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Book: “Rooted” by Leopoldo Goût
Publishing Info: Tor Nightfire, September 2026
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: Aurora, a successful art lawyer, has returned to Mexico to celebrate a recent campaign for the repatriation of stolen artifacts. In particular a mysterious statue of an Aztec god.
There’s nothing wrong with Aurora. But Mexico City isn’t as she remembered, and as she cares for her ailing mother, home isn’t as she remembered either. Nothing is as she remembered. Elements of her past hint at darkness and power, and reality begins to crack and warp the streets.
There’s nothing wrong with Aurora. But some sicknesses can’t be healed. As Aurora’s sanity unravels, she must pry apart her family’s secrets and accept the simplest of The Flayed One cannot stay buried.
Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!
I really loved Leopoldo Goût’s previous horror novel “Piñata”, as I found the story, themes, and critique of violent colonialism to be incredibly powerful as well as very creepy. So of course I wanted to read his newest novel “Rooted”. And also, look at that cover. I’m not usually that in tune with the impact of book covers (I know Serena comments on covers a fair amount!), but this one really jumped out at me. Throw in themes of artifact repatriation and the violent history of colonized Mexico (and the wrath of the Old Gods), and I was super pumped to check it out.
Once again Goût centers his story and its themes with a backdrop in Mexico City, and with a huge theme of Mesoamerican mythology and folklore. Our protagonist is Aurora, a lawyer who is returning to her original home of Mexico City as she oversees repatriation of ancient artifacts that had been stolen and sent to other museums. Now that the artifacts are being returned she can celebrate as well as see her mother Maria, who returned to Mexico from Aurora’s childhood in Texas after Aurora grew up. But once she is there she starts having strange visions and hallucinations, as well as memories that don’t make sense, and they seem to have to do with a statue of Xipe Totec, also known as The Flayed One. It’s a great premise, and there are so many questions of what Aurora is seeing, what the statue means, and what the memories and dreams could mean. It’s creepy and at times incredibly gory, with lots of nasty body horror bits as well as commentary about family secrets and familial traumas that are kept from the younger generations out of a misguided attempt to protect them. There were times that I would go from squirming over some of the body horror stuff, and then I would feel a deep melancholy because of the difficulties in the relationship between Aurora and Maria, with Maria hiding things in hopes of protecting Aurora, but only making it worse in trying to keep her safe.
I do think that sometimes the story stalled here and there. It had a true bang of a prologue, and then the set up of Aurora going to Mexico City to work as a lawyer within repatriation deals of Mexican artifacts being brought back to Mexico was incredibly fascinating for me (as I used to work in museums and these questions are always present). And with the set up of the Xipe Totec statue ever present and the weird things that Aurora was seeing made the slow burn of the plot nice and creepy, but I did find myself wanting the plot to move forward a bit faster with repetitive creepy moments weighing it down until we got some answers. We did eventually get there and once some of the pieces fell into place things picked up again, but I think it could have been tightened up without sacrificing a build up of suspense.
But pacing issues aside, I enjoyed the themes and horror elements of “Root”. Leopoldo Goût delivers another satisfying horror tale! I look forward to seeing what more he brings as time goes on.
Rating 7: It was a little slowly paced at times, but the body horror, folklore, and look into family secrets and trauma all worked well for me.
Reader’s Advisory:
“Rooted” is included on the Goodreads list “All the New Horror Books Arriving in September 2026”.
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