Bochica

Carolina Flórez Cerchiaro

2025

Ratings1

Average rating2.5

A real-life Latin American haunted mansion. A murky labyrinth of family secrets. A young, aristocratic woman desperate to escape her past. This haunting debut gothic horror novel is perfect for fans of Mexican Gothic and The Shining. In 1923 Soacha, Colombia, La Casona—an opulent mansion perched above the legendary Salto del Tequendama waterfall—was once home to Antonia and her family, who settle in despite their constant nightmares and the house’s malevolent spirit. But tragedy strikes when Antonia’s mother takes a fatal fall into El Salto and her father, consumed by grief, attempts to burn the house down with Antonia still inside. Three years later, haunted by disturbing dreams and cryptic journal entries from her late mother, Antonia is drawn back to her childhood home when it is converted into a luxurious hotel. As Antonia confronts her fragmented memories and the dark history of the estate, she wrestles with unsettling questions she can no longer ignore: Was her mother’s death by her own hands, or was it by someone else’s? In a riveting quest for answers, Antonia must navigate the shadows of La Casona, unearthing its darkest secrets and confronting a legacy that threatens to swallow her whole.

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C. J. Daley

Thanks to Atria/Primero Sueno Press. I absolutely love this cover design so I’m so happy I have one.

People always say that novelists fall in to some common pitfalls in their debuts, and as someone that just released their own debut, it was interesting to really read one and kind of understand that. While I enjoyed the overall plot and vibe of this story, it had some issues. For one, it is repetitious, and for a book so short, that kind of hurt it. The opening of the book had the character flitting back to memories so often I was confused for over fifty pages. Some of these flashbacks/past commentary happened on almost every page. This might have been a chosen voice for the novel, but I felt it truncated the actual story, the length just coming from the past and repeating.

The main characters felt real—emotional, dynamic, traumatized even. I just would have wanted them to open up into their own even more, and as this book reads as standalone, it just doesn’t happen. There is also a scene where Antonia and her love interest are trying to go incognito with masks that cover half their faces. It killed some of the realism for me as the person they didn’t want seeing them knew them both very well. It just felt kind of like pretending you wouldn’t know who Batman was regardless of the jawline? Or maybe I just notice peoples’ features more than others.

Overall, I didn’t dislike the mystery. Finding her mother’s journal entries and sneaking through an abandoned childhood home felt almost like watching a video game play out.

April 27, 2025