Friday Friyay: 'Silver Nitrate' by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Happy Friday! We've finally had a week in which the temperature stayed under 30 degrees Celsius, thank God! I also managed to get some major things done so while there's still one more week of semester left I am going into it a lot calmer than last week. This week I've also done some very gentle reading, just an hour or so at night, but I'm planning to majorly catch up this weekend! One of the books I'm reading this week is Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, which came out this week!

A breathtaking blend of Mexican horror movies and dark occultism from the bestselling author of Mexican Gothic.

Montserrat has always been overlooked. She's a talented sound editor, but she's left out of the boys' club running the film industry in '90s Mexico City. And she's all but invisible to her best friend Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, even though she's been in love with him since childhood.

Then Tristán discovers his new neighbour is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he has a way to change their lives - even if his tales of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed.

Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristán to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse . . . but Montserrat soon notices a dark presence following her.

As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Tristán might just find out that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies . .

Book Beginnings is at home on Rose City Reader, hosted by Gilion Dumas, and Friday 56 at Freda's Voice, hosted by Freda. I'll also be joining the Book Blogger Hop, hosted by Billy over at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. All quotes are taken from an ARC and may be different in the published book.

BB:

'An engorged, yellow moon painted the sky a sickly amber hue, illuminating a solitary figure. A woman, standing between two sycamore trees.' p.1

Love this opening, it immediately feels Gothic to me, which is what I've come to expect from Moreno-Garcia. I'm also digging the image of a solitary woman, cast in this weird, amber light. I'd be very torn between running away and coming closer.

F56:

'Film was a shambling zombie of an industry; she'd worked on the periphery of it and only succeeded in having half a life.' p.56

This feels incredibly timely, considering the strikes happening in Hollywood and the way in which they're highlighting the hardship of working in that industry. Honestly, academia has its fair share of uncertainty etc., it's no cakewalk, but at least no one cares what I look like...

BBH:

This week's question comes from Billy himself:

Which plot twist is your favourite?

Y'all, I'm so desperate for July to end that I did next week's question by accident xD So here is a quick response to this and then next week you'll get my thoughts on memoirs!

I do tend to enjoy almost all kinds of plot twists. The ones I hate (I know, now the question!) are those which are only twists because the author actively lied to you. Like, how was I meant to figure this out if you left out the relevant information?! Compared to that, the ones I love usually radically shift my understanding of a character, merely by putting something they have done in a new light. As in, all the puzzle pieces were there, I just hadn't considered one specific approach which is now obvious! So if you know books like that, please recommend them!

And that's it for me! What do you think of Silver Nitrate? And what kind of twists do you like?