by V. Castro
Having grown up in Texas, I was familiar with the tales of La Llorona, the ghost of a crying woman. The Haunting of Alejandra expands this legend into a modern horror story. Alejandra, a stay-at-home mom with three children, is deeply unhappy with her life. She feels trapped in a marriage to a man who doesn’t see or love her, smothered by the daily, repetitive demands of her kids, and has untreated childhood trauma from growing up in an unhappy adoptive home. At times in her life, she has heard a dark voice urging her to do terrible things. And now, as she sinks lower into a psychological abyss, she begins to see things, too. Fighting for her life, Alejandra reached out to a therapist who encourages her to connect with her past to try to free herself of the darkness she begins to call La Llorona.
Likes: The central premise, that a person could be haunted by generational trauma, is a fascinating one. Some of the characters provide interesting glimpses at earlier parts of Mexican history; I especially enjoyed the section about Flor’s contributions to the Mexican Revolution as part of Emiliano Zapata Salazar’s fighting group. The horror elements are creative and, especially in the beginning, quite scary. Alejandra’s struggles as a stay-at-home parent are sympathetically portrayed.
Dislikes: Unfortunately, I did not connect with the writing style, which often felt stilted and awkward. There were lots of repeated passages of description that bogged down the plot. I also felt that the book spent much more time telling the reader about emotions and family backstories that would have been more effective had they been shown. And I thought the big reveal about the source of the haunting came too early, and consequently the psychological tension evaporated in the last half of the book.
FYI: Murder, suicide, attempted infanticide, traumatic pregnancy, stillbirth, forced marriage, rape, violence, gore, mental illness, parental abandonment.
Thank you to the publisher, Random House, and to NetGalley for my advance reader copy. All opinions are my own.
Liz Helfrich 