Summer Reading 2022: The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

 

I took a few days of vacation to make a long weekend and was determined to finish a few books in my summer TBR list. This novel has been in my pile for a few months. I started it in May, got distracted, and put it down. Yesterday I picked it back up and got swept away pretty immediately. 

Beatriz needs to get married to escape the awful life her and her mother are in after her father is taken away in the night and murdered for plotting against the Mexican government. It's 1823 and women have limited choices. She married Rodolfo Solórzano, a wealthy man who takes her to his home, the Hacienda San Isidro. 

Beatriz isn't greeted with much enthusiasm by the servants at San Isidro, nor Rodolfo's sister Juana. She's the second Doña Solórzano, and yikes it's not the welcome she was hoping for. The first wife of Rodolfo was a horrible woman who treated the servants terribly and made everyone's life miserable. She died from typhoid a few years before. 

However, the moment Beatriz steps into the hacienda, she feels something is terribly, terribly wrong. The house seethes with bad energy; cold air sweeps through in waves; doors slam, and there are those terrible red eyes peeking through the darkness. Rodolfo leaves for business in the capitol, and Beatriz is terrified to live in the house alone. She hears voices, sees terrible visions, and is afraid to sleep. 

She attends church, and asks for a blessing. Snubbed by the older, crabby Padre, she meets Padre Andrés, a young priest who grew up at San Isidro and has returned to take care of the village outside of the hacienda. He agrees to bless the hacienda, and oh boy, what he feels and sees when he visits is exactly what Beatriz experiences: an unholy, terrible, evil force. 

Who's that force? Why, the first Doña, of course. Beatriz is frantic to fight the evil-she just isn't strong enough to do it herself. Andrés has a few surprises of his own that may just be enough to fight the evil that inhabits the hacienda. It may kill them first, though. 

There's a lot going on here with back story and the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence. Generations of people working on the same land; generations of the same land owners treating those people poorly and taking advantage of them. People who can't get away because of the class system that keeps them down. A priest who is also a witch, and must be careful to not be exposed. A woman who thought she was marrying a man who would give her a home, only to realize the home, and her husband, are awful. Cut off from any help, she only had Andrés to turn to. The folks around the hacienda know something dark is there, but are too afraid to do anything about it. 

This was a spooky story--I could feel that numbing cold rolling down the hallways. Author Isabel Cañas does an excellent job building tension and terror and ramping it up. This is evil that is vicious and nasty. Can you imagine what this woman was like when she was alive?! I raced through this horror novel, and was tense every time Beatriz had to be in the hacienda alone. 

A horror novel of a different kind, set in 1823 Mexico. The setting was well drawn and I could picture it all in my mind. Beatriz was smart, tough, and stalwart in her belief that there was something very wrong in the hacienda. Padre Andrés was a complex character torn by guilt as a priest and the power he was born to use for good. 

Rating: 5/6 for a tense, atmospheric horror novel with a historical setting. Once I got into it, I was hooked. 

A big thanks to Berkley for an ARC of the novel. 

Available in hardcover, ebook, and audio. 

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Summer Reading 2022: The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

This book has been on my "gotta read" list for over a year.  I finally got the chance to read it, thanks to Rebecca at Penguin-Random House books.  I'll admit I had a vague idea of what this book was about, and that drove me to read it.  But what I thought it was about and what is actually was about ended up being different, and much more than I expected.

This novel is based on two women who had the guts to stand up against slavery and the lack of rights for women in the 1820's.  A hundred years before women got the right to vote.  Sometimes a loud roar starts off with a quiet growl.  Sarah and Nina Grimke form two parts of an amazing trio of women; the third woman, Handful, was Sarah's slave.  Sarah's mother gives Handful to Sarah on her 11th birthday.  Sarah is a pretty smart kid.  She reads books from her father's library (he's a judge, wealthy, slave owner, and lives in Charleston) and dreams of one day becoming a lawyer.  She is horrified at the gift her mother gives her, and refuses to become the owner of Handful.  She even writes out a statement freeing Handful and leaves it for her father, sure he'll abide by her wishes.  Instead, the statement is ripped up and left outside her bedroom door.  She is Handful's mistress whether she likes it or not.  Thus begins a 30 year journey between two woman: one black, one white, one free, one enslaved. 

We come to know Handful and her mother, Charlotte, the family's seamstress.  Charlotte is feisty and determined to one day be free.  She quilts her family's history and sneaks out to make extra money to one day buy her and Handful's freedom.  And yes, you guessed it--things don't go so well.  The brutality and downright wrongness of slavery makes blatant appearances to Handful and Charlotte, as well as Nina  and Sarah.  The relationship between Sarah and Handful was a complex one; I expected more of a novel about a close relationship between the women, but that didn't happen.  Sarah is haunted by Charlotte's demand that one day Sarah free Handful.  Sarah finds it much harder to do this than she ever imagines; can she ever grant this wish and free Handful?   Sarah's life as a privileged upper-class white woman in Charleston has left her in a prison created by society's rigid rules and regulations regarding women.  While Nina became the more famous of the Grimke sisters, it is Sarah's story that is the focus of this novel.

The novel is told in alternating chapters between Sarah and Handful.  It took me a bit to get into the story, and I think this was because I kept getting distracted from the book.  The ending is one that made me tear up.  It comes full circle.  Knowing some background of the Grimke sisters certainly helped me have a good framework before I got too deep into the story, and I would certainly read the author's notes in the back of the book before you begin the novel.  

A powerful novel about the horror of slavery, friendship in all of it's complications, and amazing women who were afraid but stepped forward and fought anyway.  

Available in paperback, hardcover, e-book, and audio.  

Thank you to Rebecca from Penguin/Random House for a copy of the book!  

Rating:  8/10 for a novel about women who saw wrong and fought hard to change it, sometimes at great cost to themselves.  

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The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

Last Review of the Year: Longbourn by Jo Baker

Jane Austen is like the energizer rabbit:  she just keeps going and going.  She is the ultimate Girl Power!  

School is done for a few weeks, and I've had a little bit of time to begin reading for fun.  And I've managed to buy another six books just to make myself crazy with which one to read next.  The life of a book lover is never dull.  

Longbourn is a novel that had to wait until I was ready to read it.  It has stared at me from the bookshelves and tables at work, first in hardcover, and now in paperback.  I am so glad I waited to read it, and it's a perfect ending to my reading year.  

Longhorn follows the lives of the Bennet household servants:  Mr. and Mrs. Hill, Sarah, and Polly.  Life is pretty dull washing out the underthings of the Bennet sisters, cooking food, and running up and down stairs at the slightest ring of a bell.  Then mysterious James shows up; he is taken into the Bennet household as their latest servant.  Sarah at first loathes him; but the loathing quickly turns into interest.  Just who is James, and why is he so secretive?  

Meanwhile, the storyline of Pride and Prejudice winds its way through the novel, and the author cleverly starts each chapter with a line from P&P, which helps keep you on track with what's going on above stairs.  Tiny details of life as a servant, the day to day life of British gentry, and the complicated relationships between servants and those they serve all bring a richness to this tale that completely captured my imagination.  I don't think I will ever be able to think of Pride & Prejudice again without this book in my mind.  It certainly did make me look at the Bennet sisters in a new light--and not a particularly flattering one at that.  It dented my admiration of Elizabeth just a bit.  Read it and decide for yourself!

Jo Baker did an amazing job creating a whole new addition to the world of Jane Austen.  Not only did she remain faithful to Pride and Prejudice, but she took the reader away from Longbourn and into the private hopes, dreams, and yes, nightmares of the servants that remain always below stairs, and always behind the scenes.  In this novel, the Bennet sisters and their love lives are merely along the edges--what happens to the Bennet servants is just as dramatic and  full of highs and lows as the best soap opera around.  

Rating:  8/10 for a wonderful story that weaves the world of Pride and Prejudice into a new tale sure to appeal to any fan of historic fiction.  And Sarah is a wonderfully strong female character you won't be able to forget. 

Available in hardcover, paperback, e-book, and audio.

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Last Review of the Year: Longbourn by Jo Baker