I'm not normally super into horror books, but I decided to go all spooky this month to get in the mood for Halloween. I was more into horror in general as a book/movie genre as a kid and teen however so I wasn't exactly just dipping my toes in. My overall feeling about this book was that I appreciated the atmosphere that was created and I'll always love a good creepy feel with some iconography; in general it checked all the creepy boxes for me, but without that I would have found this book kind of forgettable. I suppose that is mostly the point of this genre, and the mood was definitely there which was my main reason for reading the book - I got what I was looking for so I still give this a pretty good rating.

The plot itself felt pretty predictable to me, but with horror I think it's hard to really throw in surprises. You consume enough horror media and you're trained to expect the worst possible outcome, I guess. Maybe I'm just jaded. The ending actually pulled it more together for me, that's my kinda ending, even in horror.

I did spend most of this book wondering if Francis was sincere or not. I didn't hate this, because the wondering makes it fun in this genre, we're going to wonder if we can trust anything that's happening. The problem was I didn't actually feel as if there was much actual chemistry between him and Noemí which left me feeling uncommitted whether he was on her side or would betray her. The only time I felt attached to their relationship was at the very end, because that was a cute moment.

The scenes with Virgil in the dreams-but-not-dreams felt both horrifying/uncomfortable (adding to the mood) and unnecessary. I think I just get tired of the sexual violence aspect in horror that always seems to get applied when there are female characters involved. It wasn't badly done, but I also could have gone without it.