This was definitely not was I was expecting.
After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.
This books takes place in the 50’s I believe and the societal expectations of the time really gets on my nerves. The fact that women aren’t allowed to really do anything for themselves, where it’s considered rude to interrupt when men are speaking and when the main protagonists doesn’t have any authority to do anything is so annoying. I think this was the most frustrating part of this book for me. Noemi not being able to visit her cousin even though she came all this way to see her having to abide to such stringent rules without any reasoning. I liked that she pressed against these rules and still did what she wanted but all of the restrictions bugged me.
I really liked Noemi. She doesn’t take no for an answer and seeks out proof rather than just accepting Virgil’s version of events. I think she was a little disrespectful at the start smoking in the house when it was requested that she didn’t but still had I been in that situation and was greeted the way she was I probably would of acted the same. She refuses to be intimidated by the Doyle’s and keeps asking questions and delving deeper into what is going on at High Place and what it has done to Catalina.
The pacing felt quite slow at times but I found I was so enthralled that I got through it quite quickly. There is definitely an atmospheric tone to the story which made it even more gripping. I have to admit having a unreliable main protagonist isn’t my favourite trope in terms of the hallucinations and trying to figure out whether or not she was dreaming. But I can appreciate how it added that layer of unpredictability to the storyline.
This was an intriguing, dark, weird and twisted tale that didn’t shy away from shocking the reader. I appreciate how far Silvia Moreno-Garcia was willing to push the plot and take it to a place that I wasn’t able to predict for sure. This was highly original and in the end quite thrilling and action packed.
⭐️3/5 stars haunting and creepy!
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