I like Isabel Cañas’s first novel, The Hacienda, so of course I was going to read her next novel, Vampires of El Norte. Also, there are vampires in it, so it must be thrilling, right? Unfortunately, Vampires of El Norte fell a little flat for me.

Vampires of El Norte is set in 1840s Mexico. It is a story about two thirteen-year-old friends, Nena, the daughter of a ranchero, and Néstor, the son of a lowly vaquero (cowboy). One night, Nena and Néstor sneak out of the rancho to look for fabled Spanish gold, and Nena is attacked by a creature that looks human but has leathery skin and no eyes. Néstor manages to fight the creature off and runs off back to the rancho with Nena in his arms. She is unconscious and has a large gash on her collarbone where the creature had sunk its teeth into her. Once back at the rancho, Nena’s mother starts screaming about how Nena is dead, and Néstor, thinking he is responsible for the death of the girl that he loves, flees from the rancho.

But Nena is not dead. She recovers from the attack and grows up to be come a healer, helping vaqueros recover from susto, a mysterious illness that makes them appear dead, when one day she notices that one such vaquero with susto has a bite mark similar to the scar on her collarbone.

Néstor, on the other hand, has become a vaquero, moving from rancho to rancho, and one day decides to return to the rancho that he fled from nine years earlier. When he arrives, he is shocked to discover that Nena is still alive, but I found it hard to believe that Néstor spent nine years not knowing Nena was alive, especially considering he was still in contact with relatives to live on the rancho. But whatever.

So Néstor is happy that Nena is alive, but Nena is pissed at Néstor because she loves him and she thinks that he abandoned her, so she resolves to have nothing to do with him. Then Nena’s father and brother decide to join the Mexican army in a war against the US (this is the Mexican-American War, resulting from the US’s annexation of Texas in 1845), and Nena begs her father to let her go with them because she wants to prove her worth as a healer so her parents won’t marry her off to a stranger. And of course, Néstor also goes with them because he wants to protect Nena.

For a novel called Vampires of El Norte, I felt it was light on vampire action. Most of the novel is spent with Nena and Néstor travelling alone together through the chaparral (scrubland) as they escape both the Yankees and the vampires, while they alternate between bickering and having tender moments, but basically just making assumptions about each other’s feelings and not having an honest conversation with each other. I am at an age where I am not interested in this kind of nonsense anymore and think people need to get over their egos and communicate clearly.

What little vampire action there is, though, was interesting and a bit creepy. There is one scene in the novel where a vampire claws its way out of the corpse of a Yankee soldier. Like wtf? How? Why? But the thing is, nothing about the vampires is explained. What are their origins? Were they once people who were turned into vampires? Why do they have no eyes? I think the lack of explanation is because it is not likely that Nena and Néstor would ever find out about the history of the vampires, but that does not make it any less disappointing. And as excellent as Cañas’s depiction of 1840s Mexico is, even the Mexican-American War takes a backseat to Nena and Néstor’s love drama.

I am not going to tell you to not read Vampires of El Norte, but I am going to suggest that if you plan to read it because of the vampires, then you should temper your expectations.