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Book: “Something Followed Us Home: Tales of Latiné Horror” by Cynthia Pelayo (Ed.)
Publishing Info: Atria, September 2026
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC at ALAAC26
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: Dive into the chilling depths of Latiné horror with Something Followed Us Home, edited by Bram Stoker Award–winner Cynthia Pelayo, a groundbreaking anthology where each story reimagines immigration, colonization, faith, and folklore as the fears we inherit and carry across borders and generations.
Something followed us home. It crawled in with our prayers, slipped into our beds, watched from mirrors, waited in water, and learned our names. In these stories, horror does not announce itself. It possesses, feeds, whispers, and waits.
Gathering chilling work from some of today’s most acclaimed Latiné voices, this anthology moves through haunted households, brutal landscapes, sacred spaces turned dangerous, and bodies claimed by forces both ancient and intimate. The dead murmur behind locked doors. Bones rebuild themselves under merciless suns. Love becomes a doorway for demonic hunger. Prayers summon answers that arrive too late…or too fully. Blood, devotion, and memory intertwine as the past presses back with teeth.
Something Followed Us Home is a landmark anthology of Latiné horror. These stories remind us that the past is never gone, the dead are never silent, and the places we come from will always find their way back to us. Featuring stories Agustina Bazterrica, Ann Dávila Cardinal, Cynthia Pelayo, Isabel Cañas, Gerardo Sámano Córdova, Zoraida Córdova, Mariana Enriquez, Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro, Ananda Lima, Xochitl Gonzalez, Leopoldo Goût, Juan Martinez, Mónica Ojeda, Daniel Jóse Older, Lilliam Rivera, Alex Segura, Diana Rodriguez Wallach
Review: Thank you to Atria for providing me with an ARC of this novel at ALAAC26 and thank you to Cynthia Pelayo for signing it!
One of my favorite moments at ALAAC this past summer was getting to go to a panel that focused on horror and thriller novels, especially because Cynthia Pelayo was one of the speakers AND she was there to promote the short stories collection she edited entitled “Something Followed Us Home: Tales of Latiné Horror”. This book had been on my must read list for a long time, and not only getting a copy but also getting her to sign it (and to tell her how much we like her here on the blog!) was a true joy. I opted to save it for Horrorpalooza, and it was a good call because it is a great horror collection for the spooky season! No surprises here, given that I really enjoy a lot of the authors that contributed.
Like I always do, I will review in detail my three favorite stories from the collection, and then review the collection as a whole.
The Hand That Feeds by Isabel Cañas: We all know how much I love Cañas, and her contribution to the collection was pretty early on and it really sank its claws into me. A she wolf, La Loba, who can transform between human and canid is living her life, until she marries a controlling man who decides to take her wolf skin and therein steal away her powers and agency. This story feels like it’s within the same realm as the story of the selkie, but Cañas brings in some more tension and some gruesome beats to it, making it deeply satisfying.
El Jíbaro de Puerto Rico by Cynthia Pelayo: This is my favorite in the collection, and I was full on weeping by the end. Pelayo is one of my favorite horror authors because she can bring in such bittersweet beauty with incredible beats of frightening prose, and while this one isn’t exactly subtle, I think we can throw subtlety out the window when talking about colonization and the violent suppression of a people. A teenage girl lives with her abuelo outside of San Juan, preparing for a misa and seance with some strangers, all while her family is haunted by violence and despair as the American Government brings more and more force to the island. As I said, this one made me cry, but while it’s upsetting and horrifying it is also raw, dreamy, and beautiful.
We Are Gathered Together by Diana Rodriguez Wallach: There were a few quite humorous stories in this book to balance out some of the horrors, and this one was the last story in the collection and also helped it end on a charmingly funny note. A school community is gathering for the funeral of a fifteen year old girl, though many of them were either wholly removed from her life or downright awful to her. Little do they know that this funeral is inhabited by some things that aren’t quite human… I was cackling at this story, with some fun bitchy antagonists and a fun twist that felt pretty damn cathartic when all was said and done!
Taking the collection in as a whole, this was a well done anthology! I liked the variety of authors and their different perspectives, and while I generally enjoyed the horror and dark fantasy tales more than the speculative fiction ones I felt that each story had things that I enjoyed about them. The cultural throughline of various Latiné inspired stories, be it vis a vis history, folklore, horror mythologies, and more really blended together to bring a unique reading experience that I greatly enjoyed. Whether it be about the horrors of colonialism, the realities of living in America during this time period as a Latiné person, or just plain old horror stories from the various parts of the diaspora, it meshes well and I found it very entertaining and creepy at times.
“Something Followed Us Home” definitely lived up to my expectations! If you want some stories that you can tackle one at a time at your own pace, consider giving it a go!
Rating 8: A solid collection of horror, dark fantasy, and speculative fiction tales with Latiné experiences and perspectives at the forefront, “Something Followed Us Home” is must read for this Halloween season.
Reader’s Advisory:
“Something Followed Us Home” is included on the Goodreads list “Horror Books Coming in 2026”.
