CBR Bingo: What I have left is season, I can’t think of a way to shoehorn this into that so we’re just calling this one my Free square–which means, yes, a completed bingo card!!! Since bingo came out AND I decided I needed to get back on this reading horse, I’ve written every review within 24 hours (12, really) of finishing a book AND committed to finishing another two off my back log (on average–one time I did four and then only wrote two the next day). Bingo really does work, I can’t believe it took me as long as it did to get on board.
I’m pretty sure I picked this one up after seeing a shared post on Emmalita’s (?) instagram wherein Morena-Garcia admitted that despite being a prolific author with quite a few hits, her latest was struggling and she was asking people to read it. And yes, while none of her works have quite reached the heights of Mexican Gothic, I was surprise to see that this work only has about 2,000 reviews–a full order of magnitude less than her next least reviewed books, and way out of line with her usual 30,000-40,000 range. The publishing industry is wild, I tell you, and it’s hard to tell what will take off (Yesteryear) vs won’t. I know I’m part of the problem, as much of my reading list comes in the form of recommendation lists from Goodreads or the NYT. But here I am, trying to make amends.
This is a straightforward (?) sort of 1940s con artistry story set in Mexico, as Morena-Garcia’s work is (all of it? most of it? inspired by, at least). As she notes in her first review of this work, there isn’t any horror or gothic element to it. Our characters are all stuck in a house, but it’s for normal societal reasons, not spooky ones. And having read Mexican Gothic, I have to say that non-mystical reasons for being stuck and unable to escape are potentially even worse?
The book alternates between three different POVs and two timepoints. Our POV characters are:
Ulises (the name he uses for the book): a second generation con man, whose father’s care bankrupted him and who has struggled to regain the success that he enjoyed under said father’s tutelage. He’s hoping he can marry his way out his troubles via
Perla: a small town gentlelady whom Ulises has been corresponding with, who owns a grand house that is now a boarding house to make some extra money during the challenging WW2 times. She’s from a formerly wealthy family brought down low, utterly along except for
Inés: her niece, the bastard daughter of her late sister, who is even more irrevocably stuck caring for her aunt and will remain so until the day she dies
Ulises and Inés realize they are kindred spirits, of sorts, and try and team up to take down Perla, get her money, and flee. Of course, Perla has secrets of her own and hasn’t made it to 40+ without learning how to avoid being fleeced.
The tension ratchets up quite quickly, and Moreno-Garcia does a good job in maintaining an equal balance between the three characters in terms of playing on your sympathies. We’re smartly introduced to the least empathetic first (Ulises), and then to Inés and Perla. It was about 70% of the way through when I realized that my preferred, obvious (to me!) ending might not actually happen, and then I was absolutely hooked. Not sure why this hasn’t caught on, but it absolutely should.
