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What a disappointment. I guess I'm in the minority where this book won a Goodread's Choice 2020 Winner award but this book is boring, not scary, and not super gothic. I was excited to read this book based on the hype but I literally fell asleep every time I tried to read it. The first 75% of the book drags on so slowly that the last 50-60 pages where stuff actually happens are not satisfactory enough to makeup for the slow slog to get there. The characters are very one dimensional. I did appreciate the thought put into the "twist" but the themes at play are nothing new.

As one Amazon reviewer D. D. Montee put it, "No sense of the time period (the 1950's), no sense of location (most of the characters are British! So why even set it in Mexico?), no real sense of atmosphere (except for the usual clichés: fog, bad dreams, dark corridors, old cemeteries, assorted fungi), and no real narrative drive...This is the most over-hyped 'horror' novel since BIRD BOX. But maybe that's just because most readers don't really want to be haunted by their horror reads." (I liked Bird Box, actually.)

If you want a truly terrifying/chilling gothic fiction, I highly recommend The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell.