Hi friends, happy Monday! I hope you’re all doing well! Today I’m posting my review of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s novel Untamed Shore.

Untamed Shore by: Silvia Moreno-Garcia: In the small fishing town of Baja California, Mexico, lives Viridiana. It’s 1979, and all she dreams about is leaving to travel, go to school, explore, but instead her options are very limited, to stay, get married and have children. When a wealthy American shows up with his wife and brother-in-law, she jumps at the job opportunity to be his writer’s assistant. Little does she know, she begins to fall down the rabbit hole of lies and deceit as she’s entangled in their webs. Do the risks outweigh the rewards and is she willing to stick around to find out? Another solid novel from Moreno-Garcia. In this novel, she really hit the mark with a slow burn, coming of age, mystery. This had a slow-paced start; it didn’t really pick up until the last handful of chapters, but this really worked for the story. We’re in a sleepy town in Mexico where nothing ever really happens, so the pacing felt perfect for the kind of life our main character would live and know. Obviously our more secondary characters brought the action and drama, but it was worked in so well that it wasn’t rushed in, but a slow gradual build up. Moreno-Garcia’s writing was also really well done because everything just flowed and the layers in which she not only created suspense and tension, but her characters were so deeply layered it made it hard to put down; they needed to read more. Our main character, Viridiana, was such a flawed character, it basically made her perfect. She’s eighteen years old and wants to escape her small town. When she gets the opportunity with her new job and she learns the truth of their nefarious ways, she knows it’s bad, yet she can’t help but weigh her options – do the right thing, or help in doing the wrong thing, but essentially use that as a get out of town ticket. The decisions that Viridiana must make are hard ones, and we see her struggle the whole time, but it was so interesting to keep reading to see what choices she’d make because the reader never knew what would do; the reader doesn’t think Viridiana even knew until she was making them. The secondary characters really moved the plot along in how mysterious they were. The reader knew there was something up with them, and it was so satisfying to keep reading to figure out if their suspicions were right or not. An overall thrill of a novel, even if it could be slow; Moreno-Garcia has a way with words to make it feel well worth the time and investment.