Content warnings: body horror, domestic violence, death of a child, death of parents
Summary [courtesy of Goodreads]: The Montoyas are used to a life without explanations. They know better than to ask why the pantry never seems to run low or empty, or why their matriarch won’t ever leave their home in Four Rivers—even for graduations, weddings, or baptisms. But when Orquídea Divina invites them to her funeral and to collect their inheritance, they hope to learn the secrets that she has held onto so tightly their whole lives. Instead, Orquídea is transformed, leaving them with more questions than answers. Seven years later, her gifts have manifested in different ways for Marimar, Rey, and Tatinelly’s daughter, Rhiannon, granting them unexpected blessings. But soon, a hidden figure begins to tear through their family tree, picking them off one by one as it seeks to destroy Orquídea’s line. Determined to save what’s left of their family and uncover the truth behind their inheritance, the four descendants travel to Ecuador—to the place where Orquídea buried her secrets and broken promises and never looked back.
[Note: This review is based on an eARC from NetGalley and Atria Books.]
This book is so good, and so deep, and I could never do it justice. It’s got a generational family drama, it’s got the best, most lush and gorgeous magical realism, and it’s got nuanced, snarky characters who you will be rooting for in the face of some seriously terrifying peril.
And, as a bonus, it actually has TWO furious femmes at its center–the titular Orquídea, an abandoned girl who grows into a matriarch and builds a sprawling family in the middle of nowhere, USA, out of nothing but magic and boostrapped tenacity, and her granddaughter Marimar, who inherits not only her grandmother’s massive homestead but literal thorns growing from her chest.
The way floral and botanical forces invade the Montoya family (or at least the chosen few at the core of the story) as well as their homestead is fascinatingly done, serving as a fecund, powerful inversion of the way another recent Latinx book about familial curses, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, figured nature as a harmful invading force. (I can’t really include Mexican Gothic in this series, since while its heroine Noemi is many things, furious is rarely one of them, but I will say it’s a fabulous take on whiteness, rot, and colonial menace).
This book has it all: gambling with a river monster, a woman who becomes a tree, a magical travelling circus, international mystery, archival research, a truly incisive send-up of the NYC art scene, angry women called to sacrifice more than they’re willing, and quiet women who lead quiet lives until they discover their capacity for greatness. The writing is absolutely stunning, and I can’t wait to return to this again and again.
I’ll leave you with just a taste of what I’m talking about:
“When she’d met Orquídea Montoya, she saw a whisper of a girl who wanted to become a scream.”
“Then, Marimar let out a scream that shook the valley. How do you fight a thing that believes it owns you? How do you fight the past …With hearts that are tender and bloodied but have thorns of their one. With the family that chooses you.”