed to a set director to build the scene. But pace seemed to be mixed, and some parts were redundant. I’m appreciative to Penguin Random House for the Advanced Reader Copy.

This book revolves mostly around a teenage friendship, which is not what I originally expected but ended up liking in the end. I am always interested in female friendships and the way that both conflict and fierce loyalty can coexist. I’m also a fan of the journal woven throughout and the way it adds a layer of mystery to the story. I would recommend this book for anyone who has a haunting friendship in their lives, one that seems to follow the despite their best efforts to leave it behind.

This was boring :( I really liked the idea of it but found it to be way too slow & kind of a mess. The most interesting parts were the flashbacks to Mayra & Ingrid’s childhood friendship. I also hate when a character finds a journal & reads like 1 page a week. Who finds a journal & doesn’t read the whole thing in one sitting?! I didn’t connect to any of the characters & had a hard time picturing a lot of the scenes.

Thank you to Random House & NetGalley for the ARC.

Nothing was really going on in this book. It felt more like literary fiction than horror. The horror element was hardly there at all. For being such a short book, it felt really long.

Mayra was an interesting book. I'm not sure if I would classify it as "gothic" but it did have some eerie elements. A lot of the story was comprised of flashbacks to Ingrid and Mayra's teenage friendship. Some parts of this were interesting and other parts were lackluster. I feel as though I spent most of the book waiting for something enthralling or shocking to happen. The ending was meh.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for allowing me the opportunity to review this ARC!

This was such a strange and unexpected book. I think I loved it. I know, having finished it about 10 minutes ago, that it devastated me. This is a book where the plot is the relationship. I kept saying, “I’m at the halfway point and I still don’t know what this book is about” because it really unfolds in such a unique way. The writing was beautiful. I can’t think of any other reason why I read it so quickly and never really put it down despite what I thought was a lack of plot.

I dislike the idea that this is a book about toxic female friendship. I feel like it’s about complex, human female friendship. How people hurt each other without meaning to, how they desperately want to be loved by the person they love. There’s a moment where the ‘toxic ex best friend’ reflects on moments where the narrator really hurt her in the past and it serves as a reminder, I think, that sometimes the way we see ourselves is not the way others see us. How we perceive people wrong. I feel like insecurity is the real monster of this book rather than “toxic female friendship”.

Honestly, I only finished this book because I had received an ARC and felt obligated to complete it and provide a review. My initial rating is 3 stars, but I didn't really like the book and certainly don't feel that it did a good job of living up to the summary from the publisher. The writing is fine, but with only 240 pages this book leaves a lot unexplored and would have been better if it was expanded upon.
Mayra and Ingrid were childhood best friends, who had an unhealthy co-dependent relationship, until Mayra moves north from FL to NY for college and rarely returns. Ingrid is left to live her life, until one day Mayra calls to invite her to a house in the middle of the FL wetlands to "disconnect" and Ingrid spontaneously agrees. We as the reader are given glimpses of their past in little vignettes as Ingrid reminisces about their childhood as she explores the house and loses herself as well. The book is sold as a Southern horror, but the horror is only about the last 8-10% of the book and is so quickly resolved I felt like I had whiplash. I am rounding up from 2.5 stars, the premise could be good, but the execution did not live up to my expectations.
Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for the electronic ARC of this review.

Okay, so "Mayra" by Nicky Gonzalez. this book was a trip, dude. I approached it thinking it'd be this creepy haunted house deal, and sure, it was kind of that, but it devolved into something totally stranger. Like, for the most part it was this weird, kinda poisonous friendship between Mayra and Ingrid, and then the end just went into full-on fever dream.

The first half of the book, I was loving it. So many flashbacks to when Mayra and Ingrid were teens, and this creepy old house out in the Florida Everglades? So atmospheric and creepy. It was a slow-moving book, but I thought that it was building up to something gigantic. Then it just turned into. repetition. Like, oh, yeah, they're still stuck in the house. Yes, more flashbacks. Yes, teenage Mayra was a brat. You know.

And then the ending just happened. Seriously, what the heck? Where did that even happen from? Why on earth are we suddenly in a swamp and everything's all. psychedelic? I have just so many conflicting emotions about it. The premise of the book was great to begin with, but I just wasn't fond of the whole hallucinatory prose thing. If I wanted to imagine like I was stoned, I'd, you know, do drugs. Not read about doing drugs.

Also, can we talk about the discovered journal trope for a moment? It drives me nuts when characters come across these ancient journals and then read them at a glacial pace. Like, "Ooh, this person is so enigmatic, I'll read one entry per day." Who does that?! No one. And to be honest, the journal entries themselves weren't really doing it for me. This Elizabeth girl was just so bland until the eleventh hour when she proceeded and made this really stupid decision. Seriously, how was she thinking that was going to end well?

The writing style also felt kind of jump-y, especially towards the end when things got really weird. They're talking about one thing, and then BAM, we're suddenly later and they're talking about something else entirely, and I'm sitting there wondering what the heck did I miss. It felt like the timeline was fast-forwarding unexpectedly, which just made things more confusing.

Yeah, okay, but I will say that Mayra's boyfriend Benji was freaky in the absolute best way possible. He was sort of normal, but you just knew that something was off. The whole "cleaning the windows" scene? Complete and utter WTF and I loved it, though I still don't entirely get what was going on there.

So, yeah. Part of this book I enjoyed, and part of it I just didn't. I'm sure some are going to totally get the whole fever-dream thing, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. The concept, though? Honestly fantastic. I'd be more than happy to read more by Nicky Gonzalez in the future, even if this one only got a 3.25 from me.

Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez is a gothic psychological novel about Ingrid, who reunites with her estranged childhood friend Mayra at a remote house in the Florida Everglades. As they revisit their past, the eerie setting and emotional tension blur reality, revealing the dark complexities of their friendship.

I didn’t quite connect with this one. The first 75% of the story explored the complexities of Ingrid and Mayra’s friendship in depth - but Ingrid’s constant shifts between love and resentment toward Mayra (both in the past and present day) became a bit exhausting to follow. Additionally the plot development toward the end didn’t quite deliver the payoff I was hoping for. That said, readers who enjoy gothic, eerie, psychologically driven narratives may find a lot to appreciate here.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and author for granting me a complimentary advanced reader copy of the ebook. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own and based off of this draft; the final publication may be different. Expected publication date is July 22, 2025.

Mayra and Ingrid are childhood friends that haven’t spoken in years. Out of the blue, Ingrid gets a call from Mayra inviting her to visit her at a home deep in the Florida Everglades.
The book goes back and forth between memories of the girls as teenagers to present day in the vacation home.
What starts out as a pretty normal read takes a turn and suddenly I had no clue what was going on. It wasn’t bad, it was just odd. I think a bit of confusion was what the author was trying to evoke, similar to the house itself. Generally speaking I liked the book but describing it leaves me at a loss.
Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for access to this ARC.

Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for an eARC of Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez, which I really enjoyed. The novel's creepy gothic atmosphere was its most interesting feature, even if it got slightly lost by the end. Ingrid and Mayra were both engaging characters that kept the plot propelling forwards. The novel is an easy recommendation for thriller fans who love a breezy read.

Knowing how much time and effort it requires to write an entire book, I try to look for positive things to say about a story before criticizing. Unfortunately, I did not find much that held my attention with "Mayra." Several times I thought I would stop reading, but then continued to the end. The premise of two former close friends, meeting again after many years of "life goes on," is a good basis, and the details of Ingrid and Mayra's childhood set up the background for the reunion. With the appearance of Benji, who knows every detail of the house they are in, located in a remote area of the swamps of Florida, and cooks, cleans, and picks up off the floor dirty clothing left by Ingrid, most of the time I was trying to figure out the purpose of his presence and the suspicions Ingrid has about him, as well as the relationship between Ingrid and Mayra. Many times the story veers off into dreams, surreal escape attempts from the house and it just didn't make for a cohesive and satisfying story. The ending left me equally
disappointed, and wondering why I finished this book.

There were some genuine spooky parts sprinkled through out the book but it wasnt all out horror. More creepy than anything but I enjoyed it. The end fizzled out a bit for me I wanted something a little spookier but it ended I would say more weird and unsettling than straight horror. I will say the target audience that would really get more out of this book is Florida natives particularly with the Latin community.

The way this book was described does not match how it read for me. I have no problem with low/no plot books as long as the characters are interesting. And while the main female characters weren't exactly flat, they did feel cookie cutter. A girl who doesn't know herself and wants to leave her small town behind and the girl who is very judgmental and doesn't ever leave. These archetypes didn't leave a lasting impression on me. And it did not make up for the lack of nothing in this book. While some moments and discussions the 3 characters would have did make me pause a think a little, it never went deep enough to inspire lasting thoughts. Maybe this is my own fault- who knows?

The ending felt so rushed. I was at 90% thinking maybe something would finally happen and suddenly the danger the main characters were in were suddenly realized and then the story ended. I had guessed the nature of the man and the house but there was hardly anything on its origins or how it worked or the timeline. It just wasn't for me. While this is a very surface level interpretation of the book, I think at the very least the most literal interpretation needs to be interesting to be well liked.

I have come to the conclusion that it just wasn't for me and that this will appeal to different people for sure! I would have liked it more if the characters had been more interesting but toxic, sort of homoerotic, teenage female friendships didn't appeal to me for this setting. Nonetheless, the writing was a strong point! This author knows how to create an atmosphere that is unsettling and pointed. I loved it and it was a main reason why I wanted to finish this story.

Thank you to Netgalley and random house publishing for sending me this ARC in exchange for an honest review~

Beautifully written and haunting, Mayra stayed with me long after the final page even though I was left with some unanswered questions. If you are a fan of atmospheric books, need a break from story-driven plots with multiple characters and subplots and background character development, or want to read a short film, this is the one for you.

I was immediately drawn into the book because of the writing and, even after I was done, I couldn't place what I was feeling throughout - was it nostalgia? Confusion? Loneliness? Nicky Gonzalez did a great job in creating a mood that I would expect to find in an artsy short film; all winding corridors and rooms that lead nowhere but back to where we started. I haven't read a book like this in a very long time so I truly appreciated the non-traditional story and narrative. I was so wrapped up in the steady stream of consciousness from Ingrid that, eventually, time in the book and my time reading moved along together. This was entirely unsettling but would be enjoyable for fans of eerie, uncomfortable horror that isn't a jump-scare in your face. I am so glad I gave this a chance!

Nicky Gonzalez's "Mayra" presents a narrative shrouded in an intriguing air of mystery, particularly surrounding the central friendship. This enigmatic dynamic proved to be a compelling thread, subtly urging the reader forward even when the overall direction of the plot felt elusive. However, the initial two-thirds of the book unfold at a measured pace, with significant plot developments feeling somewhat delayed. This gradual build-up, while perhaps intentional, ultimately contributed to a sense of disorientation that lingered even after reaching the final pages. While the atmospheric tension surrounding the characters' connection is undeniable, the lack of substantial progression in the earlier parts of the book and the lingering confusion at the conclusion may leave some readers seeking a clearer sense of resolution.