Bochica - 3 stars

Welcome to "A Fleeting Thought" where I post relatively short and to the point book reviews.

A review of Bochica by Carolina Florez-Cerchiaro

Book summary at end of review

Thank you to Atria/Primero Sueño for an ARC of Bochica. These are my honest opinions!

Ah! A strong start of a Hispanic woman resisting against religious and patriarchal ideals. A book after my own heart. 

As a Hispanic woman, I was so happy to have the opportunity to read a story about and written by a Latina. I was raised Catholic (and I’m no longer religious), so I felt a strong initial pull to Antonia and her thoughts.

I loved how Antonia rejected the norms of the time. She claimed she didn’t need a man, defied spaces that required her to have a man to enter, and was happy to be independent. I do feel like we lost a bit of that as the story went on. It started off quite strong, lost it for the majority of the book, and then it came back only at the end. 

Why didn’t I give it five stars?

There was a lot of set up for religion to be a bigger part of the story and I feel that got a bit lost. Having been raised the way Antonia was raised, to respect a non main stream religion, I thought more of a connection would be made between that and the fact that she was teaching at a catholic school. 

It felt quite disjointed in some parts. It could be an effect the author is going for to bring us into the mind of Antonia, but I just find it jarring and annoying. It didn’t make me want to stay with the story. 

I didn’t feel enough of a connection to the fear behind the haunting. I wanted to understand a bit more. There was a lot of repetitive description of the cóndores and the Muiscas but I don’t feel like it added much to the story. There was a lot of fight to get to one location in the story and once we got there, it felt pretty anticlimactic. 

For as much as Antonia postured that she takes care of everything she still feels very childish throughout and that caused me to lose some of the connection I felt toward her initially. 

As a bilingual person, I found the words they chose to keep in Spanish interesting and some of them unnecessary. “Hot chocolate with queso” felt a bit weird. It was said enough times for me to comment on it.

This is a very solid 3 stars for me.

Some Spanish words/terms brought up throughout with their English translations. 

Asunción- assumption 

Agosto- August

Encenillos- tree native to the highlands of the Andean region of Colombia

Cóndores- condors 

Nogales- walnut trees 

El señor caído- the fallen man 

El Refugio del Salto- the jump shelter

Querida- dear/cherished

Casona- large house 

Doña- boss. respectful term for a woman, usually an older woman, head of household

Enero- January

Catechesis- basic (Christian/Catholic) religious education for children and adults 

Book summary:

A real-life Latin American haunted mansion. A murky labyrinth of family secrets. A young, aristocratic woman desperate to escape her past. This haunting debut gothic horror novel is perfect for fans of Mexican Gothic and The Shining.

In 1923 Soacha, Colombia, La Casona—an opulent mansion perched above the legendary Salto del Tequendama waterfall—was once home to Antonia and her family, who settle in despite their constant nightmares and the house’s malevolent spirit. But tragedy strikes when Antonia’s mother takes a fatal fall into El Salto and her father, consumed by grief, attempts to burn the house down with Antonia still inside.

Three years later, haunted by disturbing dreams and cryptic journal entries from her late mother, Antonia is drawn back to her childhood home when it is converted into a luxurious hotel. As Antonia confronts her fragmented memories and the dark history of the estate, she wrestles with unsettling questions she can no longer Was her mother’s death by her own hands, or was it by someone else’s?

In a riveting quest for answers, Antonia must navigate the shadows of La Casona, unearthing its darkest secrets and confronting a legacy that threatens to swallow her whole.