The Bewitching

 

The Bewitching / Silvia Moreno-Garcia
NY: Del Rey, c2025.
356 p.

A perfect book to share on this haunting date, The Bewitching is all about witchcraft in a family line and how it has travelled from Mexico to Massachusetts, starting with Nana Alba in small town Mexico and following her granddaughter Minerva to university in the US. There are three storylines here; the third follows Beatrice Tremblay, the writer who Minerva is researching. The story intertwines the three threads, and slowly comes together the further you get into it. 

Because there are such distinct storylines, I did find it started slowly, and it took me a good quarter of the way to get into it. But once I began connecting the stories and getting in to the plot, it sped by. I do like an academic gothic!

I found this book fascinating for many reasons. The story of Alba, discovering black magic in Mexico, was eerie and almost fairytale-like in some ways (the dark kind). A lot of the folklore was new to me and so really intriguing. Minerva was a good contemporary character - intelligent, courageous, curious, and tough; a poor scholarship student who was also working to keep herself going. Lots of grit. And that helps her in the circumstances she has to face as the book develops. 

Meanwhile Beatrice Tremblay's story feels a bit like a story within a story, one that Minerva is uncovering as we go. It's intimately connected to Minerva's family history, but she doesn't know that in the beginning. There are a few male characters who play foil to Minerva in a couple of different ways but it's really Minerva and all the women, past and present, who are the focus of this book. And that was something else I appreciated about the story. 

There is a little bit of gore and some creepy elements that I found a bit disturbing, especially in Alba's storyline. You can always skim a bit though! As a whole, I thought it was a good read with unexpected elements and connections between the characters. A bit tricky for the reader, in the best ways.