Thank you to Isabel Cañas and NetGalley, for the amazing opportunity to read : vampires of El Norte as an ARC.

Key words : Mexican folklore / western / romance / vampires

This book was a total surprise for me. I didn’t know anything about Mexican folklore and I was so happy to discover part of it. All the characters are well written they aren’t 100% good or bad or even 100% a specific character archetype and that’s what I liked.
I expected a bit more of a « twilight » vibe at first and wanted to see more of the vampires, but the scenes with the creatures were actually pretty scary and it felt so real. Just imagining a creature going from 4 legs to 2 was creepy.
I also liked the ranch theme and the historical setting. Even if I do not know much about it.
The romance was well written, the childhood best friends to somewhat ennemies to lovers. It’s one of my favourite tropes ever and it suited the characters so well.
The only downside to the book was that there were a lot of idioms and Spanish words and not dictionary or footnotes to translate. And I speak 0 Spanish so I had to google what some stuff meant. But that is just MY issue.

Rating : 5 ⭐️

Vampires of El Norte is my second book by Cañas, and let me tell you, she knows how to bring the horror, romance and the atmosphere to create a truly brilliant book.

It's described as a supernatural/Western and while that does sum parts of it up, at it's heart this reads as a romance between two people, separated for years, who are forced to come together to protect the people they love. The story is told from the POV's of Nena and Néstor. Nena is the daughter of a rancher, something that comes with a privileged upbringing. She isn't expected to work on the ranch, but she is expected to marry to further it, something that grates on her. She's a character that I struggled with. At times she comes across as incredibly strong, forthright, but when it comes to standing up for Néstor, for her heart, she always seemed to shy away from any conflict, and I felt this duality didn't really make sense for the story.

Néstor as a child was a vaquero, someone who worked for Nena's father on the ranch, and someone not at all suitable to marry her. Cañas knows how to write broken boys struggling with their feelings, and she really nails it with Néstor. He loves Nena, there is no denying that, but he isn't sure it's reciprocated, especially when it seems he is the only one fighting for them to be together. He is someone who wants everything or nothing, not sure he can live by her side taking whatever scraps she deems to give him.

The romance between these two is wondrously slow burn. We know from page one that they love each other, but their places in society, as well as their own idiocy in parts, means that the physical romance doesn't come into play until quite late through the book... even if they spend the majority pining for one another. Nena annoyed me slightly when it came to the romance, she couldn't see Néstor's point of view, how after he believed her dead he had to leave, because staying would have been so much harder. She just see's it as him abandoning her, and I do feel she came off as a little juvenile in parts. That being said, these are two people who know each other inside out, even 9 years apart couldn't change that, and I enjoyed seeing all the yearning and longing we get before they fall back together.

Cañas did a great job with the horror aspects of this book. It was deliciously creepy, and her descriptions of the Vampires ensured this was a day time only read for me. But I think what I loved the most was how she showed the parallel between the horrors of the supernatural, and the mundane. She blends the magical and the mundane to ensure we know that, yes the vampires were scary, but the real horror, the real monsters of her story were the anglo settlers. I've read a few books recently where authors use the supernatural to sufficiently show their readers the horror of historical tragedies. How colonialism washed away cultures and societies because they believed in their right to own a certain piece of land.

Cañas' writing style is lush and descriptive bringing Mexico, the ranch as well as her version of vampires to life. It's character driven, with the story focusing on Nena and Néstor's through the perils of war and the supernatural, so in that respect I would have maybe liked a slightly bigger focus on the monsters themselves, but the romance was so brilliantly written that I didn't mind too much that it became the focus of the story. If you enjoy horrors that are heavy on the romance side, with monsters that will have you searching every shadow, and characters you can't help but love, I would definitely check this out.

I gave this a good try, I really did, but I'm pulling the plug at 69%.

This is too boring for me. Calling this "Vampires of El Norte" was a mistake because the vampires are an afterthought and adding "horror" into the mix of identifying genders for this is just a lie, there isn't even one creepy moment. I wouldn't mind any of that if I found the characters or the romance compelling, but I just don't. Historical can be hit or miss for me, and this is a miss. It's a slog to get through and I just don't want to continue with it.

I'm glad I read The Hacienda and know what this author can do when she does hit the nail on the head with the horror/historical/romance/fantasy mix, but this wasn't it.

The second horror novel from this highly acclaimed author. Vampires of El Norte takes place during the Mexican-American war, and centres on the romance between Nena - daughter of a ranchero - and Nestor (a vaquero) who returns to his true love, following a long absence. As a historical romance, Vampires works very well indeed, taking a childhood friendship that blossoms into a love that's hard to deny, even in the face of testing circumstances. There's also a supernatural element to this story, which initially whetted my appetite. Although the titular vampires are not front and centre for much of the book, when they do appear, it's to devastating effect , and their presence is never too far away.

The story is engaging, right from the word go, with strong characterisation, detailed backstories and vivid descriptions of the locale which capture a war-torn region mixed in with paranormal activity of a truly horrifying nature. There's also interesting commentary on colonialism and class, making this a book that provokes deep thought on many levels. Vampires of El Norte is tailor made for those who appreciate historical romances, with a delicious twist of otherwordly terrors. It's perfectly paced, but a read to be savoured with concentration and reflection amply rewarded.

This paperback edition will be published in the UK 24th October 2024 published by Rebellion . Solaris Books Imprint.

Description:
Nena is the daughter of a wealthy ranch-owner, Nestor is the low-born orphan son of a vaquero. They're inseperable when growing up, until Nena is attacked by a vampire and Nestor flees, thinking her dead. Later on they reunite amidst a battle against Yanqui invaders, with even more vampires roaming the countryside around them.

Liked:
The historical setting is very atmospheric, and the book does a good job of introducing its vocabulary. I enjoyed learning a little more about the setting. I also think I quite like the way the book treats vampires by the end... but I'm not entirely sure. Won't go into that one more because spoilers!

Disliked:
Much more of a romance than I expected - I'd have liked more vampires and less repetitive interiority. It feels like a full half the book is Nena being conflicted about what she wants and treating Nestor like shit. Honestly had very little sympathy for her; sure, her parents are overbearing and it was likely very difficult to disobey them in those times, but she just make stupid choice after stupid choice. In the end Nestor seems to beating himself up as much if not more than her despite having done almost nothing wrong. Most of the longed-out will-they-wont-they stems from terrible communication, and it's just frustrating. Also, the vampires seem like an afterthought, really. They provide a bit of tension in one or two spots, but aren't very present or scary beyond this.

Read This If:
You’re into romance and/or historical fiction. Do not read if you’re looking for a good vampire story.

I really wanted to like this one but I had to abandon it at 40%. The premise of this sounds great - a supernatural western that takes place in 1840s Mexico. There are vampires, there’s a tragic love story, there’s war. What more could you want? Well, as it turns out, a lot more. The first few chapters are electric but after that the pacing is so extremely slow. From 2% to 40% of the way through pretty much nothing happens.

Simply put, this had too much romance, and not enough of the titular vampires. Not in the first half anyway. The second half might have picked up but I’m afraid I won’t be sticking around to find out. Do not go into this expecting horror. Read this if you fancy a historical western romance with a tiny dash of supernatural creepiness.

Thanks all the same to @netgalley and Solaris Books for allowing me to ready this early copy in exchange for my thoughts.

Isabel Cañas' The Hacienda was a solid if overtly romance-focused gothic novel which provided some much-needed diversity for quite a stale and formulaic genre. It gave us atmosphere, a predictable but well-executed storyline and a great sense of place, and placed Cañas among fresh horror authors to watch. When Vampires of El Notre was first published in the USA, there was a tiny window in which the audiobook version was avaiable in the UK, which I had sadly missed, so I was very excited to get an e-ARC for the much-awaited UK release of the novel. At first glance, Vampires follows the increasingly popular trend of reclaiming vampires from Twilight-style love stories and reimagining them squarely as monsters (see, for example, what Grady Hendrix did with The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires). I was very intrigued.

Pretty quickly my high hopes were dashed. Unlike The Hacienda, Vampires of El Notre is not a horror novel with a strong romance element - it is first and foremost a romance novel with some horror backdrop. Gone are the gothic atmosphere, and the novel does not even try to actually scare the readers. Instead, we follow a rather uninspired romance between two characters who feel rather wooden and one-dimensional.

I have two serious issues with this novel. The first one is the premise of the romance. It follows a well-established miscommunication trope aka the tension of the relationship could have been resolved by a 20 second conversation, and it seemed very unrealistic that Nestor would not have known that Magdalena was alive this entire time, as he was in close contact with the people from her father's hacienda. I dislike the miscommunication trope at the best of times, but this one was made all the worse by the context.

My other issue is the central premise of the book - the real 'vampires' are the Americans who are trying to conquer this part of Mexico (from what I understand, currently a part of southern Texas, so we know how the story ends). Magdalena's family and social circle are seen by her as the rightful owners of the land which they will defend. However, both in real history and within the text of the novel, we know that the families in charge are the direct descendants of the Spanish hidalgos, who got the land by the decree of the Spanish crown. The 'guns, germs and steel' Spanish crown, ultimately responsible for the deaths of up to 90% of all indigenous inhabitants of the Americas. We know from most creole studies that settler colonial societies, including the OG one European one, the Spanish Empire, were even more bothered about the 'purity' of their blood than the metropoles. The Spanish Empire in particular is the origin of the limpieza de sangre ideology, one of the earliest forms of rigid racial classification in European thought.

In other words, Magdalena's family have about as much right to the land they occupy as do the Americans, and Nestor acknowledges that early on in the narrative. I could understand Nestor being the driving force of the anti-American sentiment of the novel - he has some Pueblo roots. However, what this novel actually needed to make its central metaphor work is an Indigenous perspective, sorely missing from the narrative. Magdalena's determination to protect 'her' land read to me like a Scarlett O'Hara lamenting the loss of her 'way of life' (and yes, Spanish and Portuguese empires were also the earliest early modern European empires to use African enslaved labour, although this is not the focus of the book).

This is a boring romance, not a horror book, with a very questionable central theme.

Thank you NetGalley and Solaris and Simon & Schuster for a free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

trigger warning
<spoiler> war themes, trauma, grief, animal attack, gore, classism, corporeal punishment </spoiler>

Nena and Néstor grew up as best friends, until the fateful day they found out about creatures living not too far away.

I knew going into this that the focus was on the love story, not on the vampires.
My brain still says yeah, far too much romance and not enough vampires, but I know this is a me-problem. Additionally, be warned that vampires are creatures here, not the beautiful seducers you'd find in an Anne Rice novel.

I liked the setting, especially because I watched a lot of classic western movies with my father, where the Mexican population is either represented by the villain, dirty beggars or, if the regisseur was feeling nice, by the owner of the cantina the hero goes to eat. This novel taught me a lot about the people, how life on a ranch could have looked, and I appreciated the afterword where the author delves into her inspirations for this story, and goes into her sources and her work process.
Would be interested to read her first novel, the Hacienda, and also further works.

What I found surprising is how familiar the writing felt. A few years back, before I started writing reviews here or even reading books in Englisch, I went through a phase where I read a lot of books written by people whose first language is some form of Spanish, Isabell Allende and Carlos Ruis Zafón especially. I am too scatterbrained thanks to the heatwave still hanging around, but something about her writing reminded me of that. Maybe in the way you just feel if an author has read a lot of the same stuff you did.
Usually have that with white british fantasy authors, so it was nice having it here as well.

Would reccomend if you're into speculative historical fiction from this perspective, not so much for the vampire content.
The arc was provided by the publisher.

Had to DNF this book because, sadly, I was not invested.

I was expecting more horror and vampires, and... not really that much focus on romance?
Besides, the romantic tropes I have seen in this book so far are big turn-offs for me (avoidable miscommunication particularly). And I get that Nestor didn't want to be punished / blamed for Nena's supposed death, and couldn't stand seeing her dead, but leaving like that (and then proceeding to have a crush on her for the next decade) seemed forced to me.
I also found the Spanglish a bit grating, but that might just be because I'm a native Spanish speaker and my brain hurts when I have to switch rapidly between languages several times in one sentence. This got better after chapter 1, but still made for a rocky start to the book (for me).

I will not be giving this book a star rating on Goodreads, because I don't think it would be fair to rate it low given that I haven't finished reading it.

Vampires of El Norte is a historical romance, with horror elements, that plays in 1840's Mexico (Southern Texas) during the invasion of Mexico by the United States Army, which resulted in the annexation of Texas. (Though technically, the invasion wasn't limited to Texas but so happened in other states but I will leave it out as the book plays just in Texas.)

Plot-wise, Magdalena "Nena" is the daughter of the rancher who owns the Los Ojuelos ranch, and is therefore expected to marry well, so the ranch gains additional cattle but also men and support against the encroaching Anglos. When she's 13 years old, she sneaks out one night to find hidden Spanish silver with her childhood sweetheart Nestor, when something attacks them and mauls Nena brutally. While he carries her back to the ranch, he flees shortly afterwards as he believes that she is dead. Nena didn't die though and grew up to be a young woman who believes that her childhood sweetheart just left the ranch "to stretch out his legs", and is utterly hurt by it. When the threat of the Anglos becomes more prominent, Nestor returns to the ranch and they both realise in the following chapters how wrong they were.

The story plays mostly on the Los Ojuelos ranch, which is roughly 45 minutes away from Laredo (by car). Whenever the story isn't set on the ranch, it will be around Laredo or in the area down to Matamoros. If you feel lost now: just open Google Maps. The UK version has no map, so I was constantly looking up where everything is because my geographical knowledge of Texas is limited to the positions of the major cities like Austin, Houston, San Antonio and Dallas. Despite using Google Maps regularly, I still felt often lost enough because the book demands a good knowledge of the area. They crossed several rivers and I still try to figure out if they crossed the Rio Grande (which seems likely as they fled from the battlefield around Matamoros) but later, were close to a river again but I don't know if it would be still the Rio Grande or one of the other smaller rivers. Aside from the lack of geographical orientation: the book requires a good knowledge of the history between the US and Mexico. Maybe US students learn about it in their history classes but we never discussed it in my history lessons in Germany, so I felt rather lost until I read the Wikipedia page about the invasion/war. In the author's note at the end, the author mentions that she did intensive research for the book (while writing her dissertation for her PhD) and you notice it. It's in all the small details that will make sense to someone who is familiar with the history and the Mexican culture but it really went over my head most of the time. Though luck, I know.

So, with these two points out of the way: the book is mostly a romance novel. The vampires add some horror but it's extremely mild. Yes, they are beast-like vampires (occasionally called El Cuco too) and not the sparkly kind or the overly sexy kind. Unfortunately, the vampires and their attacks aren't creepy enough. In the author's note, the author quotes one of her sources for the book that inspired her to include vampires. In the source, vampires were an analogy for the Anglos stealing Mexican land and killing people. That's it. So, instead of making the Anglos even worse, the vampires get shoehorned into the story as a supernatural element that is used by the US Army. There's no explanation why they exist, there's no actual connection to existing Mexican folklore. I wish the author would have either concentrated on the Anglos and their encroachment as the scary part or would have put an actual effort into the vampire element. (Because the end of how Nena deals with the vampires makes me so fucking mad.)

Concerning the romance: Nena and Nestor are starcrossed lovers and their romance is based on the forbidden romance trope. While I found their connection as teenagers understandable, I couldn't wrap my head around why both still pined after each other FOR NINE FUCKING YEARS. Yes, in Nestor's case, he puts her onto a pedestal and worships her as he considers her dead but it's still odd. In Nena's case, it's even worse because it's the constant "I still like him" vs. "I have to be hard, he left me!". Their miscommunication for the longest part was extremely exhausting.

TL;DR: my expectations were rather high and I was disappointed as they weren't fulfilled. I wanted more vampires (since the title is Vampires of El Norte who are treated as actual monsters. I would have loved a map and a glossary for all the Spanish words because I was so lost when it came to them. Yes, an eReader has a translate feature, which is helpful, but if you don't speak Spanish and are reading the hardcover/paperback/audio, you will be lost. If you like historical romances with a forbidden romance element, you might enjoy it more than I do. If you want a gothic horror novel with vampires: skip it.

3.5 stars

I enjoyed this more the further I got into the book. I think it has a solid 4/4.5 star ending but the journey to get there, woof. There was a lot in the middle that felt like an extended third act conflict - aka the part I like least in romance books - where I just wanted to bash the main characters' heads together. Thankfully, the vampires were SO FASCINATING, I pushed through because I wanted to know more. I've read a lot of different vampire takes this year, and I thought this one was wonderfully unique. I loved how downright creepy and animalistic they were. I wish the horror was more to the forefront because as it stands, this is 90% historical romance with 10% horror sprinkled in sporadically. This author can do creepy so well! I wholeheartedly loved her previous book, The Hacienda, for its sinister atmosphere.

I saw a review that described this as Gone With The Wind but make it Mexican and yeah, pretty much.

I received this for free on NetGalley.

This book had a great plot with intriguing characters. I’ll definitely be looking out for more from this author.

Following "The Hacienda" comes the new novel by Isabel Cañas which surpasses her already great debut in almost every regard. Must-read for horror fans!

Another hit from Isabel Cañas! I absolutely loved this. It definitely leaned more on the romance side than the horror side, but it was such a gorgeous gothic tale and the main characters were so down bad for each other I couldn't find it in me to care. I can't wait to see more from this author!!

Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas transports readers to the harsh and haunting landscapes of nineteenth-century Mexico, blending elements of history, romance, and gothic horror. As Nena and Néstor, childhood friends separated by tragedy, reunite amidst the turmoil of war and supernatural threats, they must confront not only the external dangers of their world but also the unresolved emotions between them.

Although I was expecting a gothic horror story, the novel leans more heavily into the romance genre. The vampires serve as an intriguing metaphor for greed and colonialism, reflecting the historical context of the story. The historical setting is well researched, adding depth to the storyline and enriching the reader's experience. Isabel Cañas' vivid descriptions and well-crafted characters shine throughout the narrative, with the dynamic between Nena and Néstor providing a compelling emotional core.

This book is recommended for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia as well as readers who appreciate a blend of historical fiction, romance, and supernatural elements.

Thank you to Netgalley and Solaris books for providing me with a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[I will post on Instagram and Goodreads on 19 September and will add the links below]