I want to enjoy this novel but could not finish. Some readers will relish the extended suspense. Others will feel Moreno-Garcia’s reveals infrequent and usually inconsequential, and the conversation repetitive. ( )

2024 book #24. 2020. 22-yo Noemi' lives a happy life in 1950 Mexico City until her father sends her to visit her cousin, now married to the master of a dark and moldy mansion far from the city. An OK start but the reason for the creepiness of the place was a bit far out for me. ( )

Wow. Somehow I saw this as a dark novel and missed it is classified as 'horror.' Horror or fantasy are not genres I go for. The first half is like a dark mystery. Begin with a decaying mansion at the top of the hill, where mold seems to be everywhere. Then it gets more and more twisted. Then strange dreams. And stranger people. And walls that talk.

That I kept turning the pages and finished it is a testament to great writing, an original plot, and my curiosity. The story sucked me in. I kept wondering, how was it going to end? No spoilers, but you'll get it if you read it. I couldn't leave the book unfinished without knowing the end.

Think Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier or Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, then set the story in 1950s Mexico. It is more novel than horror. I'm glad I read this book, as it expands my reading repertoire, and I experienced a new author. I recommend the book. It will grab you and take you on a ride through dark tunnels as you hope to find the exit. ( )

“Now she recalled one particular thing Jung wrote: everyone carries a shadow. And like a shadow the woman’s words hung over Noemi as she drove back to High Place” (70).

Just like a David Lynch production is not my usual film, this book is not my usual read. And just like watching Blue Velvet for the first time, I loved Mexican Gothic so much. This atmospheric thriller was as smooth as green velvet because of its dark whimsy—full of fables and fairytales—yet it was layered with such weight, the seriousness of gender, eugenics, race, and colonization. And the characters are just as layered as the thick atmosphere. While Noemi appears, at first, to be just a flighty socialite and Catalina appears, at first, to be just a hysterical woman, it doesn’t take long to see that these woman are not to be discredited; rather, they are forces to be reckoned with, and it’s through their will, insight, and intellect that ultimately frees themselves.

The first half of the novel could be called slow, but I think the pace is perfection—a perfect painting revealed: one of personified castles shrouded in bilious-green fog and smothering velvet green rooms. Mildew rotting the inside and moss suffocating the outside and everywhere—inside and outside, awake and asleep—is the melancholy, most notably in frail Francis. This moorish Gothic setting is heightened through the isolation and Lovecraftian characters who live at High Place: Virgil and Arthur and Florence and the weird family doctor. But it’s in the second half of the novel that these characters move from annoying to nefarious. It’s also in this second half where the pace picks up quite a bit and the pieces come together in quite a weird way—a Lynch-Lovecraft way.

What I love most about this book is that this is more than a monster’s tale; it’s about biology and religion and mythology and philosophy all amalgamated together. There’s so much here, such richness, and the ending still manages to feel hopeful despite the absurd arsenic trauma endured (by the characters and the readers): “The future, she thought, could not be predicted, and the shape of things could not be divined…. But they were young that morning, and they could cling to hope. Hope that the world could be remade, kinder and sweeter” (301). ( )

This book is creepy! An atmosphere of decay surrounds High Place... Noemi, a socialite, is sent there to find out why her cousin has written disturbing letters after marrying Virgil and moving there. She discovers that the Doyle's are not your average " dysfunctional" family! ( )