My thanks to Del Ray/Random House Worlds/Inklore and Silvia Moreno-Garcia for an eARC of this book in exchange for a review.
There's a thing we do in my family. For some reason, my parents insist on going out instead of staying in for the evening when we are all together. So we all pile into the car and where do we go? A bookstore. Doesn't matter that we all scatter to the four corners of the world inside that bookstore, we are together in a store, and that is apparently enough. Sometimes we go to 3 or 4 bookstores in an afternoon, if they're visiting me, and 2 if I'm visiting my hometown. It was one such visit to a bookstore when I found the jeweled red cover of a book, Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I'd heard of this author, so when I found that book I thought, sure, why not? I've bought every Silvia Moreno-Garcia book since.
I've been looking forward to The Bewitching and this book did not disappoint me. The book follows three separate storylines, Minerva in the 1990s, Betty in the 1930s, and Alba, Minerva's great-grandmother, in the 1900s. Minerva is a graduate student working on a thesis with a focus on the works of Beatrice Tremblay, Betty, who attended the same college that Minerva is enrolled in. Betty is a woman who wrote a novel based on the disappearance of her college roomate, and her storyline recounts the events leading up to that tragic event. Alba's story follows her experience of encountering a witch when she was a young woman and living to tell the tale to Minerva, who sees similarities between her Nana Alba's story and Betty's as she delves into her thesis research at the start of the book. As Minerva works to uncover as much personal information as she can on Beatrice Tremblay, she starts to realize that whatever force went after Tremblay is still at the school and now it is following Minerva. Turns out, the stories her Nana told her might be just what Minerva needs to fight back and figure out what happened to the missing girl before something happens to her.
There is so much in this book. The atmosphere is a bit eerie, the different settings serve to highlight the difference in timelines and the struggles each woman has to deal with, each story has a distinct voice, enough so that they stand apart but meld together. I wouldn't say this is a scary story but while I was reading this book on my phone it started to ring, which was enough to make me jolt and gasp, but the word engrossing is better, I think, to describe the effect this book had on me. I wanted to take my time reading but at the same time I wanted to rush to the ending.
Things felt familiar with the stories about the little spells that Minerva learned from her Nana, and for the things that Alba did as well. My family has roots in Mexico and things like praying over someone with an egg, putting red thread on a baby's forehead to cure hiccups and wearing safety pins during a solar eclipse are just a few of the things that were a part of my childhood. So when Moreno-Garcia put similar ideas in her book, it felt like a story that could be something told in my family. It's connections like these that keep me coming back to read books by Moreno-Garcia. I want to give copies of this to my mom, my sister and my Tía, for that sake alone.
I will say I've read a LOT of mysteries, so I knew the who of the story from nearly the beginning. It was the how and the why that kept me turning pages. I wanted comeuppance and I got that, so the little vindictive bone in my body does not want to hiss and spit at a lack of punishment for the villains of the book. I'm sitting here almost pleased as punch because HA, not laughing now, are they? I especially enjoyed the Afterword by the author at the end, because again, the stories felt familiar and I see a lot of my family in the pages of this book. Also, I have several bracelets and necklaces to ward off the evil eye. It's just what we do in my family and I'll most likely pass it on when the time comes.
Honestly, every year when it comes time to preorder books, I search to see if Silvia Moreno-Garcia has a new release for the year and then immediately add it to my shelves when it's released. Every book I've read has yet to disappoint me as a reader. I don't see that changing anytime soon. I'm planning to hound my sister into reading this book as soon as I'm finished writing this review. She loved Mexican Gothic and had been trying to get more books by Moreno-Garcia once upon a time. Need her to read this one ASAP. It'll give us something to talk about at night when we both can't sleep.
Rating on my scale: 10 Stars. This book reminds me of Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix, The Haunting of Payne's Hollow by Kelley Armstrong and A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher. If these books appeal to you as a reader, grab The Bewitching and enjoy.
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