One more book in my recent reading was Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. If you were like me and devoured the Mary Stewart gothic/suspense novels as a teen, all those books about spunky young women visiting spooky houses and dealing with wealthy men who were potentially shady, but you wished there was something truly uncanny about them and not just atmosphere, this is the book for you.

A Mexico City debutante in 1950 gets an unsettling letter from her recently married cousin, and her father sends her to check on the cousin, who now lives with her husband’s family in the manor by their defunct silver mine in the mountains. Once she gets there, she finds that this family is deeply weird and something seems to be seriously wrong with her cousin, who tries to warn her of danger. The only person in the house who seems to be reasonably sane is one of the husband’s relatives, but she’s not sure she can trust him, either. She needs to figure out what’s really going on in order to save her cousin and get back to her life, but she’s not at all prepared for the truth of what this family’s secret really is.

I wouldn’t have thought this was my kind of book from the publisher description (they forgot to mention Mary Stewart) because I don’t like horror and scary things, but I ended up devouring it. It’s just so beautifully atmospheric. I could see the setting so vividly. One thing I absolutely loved was that the heroine was allowed to be smart. There was never a point when I found myself trying to give her advice or telling her not to go there or not to do that. She made all the right moves, based on the information she had available, but she was up against something bigger and weirder than she could have realized, so even while doing smart things she ended up having to struggle. I appreciate that so much because I get frustrated by plotting that relies on dumb characters who cause their own problems to create conflict. I also enjoyed the setting. I remember liking the globe trotting of those old Mary Stewart books that allowed me to visit interesting locations, and this one gives us a view of Mexico that’s very different from the usual American pop culture depictions (and my own experiences visiting border cities).

I don’t know if this book has been optioned for film, but it would make an amazing movie because it’s so visual. I’d love to see the heroine’s wardrobe on the screen, and then there’s that house that’s the sort of project production designers drool over.

I’m definitely looking up more of this author’s books. I think she just had a new one come out this week.