Bochica

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.