Exploring Book Expectations and Dissecting 'Vampires of El Norte'

Have you ever picked up a book lured in by its gothic cover and intriguing title, only to find it veering towards a pink-hued telenovela instead? That's exactly what happened to us with Isabel Cañas' 'Vampires of El Norte.' We're not here to bash the book - quite the opposite - the writing is superb, and the historical and cultural accuracy is commendable. Our aim is to explore how the mismatch of expectations and reality can affect a reader's experience. So, let's navigate this journey of book expectations and disappointments together.

In the second half of our journey, we get into the marrow of 'Vampires of El Norte.' We dissect the slow-burn romance, the complex character relationships, and the rich tapestry of Latin American culture that adorns this book. We shine a light on Isabel Cañas' unique writing style and the themes she weaves into the plot. Trust us, this is more than your average review. Brace yourselves for a foray into the powerful world of literature, its surprises, and its ability to defy expectations.

Chapters

• 0:00 Book Expectations and Disappointments
• 8:33 "Vampires of El Norte" Book Review

Transcript

Johanny Ortega: 0:00

Oh we could, we could fly. Welcome to this new season of the Have a Cup of Johanny podcast. So I want to title this new season that I'm embarking on with I'm Growing, so this is going to be the season of growth and that's what I'm going to share with you throughout the season. So I thank you for coming over here and sitting with me and I hope you enjoy Hello everyone. So today we are going to talk about book betrayals. Are you ready? One, two, three, let's get it All right.

Johanny Ortega: 0:42

I'm so super excited about this, but I need to preface this by saying that I am not here to say that the book we will be discussing today is a bad book. By no means Is it a bad book. The writing is superb. The history and the research that went into the history because this is a historical Gothic novel is superb as well. The Mexican representation, as well as the cultural representation, was right on point as well. What we will be discussing here is the expectation a book gives to the reader based on its appearance because, yes, book covers matter quite a lot as well as the genre identification used for these books and how that translates to the expectations a reader has when cracking that spine open. If you are a spine cracker, you monster. And then what ensues from there.

Johanny Ortega: 1:53

So the book that I'm talking about is Isabel Cañas' Vampires of El Norte. So I love to do kind sandwiches. That's usually how I do evaluations and things of that nature. So let's start with some of the good things in this book, let's. So the book cover was amazing. If you look at this book cover, it's very gone with the wind, but better because it's Mexican. I love it. It has like the lady which I'm assuming is the main character, nina, and she has like the desert backdrop and the book and it's dark, right. And she has this blood red dress on. That is very poofy, yes, like this book takes place in 1840s, right. So the style, the dress, it just it looks amazing. So the book cover really sold me. And then the title, of course I love it Vampires of El Norte. Like something about Isabel Tanya is that she's going to have Spanish words in her title and in her book, and I give a fuck. And I love this about her. I love this. I do the same thing when it comes to my books and I don't translate the words either because I don't have to.

Johanny Ortega: 3:34

Are you ready to embark on a captivating journey of resilience and revelation? Get ready to immerse yourself in the extraordinary world of Isla del Gabo, a nine-year-old girl who has experienced more than her fair share of trauma. Isla's life takes a dramatic turn when she's forced to live with her dad and his new wife for six months. Her anxiety intensifies as she becomes convinced that her stepmom is an evil witch. But Isla is determined to protect herself and expose her stepmom's true nature. As the gripping story unfolds, isla discovers that things aren't always as they seem People are saying.

Johanny Ortega: 4:18

While the alarming trend of attempting to ban books continues in the United States, this book is a fantastic reminder of the power that books have. A child will read this story and feel seen, heard and hopefully feel some peace. For children of the appropriate age, this book provides the opportunity for a wonderful exercise and empathy. The message of this story is truly something a lot of children out there and even some adults might need to hear. Join Isla on a transformative journey of self-discovery where she learns that even the most traumatic experiences can be triumphantly overcome with the power of love and understanding.

Johanny Ortega: 5:02

Mrs Franci Zivo-Ring is available everywhere books are sold, but also Spanish is like a very common language. Yeah, so I love that. I love that about the book. And then the tension in the book between these two characters was like it gave me telenovela la dueña yo soy la dueña vibes, you know. But here we are, we're getting into the meat and potatoes of this. So it gave me too much telenovela vibes. It gave me too much of it.

Johanny Ortega: 5:52

This off of the cover, which is a very dark theme, it's right in line. You put this, you put this book on the shelf with Gothic and horror. It'll fall right in line. It fits perfectly. It will fit perfectly there on the shelf and that's what you want for your book. If you're listening and you're an aspiring author, right, you want your book to fit in but stand out as well. Yeah, so we're not talking about book covers, that would be another episode. So it fits, it fits perfectly.

Johanny Ortega: 6:29

But when all I was getting was this pretty pink telenovela vibes inside, I was like wait a minute, wait a minute. But I didn't have that hesitation until after. I want to say I went way past the midpoint because I know this author is a slow, a slow burn when it comes I'm not talking about romance here, but when it comes to the action, the mystery, the thrills in the book the Hacienda, which is another book by Isabel Tanya that I read, was very much like that Kind of like. It eases the reader into it. You get a few scares, a few descriptions of the monster and the Hacienda, the ghost that was haunting that mansion, but it's not full on until you get closer to the midpoint. So I knew I had to be patient with the author. I knew that. But long and behold, when I get to the midpart of it and it's still very much telenovela, you're not listening to me and they're going back and forth with a miscommunication trope that is very prevalent in the romance genre. I took a pause and I started to think that perhaps this is not going to be another five-star read from this author for me. For me because of that, because this was the first part of my expectation not being met, and then I continued to read and the second part, to my disappointment, became the lack of horror in a Gothic slash horror book. It was not there for me, so I just kept waiting because I felt that they would be a showdown between the main character and the vampires.

Johanny Ortega: 8:33

Because the book opens and if you're going to read this book, stop it here because I may be spoiling something for you, but you can also crack this open at your local bookstore. I see it. The book opens with Nina as I want to say, 11-year-old being bitten by one of these. And then Néstor, he brings her back home. He feels super guilty about it and this is Néstor, this is the romance interest. He brings her home and he watches as Nina dies. Her heart stops. Just think about this and think about all the ways that this book could have gone. So Nina's heart stops, néstor sees this, but then Nestor comes back nine years later and Nena short for Magdalena, is that life? You know she's alive, but he saw her heart stop. So just imagine the possibilities of this book. That doesn't happen. That doesn't happen. We don't get the hero understanding that. You know that I'm half vampire or whatever, right.

Johanny Ortega: 10:08

So many, so many different things that could have happened to make this a little bit more at least paranormal or something, but that didn't happen. So, with the very prominent word of vampire on the title, I thought it was going to be Nena Isubaquero, right, her love interest, going out into the desert and into this Mexico Texan desert of the Southwest region and fighting these creatures and then figuring out that Nena, she's not just a curandera but she's also like half vampire or something, because you know she has it in her blood now from when she was little and survived it. But this didn't happen. Instead, it was almost as if the addition of vampires was an afterthought. But I have a hard time believing that because that's the title.

Johanny Ortega: 11:13

The word vampire is in the book. But I'm saying it's an afterthought because this book was more about Nena in Nestor reconnecting after like nine years of him thinking that she was dead and her thinking that she left them because apparently her parents kept that away from her, that she had actually died and she doesn't remember anything. And the entire book is about them not saying the truth to the other until like almost towards the end, past the halfway mark, is when finally Nestor Lady say hey, you died. You know you died, I saw you died and I ran away because I couldn't live a life without you. And it took almost an entire novel and this man almost dying for him to finally say something like that.

Johanny Ortega: 12:10

Up to that point I was super impatient for something to happen, for for some something exciting to happen, because it had just been this, this back and forth, slow burn romance between these two characters. So I was already a bit disappointed about the romance aspect of it, so I at least wanted something to happen in that aspect, but it didn't. It didn't. And then finally, towards the end, we actually see vampires, right, and then some sort of fight. This is at the very end, folks. This is like towards, like I want to say like a chapter in the end, that's all, that's all, but it's still no revelation, no sort of Nina finally coming into her own metaphysical power or or any anything like that. Um, doesn't happen here, even though that's how we opened the book, with her being bitten. I think the thought process that Nina has in the book is that, perhaps because I'm on eating food, uh, they leave me alone, as opposed to no, their blood is in your body, now, you know so, now they see you as someone that is, is part of them. Ah, and that just gave me a lot to to think about, and it just it became this, this disappointing read. However, however, this is gotta. I gotta put the other bread in here into the sandwich.

Johanny Ortega: 13:53

The writing was superb when it comes to this author, and both do as seeing that, which is the previous book that I had loved, read and loved by this author, as well as this one, vampires of El Norte. The author does a great job in in making you feel things. Her writing is like purple prose minus. People have, like I know some people hate purple prose, like scholarly folks right, they tend to look down at that. But to me that is beautiful when you can make your words on the page sing like that and and craft emotions into the reader. To me you are doing well, you're doing your damn job as a writer, because I I I felt everything.

Johanny Ortega: 14:43

Even though I wasn't expecting a heavy romance book, I was. I was feeling the tension, like I said, I was feeling the feels. I was feeling the rejection from from Nana when she thought that this toilet that I was refusando, he was rejecting her, and stuff like that. So I was feeling what these characters were feeling because of the way that she, the author, writes and then she structures her sentences and paragraphs. It's, it's beautiful. So I suggest when it comes to this book, because the writing is so beautiful, that this book should be textually read as opposed to listened. I listened to it and it's still beautiful, because the thing is with beautiful writing is that it has beautiful rhythm as well. It's almost poetic in a sense. So it sounds just like I'm doing a chef's kiss here. Sounds amazing, amazing. But when it comes to this book, I I love to see that kind of writing on paper and highlighted and actually look at the structure so I can study it further. That's, that's how good it is.

Johanny Ortega: 15:59

And another thing that I completely enjoyed was how, while the characters got on my nerves, they reminded me a whole lot about my, my family from my husband's side. So I was like, wow, super relatable, super relatable. And the whole aspect of what will people think kind of aspect that is still very relevant in Latin American culture period and I see that in my own family and how sometimes their whole lives are structured in a way to satisfy other people's perceptions and that can be so binding and you see that here. So you can tell that the author was writing either from experience or from a very well thought out research that she did, and I found the behaviors of the family to be super relatable and the culture to be super relatable. So I really I enjoy that. I, like I said before on my TikTok videos. Whenever I feel seen in books, it's like a warm hug to me. When I see my culture represented, when I see things represented of those things that I know and love, then it's like a warm hug to me to read that book.

Johanny Ortega: 17:32

So, yeah, I gave this book a four star. Four stars because of that, because the writing was amazing and the representation it's great as well, and it was there and it hit those notes. And I took one star because of the heavy romance themes in here, which did not meet my expectations when it comes to this book. But it didn't stop me from being entertained and it didn't stop me from finishing the book. So that's why I gave it four stars.

Johanny Ortega: 18:13

So what I learned from this experience going forward is that I will ask more specific questions about the book because I did a lot of assuming here. Yes, the book cover is supposed to represent the genre, but like the wave of hype that came through book talk, kind of like, swallowed me whole and I bathed in it and I went ahead and got this book under different assumptions or incorrect assumptions, I should say. So, going forward, for sure I will be asking more poignant questions so that way I can be satisfied when I read a book, and if you're listening to this and you're into gothic books with heavy romance plot, then this book is for you. If you're a slow burn romance, girly reader shit, definitely this book is for you. You are going to love this. This is a historical, slow burn romance. You will be like munching at the bits per se. So go for it. I think you would enjoy it a lot and from what I've been seeing on TikTok I'm so old I say take tack. A lot of people are enjoying this book as well. So, yeah, so check it out and I will talk to you next Wednesday.

Johanny Ortega: 20:07

Thank you for being here with me. I hope you got something out of this and let me know either in the comments, but I don't really see comments. So email me at joa, at haveacupofjoanicom, and send me any suggestions of what you want to hear from me, and I will respond in kind. All right, see you next Wednesday. Bye, oh, we could, we could fly. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Oh, we could, we could fly. Thank you so much for listening. Don't forget to follow and subscribe to the show. See you on the next episode Bye, oh, we could, we could fly. Oh, we could fly.