Beatriz's world has been turned upside down, after her father is taken and executed at the end of the War to remove Spain's rule from Mexico she and her mother find themselves as unwanted guests at the home of her aunt. Treated like servants Beatriz is desperate to leave, so desperate in fact that she's willing to marry the handsome Rodolfo Solorzano, a wealthy land-owner she met at a ball. Beatriz's mother is absolutely against this marriage as it goes against everything her father stood for and is for all intents and purposes marrying the enemy. But, Beatriz goes through with it anyway seeing it as a way to give both herself and her mother a better life and a home. Within minutes of arriving at San Isidro though Beatriz feels something is very off with her new home, starting with a rat who's had its neck broken laying in the middle of the stairs. She also discovers she has an abrasive and strange sister-in-law whom she was never told about. As the days go on more and more inexplicable things happen in the home, things that terrify Beatriz to the point she is certain her home is haunted. She seeks help from the Church only to be treated like she is crazy, that is until she meets Padre Andres, who has a past connection with San Isidro and confirms to her that something is indeed very wrong with the house. With only Andres to help her Beatriz is terrified that the house will kill her before they can clean the rot that has infested it.
I have been trying to find some sort of horror book that was actually somewhat scary for months, this book fell way short of that mark which was disappointing. It's really more of a murder mystery/romance than it is a horror story, as it more than any revolves around figuring out just what happened with Rodolfo's dead wife more than anything. And that is why I gave this four stars instead of five.
That being said I did actually enjoy the mystery part of this. I honestly thought that Rodolfo had killed his wife for the vast majority of the book even after there is a bombshell dropped about the actual murderer I still believed he had to be the killer. Using the ghost as a clever way to mask that there was a murderer lurking in the shadows was fantastic I have to Canas that. I was more focused on the fact that the house may kill everyone than the fact that a living breathing person wanted everyone dead as well.
I enjoyed Beatriz's character too, probably more than any other character including Andres the love interest. There's one point where she tells the ghost that if it kills her then it's stuck with her for eternity so it may want to think twice and that completely solidified Beatriz as a solid heroine for me, cause that's exactly what I'd do! Beatriz is terrified of whatever is in the house but it's not the standard "damsel in distress" situation by any means and I enjoyed that immensely. The ghost might scare her but she doesn't have to put up with its crap. Andres is interesting because he's pretty much the embodiment of colonialism in Mexico, everything he stands for is what Spain (and really every other colonizer in history) has tried to wipe out; the cultural and religious practices of the indigenous groups in the colonized areas.
The book also does for the most part bring to light what those Native to Mexico would have endured during the Spanish colonization, it also makes a clear distinction between those of Spanish descent and those who were Native to Mexico at the time of colonization. For most Americans, I think that we associate Spain with Mexico and Mexico with Spain so much that we forget that Spanish isn't the native language of Mexico, far from it or that someone Native to Mexico isn't going to be light-skinned or oddly vice versa as I and I assume many have seen someone be absolutely gobsmacked when they realize that humans from Spain do not have dark skin but are fair and even blonde. But it's of course deeper than that. It's a story of colonization that we hear time and again throughout the Americas; Natives toiling on land that belongs to them, that has belonged to them for centuries under the watchful eye of a colonizer getting rich off of their work. Americans in general do not think about Mexico in these terms and I believe it's important that we do. Just like with Native Americans in America and Canada there were Native groups in Mexico that had their very way of life turned upside down, their cultural practices brutally torn from them, and their people forced into situations that most of us cannot even fathom today. The story of Mariana, especially, in this book is one that you can hear echoed throughout the southeast United States of slave owners and their wife's jealousies which ultimately resulted in the deaths of many young women. And yeah there are books on that. Specifically, the brutality young women faced at the hands of female slave owners. They aren't pretty books mind you but they are important reads.
And while I found this slow to start it picks up in the last few chapters and becomes an edge-of-your-seat, nail-biter. And even the ending while not what I was expecting I found to be perfect given everything Beatriz had gone through. I'd want my freaking mom too!
Overall, if you are picking this up because you are looking for a good scary read, keep in mind it's not really scary but it is a really great thriller with a murder mystery and a deranged killer lurking in the shadows, and just enough of romance to give you a break from the rest of it. Highly recommend it to anyone into period mysteries as well as horror novels.
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