Mexican Gothic is a physiological thriller story, originally published June 30th, 2020 by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. If you enjoy horror fiction, then this is the book for you!

The story begins with Noemi Taboada. The protagonist is described to be clearly young and beautiful, striving in Mexico City with her ambitions of becoming an actress. Her life is perfect until her father calls Noemi in to discuss a strange letter sent from her newly-wed cousin, Catalina Doyle. 

The letter was worrying considering it contained odd wording and phrases that mostly revolved around Catalina having scary visions. 

The following week, Noemi is sent as her father’s ambassador to care for her cousin, and even suggests to the family that Catalina does in fact need psychotherapy. At the arrival of Noemi, she finds herself to be staying in this very dark and old mansion, with the legacy naming it “High Place.”. 

Although, Noemi doesn’t see the issues with the “High Place” just yet, it’s in fact the townspeople’s fear that draws in curiosity about the history on “High Place”. 

One thing that I really enjoyed about this book is how even with that summary alone, there is so much more to talk about. The plot only gets so much darker from there, as the story escalates throughout long chapters. 

Moving away from the plot, and focusing on the structure, I enjoyed how the story was fairly short, with about 320 pages. It was an easy read, with a very good story. 

Although with so many positives, there’s also the negatives. In my opinion, I do feel like the beginning of the book was really dragged out, and could have been just a little more shortened or faster paced. 

There were times where I would get bored during chapters, and would stop reading for the day or even come back hours later. 

It was around the middle of the book where the plot had started really picking up pace, the conflict arose and new details and stories about “High Place” were revealed. That’s when my interest was locked and I even had my “just one more chapter,” 2 a.m. times. 

The characters you would either find absolutely adoring, or really have a passionate hate for. There’s no in between in my opinion. The characters, Noemi and Francis for example, their personalities, and interests had a hold on me for a while. Then there’s characters like Florence and Virgil, where they’re just pure evil, and manipulative. The way the author had detailed her characters was flawless, whether it had been personality or physical appearance. 

While the story revolved around the thriller side of genre, a bit of romance was involved as well between Noemi and a character named Francis. As a reader I’m not usually the type to read romance, but the dynamic these specific characters had, I actually found quite adoring. It was like an extrovert meets an introvert and shows him the world, and I really enjoyed that. 

In the end, after all of the foreshadowing presented and secrets unveiled, I unfortunately had already predicted the ending before the ending occurred. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked the ending, it was just predictable and it made my personal rating lower. 

With all of that information placed on paper, I give my final rating a 4 out of 5 stars.