trigger warning (view spoiler)[ mental illness, depression, domestic violence, mention of rape, alcoholism, suicide, gun violence, mention of slavery, trigger warning (view spoiler)[ mental illness, depression, domestic violence, mention of rape, alcoholism, suicide, gun violence, mention of slavery, anti semitism, racism, misogyny, classism, n-word (hide spoiler)]
Well, that was weird. On one hand we have the plot of a guy murdering a woman, thinking usually murderers get caught because they are stupid - while he is not, so there should be no problems. He goes and does the deed, which is discovered sooner than he likes.
On the other, there is the attempt to discuss philosophy, which may be interesting if you do this in class, go deep into thoughts at the time, various schools of thought. It boils down to the question if the goal is more important than the means by which you get there. To me, it looked like one could very easily edit out half of this book, because a lot of the characters have random monologues.
Right now I have this feeling lots of classics give me: I like having it in my brain but I probably won't go there again and if I'd recommend it depends really on a case by case basis, and what you want to get out of this....more
Nena and Néstor grew up trigger warning (view spoiler)[ war themes, trauma, grief, animal attack, gore, classism, corporeal punishment (hide spoiler)]
Nena and Néstor grew up as best friends, until the fateful day they found out about creatures living not too far away.
I knew going into this that the focus was on the love story, not on the vampires. My brain still says yeah, far too much romance and not enough vampires, but I know this is a me-problem. Additionally, be warned that vampires are creatures here, not the beautiful seducers you'd find in an Anne Rice novel.
I liked the setting, especially because I watched a lot of classic western movies with my father, where the Mexican population is either represented by the villain, dirty beggars or, if the regisseur was feeling nice, by the owner of the cantina the hero goes to eat. This novel taught me a lot about the people, how life on a ranch could have looked, and I appreciated the afterword where the author delves into her inspirations for this story, and goes into her sources and her work process. Would be interested to read her first novel, the Hacienda, and also further works.
What I found surprising is how familiar the writing felt. A few years back, before I started writing reviews here or even reading books in Englisch, I went through a phase where I read a lot of books written by people whose first language is some form of Spanish, Isabell Allende and Carlos Ruis Zafón especially. I am too scatterbrained thanks to the heatwave still hanging around, but something about her writing reminded me of that. Maybe in the way you just feel if an author has read a lot of the same stuff you did. Usually have that with white british fantasy authors, so it was nice having it here as well.
Would reccomend if you're into speculative historical fiction from this perspective, not so much for the vampire content. The arc was provided by the publisher....more
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