CASTLE OF THE CURSED, by Romina Garber, Wednesday Books, July 30, 2024, Hardcover, $21 (young adult, ages 14 and up)
Following her parents’ deaths, a young woman moves to her family’s ancestral Spanish home in Castle of the Cursed, by Romina Garber.
The house is always hungry…
After a mysterious attack claims the lives of her parents, all Estela has left is her determination to solve the case. Suffering from survivor’s guilt so intense that she might be losing her grip on reality, she accepts an invitation to live overseas with an estranged aunt at their ancestral Spanish castle, la Sombra.
Beneath its gothic façade, la Sombra harbors a trove of family secrets, and Estela begins to suspect her parents’ deaths may be linked to their past. Her investigation takes a supernatural turn when she crosses paths with a silver-eyed boy only she can see. Estela worries Sebastián is a hallucination, but he claims he’s been trapped in the castle. They grudgingly team up to find answers and as their investigation ignites, so does a romance, mistrust twined with every caress.
As the mysteries pile up, it feels to Estela like everyone in the tiny town of Oscuro is lying and that whoever was behind the attack has followed her to Spain. The deeper she ventures into la Sombra’s secrets, the more certain she becomes that the suspect she’s chasing has already found her . . . and they’re closer than she ever realized. —Synopsis provided by Wednesday Books
Castle of the Cursed is a YA fantasy gothic romance that sounds intriguing, but lost points on execution.
I love Gothic novels. I started reading them when I was 12 and have had a soft spot in my heart for them ever since. So, I came into Castle of the Cursed with high expectations. I finished it feeling ambivalent.
Author Romina Garber definitely gets the tone aspect of the genre, creating a setting that has you looking over your shoulder, even when you’re not sure why. There’s also lots of emotion and a romance. It’s just that not all of it fit together. And the romance element just didn’t work for me.
Garber’s pacing/structure could also have benefited from some reworking — there’s a big info dump that happens later in the book that feels just like an info dump for necessity’s sake.
Castle of the Cursed isn’t one of my top YA picks for the summer, but if you’ve got time, it makes for an interesting library read.
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