Opinions of a Wolf

Alejandra, deep in the throes of postpartum depression, starts to see the specter of the Mexican folk demon La Llorona.

Summary:
Alejandra no longer knows who she is. To her husband, she is a wife, and to her children, a mother. To her own adoptive mother, she is a daughter. But they cannot see who Alejandra has become: a woman struggling with a darkness that threatens to consume her.

Nor can they see what Alejandra sees. In times of despair, a ghostly vision appears to her, the apparition of a crying woman in a ragged white gown.

When Alejandra visits a therapist, she begins exploring her family’s history, starting with the biological mother she never knew. As she goes deeper into the lives of the women in her family, she learns that heartbreak and tragedy are not the only things she has in common with her ancestors.

Because the crying woman was with them, too. She is La Llorona, the vengeful and murderous mother of Mexican legend. And she will not leave until Alejandra follows her mother, her grandmother, and all the women who came before her into the darkness.

But Alejandra has inherited more than just pain. She has inherited the strength and the courage of her foremothers—and she will have to summon everything they have given her to banish La Llorona forever.

Review:
The concept for this book is super original. A family with a genetic predisposition to postpartum depression is also haunted by an interdimensional being who takes advantage of that among the first-born daughters. It tackles both intergenerational trauma (especially of the colonized) and postpartum depression through a speculative lens. This speculative horror book also shows the main character going on a healing journey.

I particularly appreciated that the postpartum depression wasn’t a mere symptom of the haunting. Alejandra has postpartum depression. The being essentially targets the negative things Alejandra’s brain is already telling her. An example from the very beginning of the book is Alejandra is crying in the shower because she is so sad, and the being shows up and starts suggesting her family would be better off without her. An idea Alejandra has probably already had, but now she’s hearing it from this being that she thinks only she can see. This strategy becomes clearer when we see the flashbacks to Alejandra’s ancestors. The being also sometimes takes advantage of physical ailments but it primarily targets mental ones. I appreciated how this meant the story still took the reality of postpartum depression seriously while also tackling the issue of the multi-generational haunting. The story is told both in the present and through extended flashback chapters to previous generations.

The main character is Chicana married to a white man. In the flashbacks to the previous generations we see the racism her grandmother endured in the 1950s, and we also learn some about Mexican history (both recent and in immediate colonization by the Spanish) through two ancestors further back. The main character is bisexual, and there is a significantly important trans side character in a historic time period flashback. I particularly appreciated seeing a trans person represented in a historical time period.

The writing was at times a little clunky, especially towards the end. It just felt like I was reading a book, as opposed to getting lost in it, and it felt like different characters sounded the same. Again, this wasn’t throughout the book but limited to occasional scenes especially toward the end of the book. I also found it an odd choice to inform the reader the present-day was 2020 and then never acknowledge any of the 2020 issues. (For example, expected the mother with postpartum depression to end up dealing with distance learning for her two school-age children. But nothing ever came up.) Everything else could have stayed the same and been in 2019, so I’m not sure why it wasn’t 2019. I also felt that the husband character was treated in a two-dimensional way, as was the marriage. Marriage is very complex and yet complexity was only allowed to the postpartum depression and not the marriage. While I enjoyed this read, I did prefer the author’s previous book, The Queen of the Cicadas / La Reina de las Chicarras (review). One reason that is also evident in the title, was that book had more Spanish in it, which let me practice my Spanish more.

Overall this is a really unique read that explores postpartum depression and intergenerational trauma through a speculative lens. It’s a plot that will keep you guessing and intrigued.

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4 out of 5 stars

Length: 272 pages – average but on the shorter side

Source: NetGalley

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