What Smack Said #25
Monkeys and haunted houses
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I had such grand plans for July's newsletter, but it fell off my to-do list when we left the country at the end of the month for my cousin's destination wedding in Costa Rica.
It was kind of a weird trip, but I attribute part of that to the fact that we stayed in a resort the whole time. Resorts are weird, you know? It's like Disneyland. Nothing is really real. (With apologies for the Disney aficionados out there.)
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I also caught covid for the first time while at the resort, which suuuuuucked and meant I missed the wedding and reception. My family was very supportive, though:
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I missed the nature hikes but still got to see some truly determined capuchins, as well as a couple of adorable babies clinging to their mamas' backs. (See the right hand photo below.) They came poking about our first day there to see if we would feed them, then didn't return until one hid half a banana on our balcony and another two found it. There was also a giant bathtub on our balcony (not a hot tub, just a bathtub with no jets) and one of the monkeys turned it on to drink out of the tap, which was incredibly unnerving.
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I spent most of the trip isolated in my hotel room, sleeping and reading. Easily the two best books I read while abroad were
The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandraw Khaw and
The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas.
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The Salt Grows Heavy is a dark retelling of "The Little Mermaid"—yes, darker than the original, though a beautiful platonic love does eventually win out in the end. I found a text that I sent to friends while I was reading this, saying of the two main characters:
T
hey're both terrifying which makes it 1000x better. Monsters taking apart other monsters to save children.
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This novella features a little mermaid who is the furthest thing from human, who was born and grew up in the darkest depths of the ocean and then was driven to the surface by a golden-haired prince and kidnapped as he slaughtered her nine sisters. The story begins just after she has given birth, and her children (all girls) have finished eating their way through the people living in the palace—most of what's left of their father is an open rib cage—and begun on the rest of the kingdom. They won't eat their mother, but they don't need her, either.
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So she leaves, though she has been made too human to return to the sea. A plague doctor joins her, and they travel into the deep, dark woods between kingdoms until they find a village of children led by a trio of seriously messed-up men pretending to be living saints.
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The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas is a haunted house horror story, and
man did it deliver. The first text I sent my friends while reading it said:
The hacienda is so scary I love it
(Also, shout out to Gabi and Laura for keeping me entertained and engaged while I was stuck by myself in the hotel room. They were my lifeline and kept me from wallowing, bless them.)
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The hacienda's evil stems from colonialism, stirred to life by the death of the owner's first wife, a stereotypically beautiful, blonde-haired, white woman. She and her husband assaulted and killed house servants without a shred of remorse. They operated a feudal system and took full advantage of their place at the top of the food chain. The servants are technically not enslaved, but they have no recourse against abuse. Most cannot move away, and there is no path to justice against the rich and powerful.
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But the pretty white wife died, quickly and unexpectedly (a.k.a. mysteriously), and the husband hastily replaced her with Beatriz, who is poor, dark-skinned, and desperate to get herself and her mother out of their incredibly precarious living situation. Within days of their wedding, Beatriz's new husband drops her off at his country estate and returns to the capital. And as soon as he does, Beatriz's predecessor begins her nightly attacks. They're terrifying, and the help that Beatriz brings in from the local parish doesn't have the power to save Beatriz or himself.
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The Hacienda happened to be the first of about three haunted house books I read in a row, followed by two more in August. Though there are some close runners-up, this was definitely my favorite.
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It's also worth noting that, while it has a romantic subplot,
The Hacienda is
not a romance. (I.e., the romance doesn't have a happy ending. It was still so good, though.)
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