Creepy, atmospheric, and then bam! Scary as hell.

Noemi is called home early from a party by her father because her recently wed cousin has written a distressing letter saying horrible things are happening to her and begging for help. So Noemi's father strikes a deal-- if Noemi goes to her cousin to see what is happening and maybe get her the help her newlywed husband is refusing to provide, then her father will let Noemi attend the University for her latest dream of getting a Master's in Anthropology. So Noemi takes off for High Place, the secluded, eerie house where the Doyle family and her cousin Catalina lives. She quickly realizes something is wrong--Catalina is wrong, the house is wrong, the Doyles are wrong. She begins to dream and see things in the mists that surround the house. A local healing woman tells her the house is cursed after Ruth Doyles took a gun and killed various members of the family, including herself, some years back. Francis Doyle, at least, appears to want to help Noemi, but can she really trust any of the them? What horrendous things are the family hiding in that horrid, moldy old house?

At first, I was a little frustrated with the book. Noemi is flighty, a little spoiled, a little inconsiderate. I didn't quite like her. The Doyles are cold, rude, and live by a weird set of behaviors and rules that they demand everyone around them acquiesce to. Francis is the most helpful, but he’s weak. There’s no one to like!

And then there is the setting. The land is full of mists, there's a cemetery on the grounds (of course there is), and the house is old and falling apart. It's all so very gothic and atmospheric, but it lacks a certain punch. I was like, "ho-hum haunted mansion, weird inbred family, lots and lots of decay and death-- been there, seen that, nothing new here." I completely missed the fact that Moreno-Garcia was tightening a web of horrors all around me as the book progressed! The more I read, the deeper I fell.

And as the story unfolded, things got spookier and weirder. Noemi begins dreaming, seeing things, horrible things, twisted things, that make no sense and yet also seem to be clues to a bigger story. A story the Doyles are obviously concealing from her. Yet with each encounter with the Doyles, she stands up for herself, not backing down to their demands that she behave, be a good girl. I admired her courage, strength, and her fortitude.

I don't want to spoil anything, but the final third of the book goes off the rails and devolves into some real scary shit. Noemi is trapped, there seems no way out, and yet... that strength and fortitude are not forgotten. I was a little on the fence about whether this was a 4 or 5 star book, but decided to give it 5 stars for Noemi's perseverance in the face of true horror. ( )

Started out as a solid 4, became just okay, but those last 100 pages were worth it. Overall, 3.6/5

I was getting the vibes of Rebecca, House of Spirits, Edgar Allan Poe and a bit of that movie Ready or Not, which are all the things that I love.

Also, this would make a great movie. ( )

[b:Mexican Gothic|53152636|Mexican Gothic|Silvia Moreno-Garcia|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1607462569l/53152636._SY75_.jpg|73647361] has the decayed and dread-laden atmosphere of the film Crimson Peak, with certain visual influences from [b:The Yellow Wallpaper|8217236|The Yellow Wallpaper|Charlotte Perkins Gilman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1276430319l/8217236._SX50_.jpg|17352354] and the second episode of Hannibal, plus a sense of disorientation not unlike that of [b:Annihilation|17934530|Annihilation|Jeff VanderMeer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403941587l/17934530._SX50_.jpg|24946895]. As befits the setting of Mexico, there are also interesting background themes of colonisation and eugenics. The premise is simple: a young woman named Noemí is sent to check on her cousin Catalina, who moved to an isolated estate after getting married and subsequently sent a peculiar letter saying she's being haunted. Noemí arrives at High Place and gradually investigates what's going on. Her perspective on the weirdness of High Place works well and the house itself is suitably unsettling.

I found the narrative diverting but predictable. Possibly I have absorbed too much gothic and supernatural fiction to be surprised by such a story? It was suitably creepy, yet I saw the twists coming. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, although I was not expecting to be able to foresee what happened. I don't often manage that with novels. The fungal network, the body-switching, the forced marriage, and final vanquishing by fire were heavily foreshadowed, or so it seemed to me. In the last 80-odd pages I was waiting for Noemí to realise that she needed to destroy what remained of Agnes and burn the house down. It was suitably satisfying when she did, of course. I think my expectations were high because this novel is on this 50 best sci-fi and fantasy books of the past decade list. I found it elegantly written, however it did not greatly distinguish itself from other haunted house novels I've come across. Also the previous one I read was [b:The Haunting of Hill House|89717|The Haunting of Hill House|Shirley Jackson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327871336l/89717._SY75_.jpg|3627], which is a really hard act to follow. ( )

This book is deeply disturbing in the best way possible. It has delicious and chewy prose, uncanny horror scenes, and a vivid setting. The story is slow, but Noemí, the protagonist, is charismatic enough to carry it. Effortlessly shrewd and self assured, she can deliver biting social commentary, talk circles around other people's politics and beliefs, and come across as a harmless socialite the entire time.

Though she garners a reputation for being flighty, she isn't without ambition, so when her father offers to send her to university as long as she first visits her cousin on the Mexican countryside, she agrees. Of course, the creepy house in the countryside is haunted by some sort of pervasive colonial force that is somehow tied to the racist attitudes of the English family who owns the property. As competent as Noemí might be, she finds herself understandably out of her depth. Despite her shortcomings, it's still easy to root for her as she navigates the surreal and unsettling horror sequences. The antagonists and side characters are also compelling. Along with Noemí, they make this book impossible to put down, even in the face of the distressing horror scenes that Silvia Moreno-Garcia likes to describe with gross and gory details. ( )

Okay so. Moreno-Garcia did her research before writing this book. And she lets you know. Right down to listing scientific names for fungi and chemical compounds that the characters recall off the tops of their heads.

The story centers on a woman in Mexico around the 1920's, I think? 50's? At any rate, she is of a wealthy family who grumbles about her wanting to pursue an education and not get married. She is attending University and has changed majors several times, for which she's teased by her family. But. A woman attending University would have been rare and she likely would have had to fight to remain in school since the gender stereotypes and cultural expectations are still dominant today and were even more pervasive back then. That she is so flippant about everything is super modern and her ideas about Anthropology seem too convenient to assist in the info dumps that are scattered throughout the novel.

The dialogue is very clunky and full of too much information. The descriptions are cinematic to a fault. Moreno-Garcia is clearly imagining the film version of this novel as she tries to describe what is happening to her characters. We get much less empathic connection to the characters (required in any novel, but especially a gothic novel, I think) and more description of things like the lighting and what color someone's eyes are. She repeats her descriptions every time her characters enter a room as well, making for a tiring read.

And in the end, this fiercely (modern), independent, educated woman who begins the novel by fighting to pursue her passions, ends up in the arms of a man and lives happily ever after. Not exactly the picture of empowerment it started out as.

The bad guys are cool, if poorly written, but rely heavily on spoon-feeding the complicated plot to the reader. The whole thing would have been much better had all the unnecessary details been cut, with more focus on character development. Noemi is exactly the same person at the end of the novel that she was at the beginning. ( )