words by Millie Harris

"How foolish of her to dream of autonomy. Of control over her life. She had never had any. She had always been this: a mongrel of mortal and monster, her soul charred and crumbling, her life forfeit since the moment her wet body emerged from a stranger and met the icy mountain air."

At first glance, The Possession of Alba Díaz appears to follow familiar gothic tropes, with the remote setting, illness spreading with haste, and a young woman confronted by forces beyond her control; but Isabel Cañas seems less concerned about writing gothic spectacle than exploring what it means to survive inside a system already built to hollow you out. Set in 18th-century Mexico, beginning in plague-stricken Zacatecas and later moving to an isolated mining town in the Mexican mountains, this novel draws on the history surrounding it. When a presence from the mines takes hold, Alba and her fiancé’s estranged cousin, Elías, are forced to reckon with the dark history the town keeps, alongside the futures they hope for. The horrors at play are not only supernatural, but institutional and environmental. The terror is not only with the act of possession itself, but all that causes and follows it. Cañas handles all of this with such precision, delivering a novel that is as thematically rich as it is emotionally grounded. 

At the centre of the narrative is Alba, a young woman negotiating a marriage of convenience to secure limited autonomy for herself. Her life is upended when she arrives at the mines and finds herself increasingly disoriented — geographically, spiritually, and psychologically. She begins to lose track of where she is, who she is, and what she has done before realising about the truth of what is happening to her. Importantly, Alba is not written as a revolutionary figure, but rather as a woman who does her best within the narrow framework available to her. This realism makes her recognisably human and very easy to sympathise with, though her characterisation is not without issues. Early in the novel Alba is introduced with quite a clear sense of self; she is composed, observant and aware of the decisions she must make to better her life, despite the lies she must tell to get there. Yet, as the novel progresses, she becomes harder to grasp. In many ways, the instability of her character is the point. Thematically, the novel is rooted in the slow disintegration of identity, in what happens when memory is no longer trustworthy and agency is lost. The fact that Alba becomes a more difficult character to hold onto mirrors the erosion of her personhood under both societal pressures and supernatural intrusion. But while this ambiguity supports the novel’s themes, it also creates emotional distance. Her losses are undeniably significant, but their emotional weight is diluted by the narrow range of her responses. For a majority of the book, the fears and concerns she has remain the same, even as the circumstances around her shift in drastic ways. Without a much needed emotional progression, the impact of what she endures lands more softly than it could. Interestingly, it was the novel’s final stretch that made Alba feel the most compelling to me. Throughout much of the narrative she is cautious, careful and often overwhelmed, but there is a notable change in the final few chapters. She makes more impactful choices and is no longer driven by fear. She no longer negotiates with what society imposes upon her, but instead meets it on her own terms, however dark they may be. That development recontextualised so much of her earlier passivity and left me thinking about her long after the book ended.

Elías, the male lead, offers a counterpoint. He is an alchemist who works with silver and mercury, suffering from metaphorical demons haunted by his past. Elías’ relationship with Alba provides the novel with its most unexpectedly tender element. Their romance is forbidden and dangerous, yet it reads as truly earned with their scenes paced to allow trust to accumulate. It gave the novel a human centre to rally around, making the stakes that much higher as the romance strengthened rather than weakened the horror aspects. The looming threat over the novel has something tangible to endanger, giving readers something further to root for, to wish for a way for the two to keep choosing each other despite the strife they’re facing. Horrific scenes of death and violence end with them checking in on each other, keeping the human stakes at the forefront. In this way, their love shows us that the harder they fall for each other, the more they have to lose and the sharper the fear becomes. For readers who, like myself, have been searching for a romance that feels earned and compelling, the relationship between Alba and Elías will come as a pleasant surprise. 

I also truly enjoyed how complex the side characters were alongside our main characters. Internal motivations are revealed with natural ease without ‘info-dumping’ who they are on page. Opinions I had of certain characters, such as María and Carlos, shifted continuously as we delved deeper into their psyches. However, I do wish we got to see more of Carlos outside of his relationship status with others. He was such an interesting character and I am still struggling to pin down my thoughts on him days after having finished the novel. His complexity could have been given more time and depth to have his character become more fleshed out, which I believe would have carried much more weight in some revelations that occurred. 

While readers of Silvia Moreno-García’s Mexican Gothic or Cañas’s debut novel The Hacienda may come expecting a high gothic spectacle, The Possession of Alba Díaz gives us a much more grounded tale. The horror is no less terrifying, but it's more internal than external, leading to my absolute favourite aspect of the novel: the setting. This novel fuses gothic horror with the historical and environmental specificity of its setting, feeling truly rooted in its time period. Historically, Zacatecas was Mexico’s second most important city, its silver mines and Franciscan, Augustinian, and Dominican networks making it a cultural hub for the country. Cañas combines these details through the narrative smoothly, grounding a horrifying premise that is otherwise quite unrealistic. The setting itself makes the act of possession feel inevitable in a place where bodies and ground are both worked until they give way. The demon possessing Alba mirrors this: a claim laid on a person, repeated until the self relents. The horror emerges not just from the supernatural, but from the accumulation of what has already been taken from both the land and the people. The act of possession becomes a metaphor for every way in which Alba is already owned — by her family, her fiancé, the Church, and the societal structures that deem her body to not be her own. Despite all of these larger issues, even when terrifying, it remains deeply human. The horror is instead rooted in consequences, the result making the historical aspects equally as compelling as the horror elements.

Thematically, the novel consistently returns to questions of control. The demon’s incursion literalises what the world already demands of Alba. Her limited autonomy within her family and society mirrors her physical loss of agency during possession. Paradoxically, under the demon’s influence, Alba steps outside her put-upon role, testing what has been enforced on her. Structurally, however, the novel is not without issues. The pacing, in particular, feels uneven. Much of the first half is devoted to family and social dramas, with the possession itself entering later than expected. The effect is that the novel feels divided into two halves, one focused on familial tensions and the other on supernatural horror, rather than being fully integrated. A structure weighted more heavily towards possession would likely have produced a stronger balance. As it stands, the delay makes the book feel slightly off-kilter, though never unengaging.

The novel’s conclusion inherits some of the book’s pacing problems. The resolution is coherent and, in places, effective, but it arrives too quickly to carry its full emotional weight. The final chapter moves past the consequences of the climax with little room for aftermath with a late plot-twist that, although surprising on first pass, feels insufficiently prepared for. It is not an unsatisfying ending, it simply steers back towards the known when the novel seemed poised to risk something braver. Even so, you do find your heart glowing with a nice warmth at how it all comes to an end.

Despite these criticisms, The Possession of Alba Díaz succeeds in what matters most. The horror is effective without being excessive, the historical detail is incredibly interesting and the romance provides a human centre that elevates the story beyond what is expected of its genre. Cañas’s ability to blend atmosphere, history, and character into a coherent whole is so utterly impressive, sustaining the novel’s pull even when it has weaker moments. Few horror novels manage to be described as beautiful, but the elegance of Cañas’s prose justifies the label. There’s a clear love of language within the book, something I wholeheartedly share as I found myself grinning from ear to ear to pause and Google whichever English or Spanish word I did not know. The Spanish terms and ecclesiastical vocabulary do appear without a glossary but are context legible, further enhancing the story’s immersement factor. Cañas’s writing is consistently arresting, this quality above all making the book memorable. 

In the end, The Possession of Alba Díaz is about what it means to live in a world that has a claim upon your body, your choices, your name, and what it costs to try and reclaim them for yourself. It’s a story about women’s autonomy, the weight of history and how love is often coupled with fear. While it may not be flawless in execution, it is deeply emotional, beautifully written, and rich with meaning. Ultimately, this is a novel that rewards patience. It is driven by atmosphere, the characters, and by how control is lost to then, with bloodied hands, be reclaimed. This is a four star read for me, feeling perfectly atmospheric as we arrive into autumn. I would highly recommend it.