The Bewitching should have been my most anticipated book of the year, because I really enjoyed reading this novel, especially after feeling somewhat disappointed with Katabasis. The Bewitching is definitely my favourite of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s novels that I have read so far.

The Bewitching is told through three separate narratives that are linked by the same horror. It opens in the summer of 1998 on Minerva, a young Mexican woman attending Stonebridge College in Massachusetts. Minerva is a bit of a loner, not only because she is a woman of colour in a predominately white part of the US, but because when she was younger, she was responsible for taking care of her great-grandmother, so between that and her studies, Minerva did not have much time for making friends. Minerva is also a fan of horror literature by writers such as H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King and is studying at Stonebridge because it is the same school her favourite writer, Beatrice Tremblay, attended. Minerva wants to write her dissertation about Beatrice but has hit a roadblock because there are scant materials about Beatrice to research, until Minerva forces an introduction with Carolyn Yates, a wealthy businesswoman and socialite who was friends with Beatrice.

Carolyn gives Minerva access to Beatrice’s unpublished manuscript called The Vanishing which is about the disappearance of Beatrice and Carolyn’s friend, Virginia Somerset, back in 1934 when they all attended Stonebridge together. Virginia was another young woman who did not seem to fit in at Stonebridge because she was “new money” and eccentric. She was also a Spiritualist who liked to communicate with the dead. Beatrice’s novel details Virginia’s unravelling as she believes someone is stalking her and she has feelings that something bad is going to happen. She abruptly disappears one December night, never to be seen again, and the police assume that she ran off with a man, so they do not bother to investigate her disappearance.

As Minerva reads through Beatrice’s novel and investigates Virginia’s disappearance, she also begins to experience feelings that something bad is going to happen and that she is being stalked by someone…or something. Whatever is stalking Viriginia in 1934 and Minerva in 1998 is revealed in the story of Minerva’s great-grandmother’s life. In 1908, Alba is a young woman who dreams of leaving her family’s remote farm for an exciting life in Mexico City, a feeling that is bolstered when her uncle Arturo comes to visit her family after her father’s death. Arturo is handsome, charming and cultured, and pays special attention to Alba. He also believes Alba, and her family, should move to Mexico City and tries to convince Alba’s brother, Tadeo, to sell the family farm, but Tadeo refuses. Then sinister things begin to happen around the farm and Alba’s family develops a reputation for being cursed. Alba, torn between her uncle’s realism and her father’s superstitious beliefs, begins to think that her family is being hunted by a teyolloquani, a type of witch that drinks human blood and eats human hearts.

The tension in each of Minerva, Beatrice and Alba’s narratives is palpable, from the unnerving description of Minerva feeling like she is being followed as she walks alone through the woods on campus at night (it seriously spooked me; I really should not read novels like this before bed), to the fear and helplessness that Beatrice feels as her friend seemingly devolves into madness, and to Alba’s isolation as she realizes that she is on her own if she wants to save her family from the teyolloquani. Not to mention Alba’s relationship with her uncle Arturo, which strains against the bounds of propriety. Ew.

The Bewitching is a delightfully sinister novel based on Mexican folklore that is the perfect read for spooky season. Although it is grounded in the supernatural, its most terrifying aspect ends up being the human intentions behind the events that occur in the story. I definitely recommend reading this one if you like horror novels.