I dipped my toe back into to the horror pool, and THE HACIENDA was a perfect choice for me. I used to be brave back as a teen, reading all sorts of horror. Now, I'm a wimp and I love my HEAs, but I wanted to try because sometimes I do love a spooky tale.

Beatriz chooses to marry the handsome, but mostly a stranger and widower Don Rodolfo to flee her life as the unwanted relative who is too brown and the daughter of a failed general on the wrong side of he Mexican Revolution. Finally, Beatriz can be the dona, the head of her own household.

Alas, Hacienda San Isidro is not the refuge Beatriz hoped for, as she begins to see bloody, horrible specters, red eyes, and bloody pranks where no one else can. All things that grow increasingly worse and ever more dangerous once Rodolfo leaves her to attend to business back in the city. Seeking help from the Church offers no help, and fears that she may be seen as a heretic, or at worse, possessed by the devil.

Beatriz finds an ally in the one, youthful and handsome priest, Padre Andrés, who offers to help exorcise the house of its demons. But, some demons cannot be quieted because they may still be ... alive.

A compelling tale that draws on how colonialism brought turmoil and upheaval and racism to Mexico and its indigenous people, how Catholicism both abhors and coopts religious practices and punishes its own followers instead of protecting them, how women's agency in these times were next to zero but still they tried.

SO GOOD.

My little quibbles mostly had to do with pacing - this one moves fast, and sometimes I wanted it to slow a bit down to really embrace that gothic, creepy atmosphere.