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Velvet was the Night: President Obama's Summer Reading List 2022 pick

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And they both have the MOST EXCELLENT taste in music. Seriously, their record collections are to die for. A finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Selected for CBC Canada Reads longlist, one of the best books of the year according to The New York Times Book Review. The next thing I knew, I was being transported to Mexico City. I was fully immersed within this story, with the characters, with their inner musings. I couldn't put it down.

The author playlist was great at the end as these are songs I grew up on that have been remade over and over so much you never know who was the original singer. In this foray into the noir genre, SMG once again transports her readers to 20th Mexico. This time around the action takes place in Mexico City during the 1970s, aka during Mexico’s ‘Dirty War’, a period of civil unrest, with student demonstrators and civilians clashing against and being persecuted/disappeared/massacred by the government.

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Elvis is a member of The Hawks. The Hawks were a government-trained paramilitary group. Elvis was an intriguing character. He grappled with using violence and cared about how others perceived him. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed the other two books I'd read by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and the writing in this one is as sharp as ever, somehow the story itself fell flat to me. I didn't connect with it at all. And I've been trying to figure out what happened ever since. If you need to be hooked in the beginning, this is definitely not for you. But if you can hang in there till about 50% of the way in, this is well worth the time. It went from being a 3 star read to being a 4 1/2 star read in my mind. I seriously enjoyed that last half!! Maite is the nervous, lonely secretary who adores Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. She spends her spare moments reading her Secret Romance comics. She is beside herself that a favorite character falls into a coma. It was funny how she would sneak moments of reading in at work. I've never heard of romance comics, but after googling them I was able to see many varieties. I loved her character and her chapters were my favorite. She was like a "Cinderella, dreaming".

A rich novel with anengrossing plot,distinctive characters,and a pleasing touch of romance. Readers won’t be able to put it down.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) I thought the characters in this story were a bit different than what I have seen in some of the author’s previous works. In some of those, the main protagonists can be selfish or flawed but would not necessarily be considered “bad” people as a whole. However, this novel features more characters who may be seen as immoral or morally ambiguous. It was an interesting shift and dynamic. They were all incredibly well written and developed too. Velvet was the Night is an explosive combination of such classic ’70s thrillers as Three Days of the Condor and contemporary Mexican noir like Yuri Herrera’s celebrated Signs Preceding the End of the World. It's the 1970's in Mexico City and Maite starts and ends her day, every day, in the same robotic manner. She works as a secretary in a law firm where the majority of the time she is running errands for the top lawyers or shuffling papers across her desk. Maite circles the Help Wanted Ads in the hope that something will prompt her to better her mundane life manipulated by her mother and overbearing sister.

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Silvia Moreno-Garcia presents a well-crafted storyline based on true events in Mexico City. The 1970's brought student unrest as activists took to the streets. The government, in turn, sent goons to stop any uprisings and the result was chaos and bloodshed. Read the Afterword at the end by this author to get a clearer picture of what actually took place. Leonora doesn't return. And things in Mexico City are about to boil over into a political nightmare with Maite, of all people, somehow at the center of the story. Now, I'm starting from a place of bias when I say that I love Silvia Moreno-Garcia already. I'm primed to—at a minimum—enjoy their work as I love the writing style and their way of delving into character development. This novel was no exception. I loved it too. Maite is a lonely girl who is quite tired of her 9-5 boring job and wants nothing more to shed her boring image. So much so that she reads romantic comics and makes up stories putting herself into them. She is thrown into a dangerous adventure when her neighbor asks her to cat sit.

Finally, the title was expertly chosen and I loved the references to the song 'Strangers in the Night' that both of the characters listen to as well as "Blue Velvet', and by the end, we get a real sense of how well-weaved throughout the novel the title really is - this was expertly done. As the narrative evolves the two strangers begin to orbit closer and closer together, but will they collide? While at times I liked SMG’s prose, her style strikes me as passive. That is to say that when she recounts something I feel very much at a distance from what she’s recounting (even if that thing is happening there and then). As Maite and Elvis come closer to discovering the truth behind Leonora's disappearance, they can no longer escape the dangers threatening to consume their lives, with hitmen, government agents and Russian spies all aiming to find or protect Leonora's secrets - at gunpoint.I was hooked from the first few chapters..... the mysterious/smoky tone, unusual characters (not your neighbor next door types) and the 1970's Mexico City setting. There’s also beautiful writing, which makes me eager to read more of the author’s books. I just didn’t connect at all to the characters or the content of this one. Had I read the end of the book before starting the beginning, I would have known this particular story wasn’t a great fit for me. This was definitely a slower story. I felt that it was much longer than need be. I did grow slightly bored with everyone's obsession about Leonora's whereabouts at some point.

As Maite and Elvis follow Leonora’s trail, they journey deeper into a world of student radicals, hitmen, government agents and Russian spies, who are all determined to unearth Leonora’s secrets- at gunpoint. Mexico City: while student protests and political unrest consume the city, Maite escapes from her humdrum life in the stories of passion and danger that fill the latest issue of Secret Romance. Elvis is a member of the Hawks which is a group run by the government. He is a criminal who loathes violence. When it becomes known that Lenora has photos that the government do not want to be seen, El Mago, Elvis's boss sends him and his crew to get those pictures. While looking for the Lenora and the pictures, Maite catches his eye and Elvis' eye especially when he learns of the things they have in common. Needless to say, both of their searches are dangerous - more dangerous than they could ever imagine! Mexico in the 1970s is a dangerous country, even for Maite, a secretary who spends her life seeking the romance found in cheap comic books and ignoring the activists protesting around the city. When her next-door neighbor, the beautiful art student Leonora, disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman—and journeying deeper into Leonora’s secret life of student radicals and dissidents. Swirling in parallel trajectories, Maite and Elvis attempt to discover the truth behind Leonora’s disappearance, encountering hitmen, government agents, and Russian spies. Because Mexico in the 1970s is a noir, where life is cheap and the price of truth is high.

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Silvia Moreno-Garcia is wonderful at setting an atmosphere within her stories. It pulled me right in from the beginning and I was there for the low-stakes and small twists and turns. Why I kept falling in love with the book covers of Silvia Moreno Garcia’s! Isn’t this one gorgeous? Mexican Gothic’s cover is still my favorite but this smoky, mysterious vibes of the cover and author’s name made me dive into this one by going blind! Before I move to the reasons why I did not vibe with this, I will try and mention a few positive-ish things: My sincerest appreciation to Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Del Rey, and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy. All opinions included herein are my own.

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