I’ll be honest, I marked this book as “want to read” when I saw the title and cover.

“Mexican Gothic”, sounds so out of place and intriguing. And the image on the cover is beautifully framed.

The action takes place in 1950s Mexico. It starts in Mexico City where we meet Noemi, a young girl who is from a wealthy Mexican family, who at 21 is attending a lot of social events, trying to impress (and succeeding also), driving her convertible car, starting all types of activities that she gets bored with, she just enjoys a carefree life.

A bit of a spoiled brat in the first pages.

The book flows really nicely, with chapters that are short enough to keep you going to the next one and the next one, without feeling like you’re struggling to find time to get into the book. As proof, it took me 3-4 days to finish the book.

Getting back to the story.

Noemi’s father receives a strange letter from her cousin, Catalina, who married around 1 year ago to Virgil Doyle, an Englishman, and moved to their estate in a town named El Triunfo.

The letter implies odd sightings, voices that are heard from the walls, people that might not exist, and it seems like either this is a possessed house or Catalina is slowly losing her mind. Noemi gets assigned the task of going there and seeing what is happening.

So Noemi packs her bags, takes the train, and goes to El Triunfo to find out what’s going on there.

She arrives to this sleepy little town used for silver explotation by the Doyle familly, with worn-down houses, little to no people around on the streets, and gets to meet Francis, who was waiting for her at the station to drive her to the Doyle house, which is called High Place.

High Place is built outside the town on top of a hill and hidden from view by trees, once you get past that, you see a Gothic English house in the Mexican countryside.

Upon arriving at the High Place, she finds out her cousin is not actually feeling that well, she’s under medication, the Doyle family’s glory days are way in the past, and the whole place seems a bit in shambles. There is a strong resistance when it comes to getting more info about what is going on, nightmares appear, sleepwalking, voices, visions, and a very dark past is uncovered.

She has to put together a lot of puzzle pieces.

As I was reading the book, I felt that it has great potential for a mystery/horror video game.

All the times she had to investigate, search various rooms, travel from the High Place to the town in order to find more pieces of the puzzle, come back with that new information and face the others with it, go around the estate and figure out what is with all the graves, nightmare sequences, all the grotesque characters and transformations, the story twist, and a burn-it-to-the-ground ending (literally).

Throughout the book, we get a sense of Noemi’s sense of humor, which is pretty good.

“Can you spare another cigarette? she added. “Very well. I hope you like them,” Noemi said, handing her on more. “They’re Gauloises.” “They’re not for me.” “Then for whom?” “Saint Luke the Evangelist”, she said, pointing to one of the plaster figurines on her shelves. “Cigarettes for saints?” “He likes them.” “He has expensive tastes,” Noemi said

I enjoyed parts like this, because even when you’re reading the narrator’s text, it still feels like she is the one that worded that part too. There are small comments similar to when you’re making remarks for yourself when you notice a situation or a piece of dialogue.

I’d say a minus was the ending, which felt a bit rushed, a bit short. I was expecting to go in that direction, but I was hoping for something more.

I did enjoy the idea of the “gloom” and the mushrooms being used as a memory holder, as a second brain sort of.

The mushroom symbiosis between the members of the Doyle family and the house reminded me of the What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher, but actually that one appeared more recently compared to Mexican Gothic. It’s just that I read it first.