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

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Maite works as a legal secretary in 1970s-Mexico City. But that's just her day job. At night she reads romantic comics and dreams of a different life for herself. Velvet Was the Night was a different kind of Moreno-Garcia read, however, and I'm still chewing on the why. For one thing, it took Moreno-Garcia's already slowwww pacing and dialed it down even further. Which I didn't know was possible. Let's be honest: I struggled with the slowness of the pacing for the first half of the book because it was just that—tooooooo slowwwwww. 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. Plus, how about that cover. Both of the books I have read by her have the most beautiful and intriguing covers!

She is deeply envious of her neighbour, Leonora, a beautiful art student who lives the life of excitement and intrigue Maite craves – so when she disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite jumps at the chance to uncover Leonora’s secrets. I normally enjoyed the author’s paranormal thrillers more but she meticulously succeeded to form a good story and showed us she could perfectly write in different genres. Maite is a 30-year-old woman in 1970s Mexico City. She lives in an apartment that she can't really afford, she works as a dictation secretary in a law office she doesn't like, and she's desperate for love and yet unwilling to open herself up to the possibility of finding it.Velvet Was the Night is a riveting historical crime noir that swept me up in its lush descriptions and complex characters consistent with everything else its author has written thus far. While this book is much different than Moreno-Garcia’s previous six novels, it stays true to much of what made her other works so impressionable: profound characters and her general talent for storytelling. This is a novel that draws upon the intrigue to an almost impossible point, fraying the minute hold I had on everything that was happening, and leaving me unaware of what to expect next. Among the complicated alliances and brimming hostility, Moreno-Garcia captures a profound loneliness in each of her characters, a loneliness that propels them forward even when facing dangerous circumstances. Elvis and Maite specifically, have an underlying bond that is only strengthened by the things they are experiencing. Something that added a much-needed lightheartedness to an already intense story. Utilizing dual perspectives creates a kind of split viewpoint in the novel, juxtaposed against the exterior of the Dirty War only beginning to escalate in the small period of time in which this takes place. I’m not sure what this would have looked like if it only centered around one character's perspective, the outsider or the inside man. Both are necessary to craft the picture that Moreno-Garcia so brilliantly captures in the story. Even the connection between the two main characters is only strengthened by the existence of an alternating point of view, aiding in their respective development from start to finish. Having never read noir before, I can safely say I am planning on continuing given how much I enjoyed this. Silvia Moreno-Garcia has once again demonstrated her ability to write incredible stories in almost any genre, and I have no doubt her next project is going to be just as remarkable. Her seventh novel gives a glimpse into two lonely people living vastly different lives, and the potential they have to become something more together. 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. Still, this book has a vibe all its own and I appreciated learning some of Mexico’s more recent history while being thoroughly entertained. I loved this book, and I think a lot of other readers are going to enjoy their time with it. The story is told through the POVs of the two main characters, Maite and Elvis. Maite is a secretary, who is always looking for excitement, and who somehow finds herself investigating the disappearance of her neighbor, Leonora; and Elvis is a hired gun, who is also looking for Leonora, howbeit for much different reasons than Maite. I didn't care for either of them - frankly, they were both annoying characters. Their two storylines also felt disconnected, which made the entire reading experience rather disjointed. Unfortunately, I just never felt any type of connection to the storyline or the characters, and the ending was also very anti-climactic. While I loved Moreno-Garcia's writing style in "Mexican Gothic," I found it choppy and almost redundant in this one. There were also too-many-to-count references to 1970's music, which I didn't find enjoyable in the least.

As soon as I heard about SMG writing a book set in the 70s, I had to have it! I am entranced by this time in history where so much happened. Before I move to the reasons why I did not vibe with this, I will try and mention a few positive-ish things: She's not a likeable character, to be honest. But I didn't care— she was interesting. And interesting people are fun to follow within a story.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!

I will be honest, I have never watched/read an noir before. So I looked up the possible tropes and I felt this book didn't even slightly touched many of them.Entwined with Maite's story is the story of Elvis, a young man working for the Hawks, a shady, guerilla/gangsterized form of enforcers operating in the shadows of the current Mexican regime. Elvis fell into the line of work when his petty thieving brought him to the attention of the wrong people, and now he's embroiled in the drama whether he wants to be or not. And Elvis isn't quite sure he wants to be involved these days. Without emotionally connecting with the story, this felt like a slog that wouldn't end. I don't want to dissuade anyone from reading this because I can imagine it being enjoyable for the right audience, but unfortunately, it wasn't me. I remain a fan of the author, but I'll avoid any more of her noir pulp fiction. Leonora is a beauty, a free-spirit, a student, an artist. She lives across the hall from Maite. Although the two have never really socialized, Leonora comes to Maite one day for a favor and then disappears. some of the descriptions were actually pretty great and certainly fitted in with the noir aesthetic