Hello friends, happy Wednesday! I hope you’re all having a good week so far. Today I’m posting my review of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s novel Silver Nitrate.

Silver Nitrate by: Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Montserrat is a film sound editor in Mexico City in the 90s, but it’s very much a boys’ club, and she’s quite often overlooked. Her best friend, Tristán is a washed up actor, but when his new neighbour is a cult horror director, Abel Urueta that both he and Montserrat admire, of course they have to meet him. Although, the two do more than just meet him, they befriend him as he tells them all his tales, including the fact that he is cursed. Now that these two have been brought into the fold, there’s no escaping until the curse is broken. At first they are willing, but when the dead start to haunt the two, they don’t know how much more they can take. Do they have what it takes to break the curse? Full of magic and mystery, this had a really great concept, but sometimes the execution wasn’t the greatest; as well, sometimes the pacing was off, which made it hard to read and hard to get into. This started off slow, which let the reader get used to the world, but it also made it feel like it dragged on, too. It got faster as we progressed, which was good because the reader just needed to know what would happen next, but then the pace would slow once more and make the story drag again. It did pick up once more by the end, but it made for a strange reading experience. As for the actual plot, it was clever and well thought out, even if it wasn’t always told very well. The mystery and intrigue were really well set up because it really kept us on our toes. We never knew what was going to happen next. This reader sorta felt like our main character, Tristán. He was always kinda on the outside and never quite getting everything his best friend Montserrat was saying; that’s exactly how this reader felt. These big concepts would be thrown at us and we’d have to try and figure it out, but because of Tristán’s character, we kinda got a breakdown of what was happening, without it feeling overtly expositional. The characters were very well developed. Moreno-Garcia is excellent at writing really flawed characters who are trying to do good, but don’t always do it in the right way. The reader enjoyed getting to know our two main characters, as they’ve been friends since grade school, and to watch them explore their friendship, not just in the present tense, but in the past, was a nice way to get to know them. Obviously, this reader could see what she was teeing her readers up for, so it didn’t come as a shock when it got to the end. Speaking of endings, this had a great ending because we had no idea if the curse would be broken, if the dead would stay dead, and the living stay living; it was really a close to the finish line ending that had us on the edge of our seats until the end. Overall, despite the pacing being a little lacklustre, this was another bold and exhilarating novel from Moreno-Garcia.