Mexican Gothic is a standalone fantasy novel. It has a lot of horror elements, so it might be more accurate to call it horror. I personally didn’t find it scary, but I can’t even think of a horror book that scared me as an adult, so I’m a really bad barometer for that.

The story is set in the 1950’s in Mexico and centers around the main character, a young woman Noemí. Her father receives a disturbing letter from Noemí’s recently-wed cousin, Catalina, who seems to think her husband is poisoning her. She claims she’s trapped in her home, and she writes other more incoherent things that calls her sanity into question. Catalina specifically asks for Noemí to come save her. When Noemí’s father contacts the family to try to find out what’s going on, they claim she’s been ill. Noemí’s father asks her to go stay with Catalina and her husband and his family to find out for sure what’s going on.

This was a fast, easy read that held my attention, but I didn’t always think it was terribly logical and the characters’ motivations often didn’t make sense to me. As an example from the beginning of the book, Noemi’s father is at least considering the possibility that something is really wrong, and he seems to have some distrust for Catalina's husband. He didn’t seem like a negligent father, so I didn’t think it made sense for him to send his daughter to stay with a family they barely knew in a situation where there had been claims of danger. Although Noemí is pretty independent and self-sufficient, I’ll reiterate that this was set in the 1950’s.

These are some other issues I had that are more spoiler-ish, so I’ll put them behind tags:
I also found it quite selfish of Catalina to ask Noemí to come help her, when she had to have known that Noemí wasn’t likely to be able to do anything and would just end up trapped too. Catalina didn’t even seem to feel any remorse at getting Noemí into this mess. It’s not far from the end of the book when Noemí expresses regret for not just fetching Catalina and taking her away when she read the letter, but Catalina says that they wouldn’t have let her, which is true enough, and then she says that it was enough that Noemí came because her presence made her better. Soooo selfish!

Another issue I had was that, when Noemí arrived, she barely spent any time with her cousin. The family did make it difficult, but it felt like Noemí made very little effort. It felt unrealistic to me, like the author just didn’t’ have much story to tell that involved Catalina despite using her as the premise for Noemí’s presence in the house. At the very least, I thought Noemí should have requested daily visits, maybe asked for a specific time of day when it would be suitable for her to visit and then faithfully showed up on that schedule. If the family wouldn't permit this then it needed to be reported back to her father. Noemí didn’t seem to take any initiative, she just showed up now and then and asked if she could see her, and was more often than not disappointed when she couldn’t.

I also never really understood exactly why they ate babies, other than because the author wanted to include something especially horrific in her story. They said the children were born infected with the fungus, so eating their flesh meant ingesting the fungus. So why was that better than just eating the fungus directly? There was some mumbo jumbo about the inter-connectivity with the priests and Agnes and each other, but even if you buy into that, it didn’t seem like the babies fit into it since they didn’t have any knowledge or experience.

So… I definitely had some complaints. Despite that, this was written in an entertaining way and I did like Noemí pretty well despite not always understanding her choices. I’m rating this at 3 stars based on my mixed feelings. ( )

Confirmed my dislike of horror genre. Written well enough, but not my thing. ( )

3.5

Loved the setting and grotesque depiction of fungi, but was underwhelmed with the plot progression. ( )

Mexican Gothic is one my favorite books! A spooky, mysterious house that has secrets alongside its owners. Familial ties that can't be broken, even by the threat of madness. I was riveted! ( )

MUSHROOMS ( )