The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

I haven’t met a Silvia Moreno-Garcia I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed and The Bewitching is no exception. One of the things I love about her writing is how atmospheric it is, she just pulls you right into whatever the setting is she is writing about. It’s quite a gift!

The Bewitching has a lot of my favourite things; scary ass witches, moody atmosphere, and my most favourite things of all, multiple timelines. There is Alba in 1908, Beatrice in 1934, and Minerva in 1998. Alba’s story takes place in her family home, Piedras Quebradas, Mexico, and Beatrice and Minerva’s take place in Stoneridge College, New England.

Minerva is the main protagonist, she is the great grand-daughter of Alba and is writing her thesis on Beatrice who is a little known horror author. The multiple timelines really made this story for me, it gave the story so much more depth and made the lore around the witches much more compelling.

I think it would be fair to say that this story was somewhat predictable, it was clear early on who the villain in each timeline was, but I don’t think that took away from the story or how creepy and atmospheric everything was. The stalking and mental manipulation in each timeline was particularly frightening and scared me much more than any of the more gory parts of the story. I certainly didn’t need the witches to explain how important a part fear played in feeding from their victims. You could feel their enjoyment of it coming off the page. Something that really solidified how great a writer Silvia Moreno-Garcia is. She does fear particularly well!

I’ve seen a few reviews that were rated low because of Alba’s uncle, and look, I get it! That part of the story gave me the major ick and made me VERY uneasy, but I think that was kind of the point. I was feeling a lot of feelings at the end of this, and I think some disgust was part of Moreno-Garcia’s plan, and you know what? I know I won’t be forgetting this book for a good long time because of that storyline. Now, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing I don’t know, but I mean it’s going to leave a lasting impression, and will bring the monsters in this book to mind!

This was the perfect book for the spooky season, I look forward to my next Silvia Moreno-Garcia. She really does a great job of getting inside my head, so much so that I’ve created a number of collages for her books, I actually think my first collage on this blog was for one of her books.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia collages:

• Mexican Gothic
• Gods of Jade and Shadow
• Certain Dark Things

Synopsis:

Three women in three different eras encounter danger and witchcraft in this eerie multigenerational horror saga from the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic.

“Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches”: That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva—stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that’s why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales.

In the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay’s most famous novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story: Decades earlier, during the Great Depression, Tremblay attended the same university where Minerva is now studying and became obsessed with her beautiful and otherworldly roommate, who then disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

As Minerva descends ever deeper into Tremblay’s manuscript, she begins to sense that the malign force that stalked Tremblay and the missing girl might still walk the halls of the campus. These disturbing events also echo the stories Nana Alba told about her girlhood in 1900s Mexico, where she had a terrifying encounter with a witch.

Minerva suspects that the same shadow that darkened the lives of her great-grandmother and Beatrice Tremblay is now threatening her own in 1990s Massachusetts. An academic career can be a punishing pursuit, but it might turn outright deadly when witchcraft is involved.