Pinata: A Novel (Gout)

Pinata: A Novel
by Leopoldo Gout (2023)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a pandemic book club alternate selection. It wasn't selected. However, given the wait time for the book, I reserved it before the poll results were in. I listened to most of the book, and I read it in its entirety. Since I finished reading it, I didn't feel the need to finish listening.

I read this book before The Saint of Bright Doors but I forgot to include it in the blog when I was catching up with my backlog. Oops. I read this a month ago, end of March, begining of April. I could check Libby to see when I checked it out, but it's not that important.

Pinata sits on top as the best book I've read this year although it isn't perfect. I believe I gave it 4 stars on Good Reads, and I would give it 4.5 out of 5 here. I enjoyed it, but the ending was a little off for me.

The book opens centuries ago with Mexico being conquered and a church being constructed on Mexican burial grounds. The priests there find pinatas, the ancient kind made of dead bodies, and destroy them. One priests suffers a horrible supernatural death because of it.

Flash forward to the present day. The church is being restored to create a boutique hotel. Carmen Sanchez is an architect sent to Mexcio to oversee the work. She faces sexism and nationalism -- she's of Mexican heritage but still a foreighner. It's summertime, so she brings her two daughters. One, Izel, is a teen who hates that she was dragged along instead of going to drama camp with her friends (she has lots of teen drama) and who has a secret boyfriend that she's constantly texting. The younger daughter, Luna, is a bit of a misfit in school but she devours all the curiousities that Mexico has to offer.

A Mexican woman who works at city hall, Yoltzi, has the ability to see spirits, an ability she's always had. (I have to admit, when first reading, I thought she was an older woman, not someone in her 20s or 30s.) She spots Luna being followed by spirits and is worried that her openness makes her vulnerable to spirits taken over her.

When an accident at the cathedral causes a wall to be broken and a secret chamber (not on any of the floorplans going back hundreds of years) is revealed, containing some of the pinatas we read about earlier. Because of the incident, Sanchez is recalled to New York, but not before Luna steals one of the pinatas and manages to get in through custons. (She had a jar of crickets which would've been confiscated instead except that she ate them.

Once back in New York, the weirdness which started in Mexico starts to ramp up, and Luna is at the center of it.

Yoltzi, along with other side characters Father Verón and Quauhtli, try to get to New York. Here is where I was less happy with the book. It's not that I want characters to have Plot Armor but they don't need to have unnecessary targets on their backs either. It doesn't come down to one person standing, which if it had, I would've knocked a full star off my rating.

I enjoyed the book overall although the pacing was off a bit here and there.