2025 Latinx Books We're Excited About
Mostly horror, but also like horror adjacent!
Normally we only write things up that are related to the book cub, next pick/discussion questions. BUT, there are so many awesome books by Latinx authors coming to us in 2025, that we wanted to share some of the ones we’re most excited about.
Malinalli by Veronica Chapa
Malinalli is one of the many names given to the indigenous Nahua woman who help translate to the colonizer Hernan Cortes. Other names include Malintzin, La Malinche (a straight up insult today in Mexico, meaning you’re a traitor), Doña Marina, and Malinalxochitl. It’s even said she was La Llorona.
This book is a much needed retelling of her story. Here’s the synopsis:
Malinalli is all of those things and more, but at heart, she’s a young girl, kidnapped into slavery by age twelve, and fighting to survive the devastation wrought by both the Spanish and Moctezuma’s greed and cruelty. Blessed with magical powers, and supported by a close-knit circle of priestesses, Mali vows to help defend her people’s legacy. In vivid, compelling prose, debut author Veronica Chapa spins an epic tale of magic, sisterhood, survival, and Mexican resilience. This is the first novel to reimagine and reinterpret Malinalli’s story with the empathy, humanity, and awe she’s always deserved.
It’s set to release March 11, 2025, but you can pre-order it too!
Vanishing Daughters by Cynthia Pelayo
If you were not aware, this is a paranormal and true crime podcast, as well as a book club. Spooky and crime is our thing and this book has both! Also, we loved Loteria, so we’re super excited for this one.
Here’s the synopsis:
It started the night journalist Briar Thorne’s mother died in their rambling old mansion on Chicago’s South Side.
The nightmares of a woman in white pleading to come home, music switched on in locked rooms, and the panicked fear of being swallowed by the dark…Bri has almost convinced herself that these stirrings of dread are simply manifestations of grief and not the beyond-world of ghostly impossibilities her mother believed in. And more tangible terrors still lurk outside the decaying Victorian greystone.
A serial killer has claimed the lives of fifty-one women in the Chicago area. When Bri starts researching the murders, she meets a stranger who tells her there’s more to her sleepless nights than bad dreams—they hold the key to putting ghosts to rest and stopping a killer. But the killer has caught on and is closing in, and if Bri doesn’t answer the call of the dead soon, she’ll be walking among them.
Haunted woman in white? Old mansion in Chicago? We are ready!
This one is coming to us soon! It’s set to release March 11, 2025
Bochica By Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro
IF you have listened to our non book club episodes, then YOU KNOW we have talked about this place. Tequendama falls. It was episode 53 and we shared the legend of this very haunted place in Colombia. This is the very haunted setting of this book and that’s why we are SO excited for it and this will FOR SURE be a book club pick.
Here’s the synopsis:
In 1923 Soacha, Colombia, La Casona—an opulent mansion perched above the legendary Salto del Tequendama waterfall—was once home to Antonia and her family, who settle in despite their constant nightmares and the house’s malevolent spirit. But tragedy strikes when Antonia’s mother takes a fatal fall into El Salto and her father, consumed by grief, attempts to burn the house down with Antonia still inside.
Three years later, haunted by disturbing dreams and cryptic journal entries from her late mother, Antonia is drawn back to her childhood home when it is converted into a luxurious hotel. As Antonia confronts her fragmented memories and the dark history of the estate, she wrestles with unsettling questions she can no longer ignore: Was her mother’s death by her own hands, or was it by someone else’s?
In a riveting quest for answers, Antonia must navigate the shadows of La Casona, unearthing its darkest secrets and confronting a legacy that threatens to swallow her whole.
This is set to release May 13, 2025!
The Possession of Alba Díaz By Isabel Cañas
Let it be known that in this podcast/book club, we absolutely love Isabel Cañas. So much that out of our 8 or 9 book club lists, we made time for two of her books and loved every bit of them. This is one book we CANNOT wait for. We also love a possession story.
Here’s the synopsis:
In 1765, plague sweeps through Zacatecas. Alba flees with her wealthy merchant parents and fiancé, Carlos, to his family’s isolated mine for refuge. But safety proves fleeting as other dangers soon bare their teeth: Alba begins suffering from strange hallucinations, sleepwalking, and violent convulsions. She senses something cold lurking beneath her skin. Something angry. Something wrong.
Elías, haunted by a troubled past, came to the New World to make his fortune and escape his family’s legacy of greed. Alba, as his cousin’s betrothed, is none of his business. Which is of course why he can’t help but notice the growing tension between them every time she enters the room…and why he notices her deteriorate when the demon’s thirst for blood gets stronger.
In the fight for her life, Alba and Elías become entangled with the occult, the Church, long-kept secrets, and each other… not knowing that one of these things will spell their doom.
This is set to release August 19, 2025! *original post had 8/29/25 but it is 8/19!
The Bewitching By Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Another author we also absolutely love and have done 2 of her books for the book club lol. Also, we love a witch story! AND this is a story taking places in at least three different eras. So we were of course, soooo excited to see when this book was announced. Not to mention, the beautiful cover! Just look at it.
Here’s the synopsis:
“Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches”: That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva—stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that’s why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales.
In the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay’s most famous novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story: Decades earlier, during the Great Depression, Tremblay attended the same university where Minerva is now studying and became obsessed with her beautiful and otherworldly roommate, who then disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
As Minerva descends ever deeper into Tremblay’s manuscript, she begins to sense that the malign force that stalked Tremblay and the missing girl might still walk the halls of the campus. These disturbing events also echo the stories Nana Alba told about her girlhood in 1900s Mexico, where she had a terrifying encounter with a witch.
Minerva suspects that the same shadow that darkened the lives of her great-grandmother and Beatrice Tremblay is now threatening her own in 1990s Massachusetts. An academic career can be a punishing pursuit, but it might turn outright deadly when witchcraft is involved.
This is set to release July 15, 2025
I am excited for Malinalli!! I know very little of the original story other than "The Malinche" was the worst of the worst (eye-roll) of women. Once I read the actual history of who she was (a child) the story really changes. She is beyond due for a re-telling and recognition of her story, even if for now it is a fictional story.