Los Angeles, 1948. Lily Bantacorte's life at home is unbearable. Her little brothers are demanding and her lecherous stepfather won't leave her alone. So Lily turns to her estranged aunt in Chavez Ravine for a place to stay, but her timing couldn’t be worse. Lily isn’t the only new arrival in Chavez Ravine. La Llorona, the legendary ghost of Mexican folklore, has taken up residence too. Aunt Lencha is a famous healer, and maybe even a witch, and the community is counting on her to save them from the ghostly weeping woman. As encounters with La Llorona escalate, Lily must confront her fears and beliefs if she’s going to survive.
This was a rather impressive short novel with much to like. The main setup involving the sketchy home life she lives in and the desire to go for a place of her own away from the sleazy father-in-law around her that ultimately forces her into leaving to visit her aunt in a different community works nicely here, building an established universe rather nicely between the two viewpoints. Going from one of the restless nature around her stepfather looming over her and the more freed and relaxed one with her aunt helping her tend to the locals trying to get by with local remedies and healing ceremonies. The easy writing style present allows a great immersion into the characters and provides the proper sympathy for the characters involved.
When it comes time for the haunting scenes featuring the La Llorona out in the community, this is quite fun with a lot of intriguing elements coming together involving the local hysteria involving the being, a series of intriguing encounters that are given a fantastic quality over the true intentions of the figure, and the great finale where the atmospheric touches in play alongside the crazy scenario is handled nicely enough to make for a well-rounded affair. This does come off with a low-stakes nature of what the ghost actually wants since it's so vague about everything that it's sometimes hard to understand its purpose as the brevity of the piece doesn't allow for much of that, but there's barely an issue with this and doesn't hold it down at all.
4.5/5