Author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Publisher: Tor Nightfire
Released: September 7^th, 2021
Received: NetGalley
Warnings: Slavery, gore, dismemberment, animal abuse (dog fighting)

If you’re looking for a spooky read to pick up this year, consider Certain Dark Things. Written by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (the author that brought us Mexican Gothic), this novel very much delves into the paranormal side of things in a delightfully dark fashion.

In a world where vampires exist, there are few places that are truly safe from them. Especially when you’re a vampire on the run from a rival clan, Atl can assure you of just how difficult that challenge is.

Her run brings her across Domingo, a young man living in Mexico City. Together, they’re going to keep running and do their best to stay alive – and out of the hands of police and vampires alike if they can help it.

“Nothing is easier.” Elisa said. “It’s just another way to get killed.”

I don’t know how, but I somehow managed to miss the release of Certain Dark Things back in 2016. Thankfully, it caught my attention during the reprinting process this year, so I’m going to take this as a net positive.

Certain Dark Things is a very different vampire novel than I’m used to. Personally, I love seeing different takes on legend and lore, so I was thrilled to see what sort of world Silvia Moreno-Garcia created here.

That being said, I do wish that we could have had more time to delve into it a bit deeper. I feel like there’s so much potential here and that we only just scratched the surface of what was available. I don’t know; maybe that’s just me being a greedy reader?

Don’t worry; there’s still plenty of blood in this vampire tale! It’s actually quite a lot, so if blood and gore isn’t your thing, you should probably find a different book to read. On a related note, other warnings for this book include slavery, eye trauma, and animal abuse (dogfighting). I’m not going to lie, the latter was pretty rough for me to read, and I probably would have put it down had I not been feeling so stubborn at the time.

Still, I think Certain Dark Things is a novel that paranormal fantasy lovers will really enjoy, especially if they like it when their novels get a bit dark and gory.

Thanks to Tor Nightfire and #NetGalley for making this book available for review. All opinions expressed are my own.