I've bounced off Moreno-Garcia a couple times, and did enjoy this more than other books of hers I've tried, but on the whole it didn't come together for me. It's about a young Mexican woman in the 1950s, who travels to a remote mansion in order to visit and possibly rescue her sick cousin. The cousin has married into an English mining family that is authentically creepy, and there's something very strange about the house. Noemí, our heroine, is a smart-talking society girl with a passing interest in anthropology and very little actual direction. It honestly felt like she was more 1920s than 1950s, but that might be a Mexican history issue (were the bright young things post WWII there?).

I did like the main character, and I think the book was doing some interesting things with the gothic narrative and colonialism. Specifically, with both having women's suffering built into their heart. Noemí is repeatedly told "Open your eyes" in a way that struck me as talking about how easy it is to just ignore how completely engrained into the structure of our society the exploitation of women is, and how easy it is to just not see it. That sounds really didactic, but I thought it came together quite neatly in the end, and was one of the better themes.

What didn't work for me was all the sexual violence. Which, yes, I understand is often part of the genre, but there was a lot. The heroine is continually sexually harassed by several of the family members, outright raped once (on the astral plane, but still), repeatedly threatened with rape, and physically sexually assaulted several times. Ditto quite a few other women. Which I guess goes with the above about the exploitation of women, especially women of colour, but felt too heavy handed for that theme, and more or less blew the creepy horror aspects out of the water. The author tried to tamp it down with a thread about how Noemí was attracted to danger, and worrying in her heart of hearts that she found the assault sexy, but this wasn't really backed up by any other part of the characterisation, and felt too on the nose, like the author had heard that was a thing, and wanted to include it. I don't object to sexual violence if it furthers the story and is necessary, but this felt like it undercut the narrative, rather than enhanced it.

Overall, though there were some great descriptions, and the horror aspect worked pretty well in places, the story felt quite simplistic and lacking in nuanced themes. As a straight forward "Maybe the true horror is the colonialism we met along the way" story, it works, but it's not really doing anything more than that, and felt a little didactic.