Joe
I enjoyed the writing of all of these stories. I don’t know that they all landed the horror elements but at the very least they had interesting plots. Some of the standouts were “Dark Home”, by Nnedi Okorafor, “Your Happy Place” by Terence Taylor, and “Hide & Seek” by P. Djèlí Clark.
The central plot is interesting and I liked the characters, but this could have been edited down a lot and little would have been lost. Parts of it almost read like it is the script for a movie itself, with a lot of explanation instead of action. Also while I found parts of Mexican Gothic to be genuinely creepy, the horrors here don’t quite hit the same level of intensity.
Sometimes I go to the library and judge books only by their cover. This one seemed interesting, and I can say it was. The writing is fantastic, and while I had no idea what the book was about going in, I became weirdly engrossed in the main character's life, just as they became engrossed in their work.
The idea was interesting, the humor was fine, but I’m pretty sure the main character’s personality and backstory was generated by AI.