I’ve heard mixed reviews of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s writing. From what I’ve heard, the general consensus seems to be that Mexican Gothic was her best, but I still couldn’t resist buying this one a couple years ago.
I listened to Mexican Gothic on audio, and I liked it, but I didn’t love it. This one I read the hardcover, and while I loved the story, the writing could have been better. There are a lot of extraneous words that should have been eliminated. I wonder if it was as true of Mexican Gothic but I didn’t catch it because I was listening to the audio rather than reading it. I feel like she should know better having published several books by this point, but maybe her editors have gotten lazy because she makes them so much money.
The second chapter introduces Maite and I remember getting to the end of the chapter and just thinking, “Is that supposed to be your way of telling us Maite’s life is lacking in a few key areas? Because I feel like that could have been much more effective if sprinkled throughout the book, rather than a whole chapter of info-dump.”
Despite the extra-long intro, I still didn’t have a good feel for Maite’s motivations. Sure, she was bored with her dead-end job and felt unappreciated by her family, but how does that lead to her working with a local anarchist group? It’s a very big leap from “My job is boring but I can’t get another one because I’m not pretty enough” to “Let’s hang out with these guys who carry around guns and are definitely torturing people. That sounds like fun!”
Also, a female character who constantly complains about her lack of conventional beauty is as boring as male characters drooling over a conventionally attractive woman.
That aside, I mostly really enjoyed this book, especially once the plot got going. Maite gets involved when a neighbor asks her to watch her cat for a few days while she’s out of town. Turns out the neighbor has a film roll containing pictures taken during a recent demonstration that compromise a certain military group that is unofficially working for the government.
Maite ends up with the film roll before she even realizes she has it, but even before she discovers the film roll, she agrees to help some guys find it even though they’re super sketchy,. Again, there’s no reason given for why she would want to help these guys who are so clearly bad news.
I think we’re meant to believe that Maite and Elvis, the other main character, have some sort of inexplicable attraction to each other. And because they like the same music, that means they’re soul mates? Even though they’re from totally different worlds and have opposing backgrounds and job descriptions? None of that made any sense.
Nevertheless, once the plot got going with the search for the film roll, I was completely sucked into the game of who’s going to find it first? Who’s working for which side? I was more than willing to overlook the book’s shortfalls for the gripping plot. As evidenced by the fact that I devoured this book in a couple days.