A surprisingly moving, piercingly effective parable about exorcisms of all sorts of demons.
A woman with little knowledge of her family history is visited by an ancient curse.
Castro returns to her sweet spot—layering folkloric monsters onto private trauma—for this generational ghost story. Even those who enjoy a straightforward horror tale may be dismayed by the sheer despair surrounding the titular Alejandra. Terrified by motherhood and depressed by her own self-loathing, she finds suicide whispering in her ear amid a cacophony of slurs like “Difficult woman. Sick woman. Dead woman.” An adoptee of Mexican descent who has only recently reconnected with her birth mother, Alejandra is isolated in an upper-middle-class ivory tower thanks to her absentmindedly cruel husband and three demanding children. Unaware of her family history, she imagines her demons to be illness, unchecked. We soon learn that Alejandra’s torture comes via La Llorona, a mythic woman who drowned her children and herself and now haunts the living as a banshee—or at least something primeval using the folk demon as a guise. As the wraith begins to appear in corporeal form to her children and birth mother, Alejandra finds a comrade in therapist Melanie Ortiz, who has a sideline as a curandera, a spiritual medicine woman. Castro’s remarkable balancing act juxtaposes the emotional turmoil of a bad marriage and depression against the very real and visceral horrors swirling around Alejandra, painting with dripping, peek-between-your-fingers menace. The story is also peppered with flashbacks from the 17th century forward, showing the demon’s trickery toward Alejandra’s ancestors and the fatal consequences that follow. There’s a lot to like here. For horror fans, there’s the palpable feeling of not believing one’s eyes added to the grotesquerie of the drowned fiend and a not inconsiderable amount of child endangerment. At a deeper level, Castro’s tale of a woman both asking for help and taking possession of her own spirit delivers cheerworthy moments of empowerment.
A surprisingly moving, piercingly effective parable about exorcisms of all sorts of demons.Pub Date: April 18, 2023
ISBN: 9780593499696
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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