A surprisingly moving, piercingly effective parable about exorcisms of all sorts of demons.
A woman with little knowledge of her family history is visited by an ancient curse.
Castro returns to her sweet spot—layering folkloric monsters onto private trauma—for this generational ghost story. Even those who enjoy a straightforward horror tale may be dismayed by the sheer despair surrounding the titular Alejandra. Terrified by motherhood and depressed by her own self-loathing, she finds suicide whispering in her ear amid a cacophony of slurs like “Difficult woman. Sick woman. Dead woman.” An adoptee of Mexican descent who has only recently reconnected with her birth mother, Alejandra is isolated in an upper-middle-class ivory tower thanks to her absentmindedly cruel husband and three demanding children. Unaware of her family history, she imagines her demons to be illness, unchecked. We soon learn that Alejandra’s torture comes via La Llorona, a mythic woman who drowned her children and herself and now haunts the living as a banshee—or at least something primeval using the folk demon as a guise. As the wraith begins to appear in corporeal form to her children and birth mother, Alejandra finds a comrade in therapist Melanie Ortiz, who has a sideline as a curandera, a spiritual medicine woman. Castro’s remarkable balancing act juxtaposes the emotional turmoil of a bad marriage and depression against the very real and visceral horrors swirling around Alejandra, painting with dripping, peek-between-your-fingers menace. The story is also peppered with flashbacks from the 17th century forward, showing the demon’s trickery toward Alejandra’s ancestors and the fatal consequences that follow. There’s a lot to like here. For horror fans, there’s the palpable feeling of not believing one’s eyes added to the grotesquerie of the drowned fiend and a not inconsiderable amount of child endangerment. At a deeper level, Castro’s tale of a woman both asking for help and taking possession of her own spirit delivers cheerworthy moments of empowerment.
A surprisingly moving, piercingly effective parable about exorcisms of all sorts of demons.Pub Date: April 18, 2023
ISBN: 9780593499696
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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