Athena, Holding Your Hair, Whispering In Your Ear

For me a few are enough, one is enough, none is enough. This is not for the many, but for you. We are audience enough for each other.

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This is an enjoyable take on a traditional high gothic novel transposed into Mexico with some interesting commentary on colonialism. It also (spoiler alert) briefly masquerades as a ghost story, but eventually reveals itself to be satisfyingly icky body horror instead.

That said, I was a little underwhelmed because the author's other books have been so uniformly clever that this one felt a little formulaic by contrast (a sick young woman trapped in the remote estate of a decayed aristocratic family hiding a terrible secret is the quintessential gothic trope). But that's the worst thing I can say about it: the writing is solid, the characters are memorable, and it is, if nothing else, a fun genre exercise. Recommended to fans of gothic horror.