I hate to pit two bad bitches against each other but The Hacienda makes it to the finish line where Mexican Gothic fell ever so slightly short for me. It's got the sharp young lady (Beatriz, here) braving a den of wolves for her family; it's got the heavy, permeating sense of dread; it's got the secondary cast who always feel like they were talking about Beatriz the second before she entered the room. However, it also nails the romance and is a little scarier, especially those first times alone with the house!

Making the male lead, Andrés, a priest hiding a background in witchery was an inspired choice. He stands on his own apart from the romance as much as Beatriz and their conflicting loyalties - his with spirituality, hers with idealism vs practicality - make for nice parallels. Cañas also expertly tunes the heat of their romance. A lot is said between the lines ("

God has sent me the only incorruptible priest in Mexico" "I would not go so far as to say that.

"), and this is not one of those books where the heroine pauses in the middle of running from a monster to remark on the hero's back muscles. The horror and personal struggles remain the star of the show. For Andrés in particular, his split between Catholicism and witchcraft demands patience and grace from the reader and I was happy to see Cañas resist the temptation to flatten his arc into renouncing the Church. Realistic touches like, and especially the setting's politics and classism, help ground the many supernatural aspects story.

(There was a time near the beginning when I thought Juana, the new sister-in-law, would be the love interest though. Please, someone write the Hacienda/Bly Manor hybrid of my dreams.)

The prose also oozes gothic. From the "low, dark hills that curled around the valley like knuckles" to sun "pour[ing] down on [Andrés] like a saint in a painting" to the Hacienda "settling around me [a]s if I were but a fly on the hide of a giant beast that twitched in sleep", this book is thick with rich imagery. Pork soup is described at one point in a way that made me regret reading it after dinner. Shout out to this extremely metal passage too:

Occasionally a line will ring slightly too modern ("I didn't want protection; I wanted tools with which to protect myself") but for the most part, the progressive sensibilities are well-integrated and refreshing for anyone who finds the classic gothic works a little too stifling.