Reading: MEXICAN GOTHIC - Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Prose (Story): Noemi Taboada, an attractive young socialite in 1950's Mexico, is pressed into action by her father after receiving a letter from her newly-married cousin Catalina, in which the normally upbeat and positive young woman sounds scattered and afraid, even implying her new husband is trying to kill her. Having been close to Catalina since childhood, Noemi rushes to High Place, a crumbling and run-down fortress high in the mountainous countryside - the family home of Catalina's new husband Virgil Doyle, who somehow comes off both exceedingly handsome and disquietingly sinister - where she not only finds her cousin a former shadow of herself, sickly and weak, but over time also learns that something is very, very wrong in a mansion where the walls seem to whisper ... the family has secrets to hide ... and High Place may hold more dangers to both Noemi and Catalina than either of them could ever imagine.

Don's (Review): Noemi Taboada progresses, throughout this slow-burn of a gothic-horror novel, from seemingly vain and privileged young beauty to a kick-ass heroine digging deep to find strengths and abilities she didn't even know she had - and I loved it. Again, it's a slow-burn to start, but that's not a bad thing as author Moreno-Garcia takes her time establishing both the odd, even creepy, members of the Doyle family (extra-big ICK for Virgil's reptilian, corpse-like father), as well as sinking readers deeply into the monstrosity that is High Place, the mausoleum of a home itself virtually becoming another character in the story. Truly gothic for a good two-thirds of the book, its tone growing darker and darker as does Noemi's situation, then for the last hundred pages or so the book breaks out more into full-on horror, where reveals and twists and more reveals ratchet up the indescribable ... wrongness of what's going on, none of which even the most bizarre of minds could probably see coming. Moreno-Garcia also works the setting, ambiance, and folklore of Mexico beautifully into her story, which seems firmly rooted in its 1950's setting as well, and by The End I was pretty much exhausted and freaked out from the reading experience, but (good or bad) got the ... closure (?) that, as a reader, more than made the reading experience both satisfying and complete. Beautifully executed, creepy and one-of-a-kind, and easily one of my top-five favorite reads of 2020.  5/5 stars