Synopses & Reviews
A woman is haunted by the Mexican folk demon La Llorona in this ravishing and provocative literary horror novel about motherhood, family legacy, and self-discovery.
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, beginning with the biological mother she never knew. And 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 of 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
“Sometimes, being a woman can be hell. In V. Castro’s dark, heroic tale, a woman draws on her familial roots to save herself and her children—by facing down a soul-devouring demon.” Alma Katsu, author of The Fervor
Review
“V. Castro charts a terrifying legacy of tears with The Haunting of Alejandra, an empathic epic that maps out the birth of a curse and tethers itself to the very ancestry of its tragic protagonist.” Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Ghost Eaters
Review
“A powerful story about motherhood, trauma, love, and the ways myths can and should be rewritten…If you’re a horror fan and you haven’t picked up V. Castro, you need to fix that.” Sarah Langan, author of Good Neighbors
About the Author
V. Castro is the acclaimed author of Mestiza Blood, Hairspray and Switchblades, The Queen of Cicadas, Aliens: Vasquez and The Goddess of Filth. She was born in San Antonio, Texas to Mexican American parents. She's been writing horror stories since she was a child, always fascinated by Mexican folklore and the urban legends of Texas. Violet now lives with her children in the UK.