The Bewitching

The Bewitching (2025) is a supernatural horror novel by Mexican Canadian author Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Moreno-Garcia is known for works that are suspenseful and genre-bending by fusing elements of horror, fantasy, and mystery. Her novels showcase Mexico’s rich culture and history, paying particular attention to women’s lives and experiences. Like many of her other books, The Bewitching features layered, female protagonists and explores the complex relationship between gender and identity. Moreno-Garcia’s most widely read work is her novel Mexican Gothic (2020), although Gods of Jade and Shadow (2019), Velvet was the Night (2021), The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (2022), Silver Nitrate (2023), and The Seventh Veil of Salome (2024) are also popular titles.

Using multiple timelines, The Bewitching tells the story of the teyolloquani, a terrifying creature from Indigenous folklore that bewitches its victims before draining their blood and sometimes eating their hearts. The Bewitching’s dual protagonists, Alba and her great-grand-daughter Minerva, must vanquish the teyolloquani to free themselves and their family from its grasp. Alba comes of age on a rural Mexican farm and is forced to make a difficult choice between her family’s traditions and a rapidly modernizing Mexico. Minerva is a graduate student at an American college completing a thesis whose source text bears an eerie similarity to the stories her great-grandmother told her about bewitchings and the presence of the paranormal. As the novel progresses, the relationship between the past and the present becomes alarmingly clear, and suspense mounts. The Bewitching interrogates the complex politics of class and gender as they intersect with folk traditions and the supernatural, explores the power of storytelling, and centers women’s empowerment and female agency.

This guide references the 2025 hardcover edition by Random House.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of substance use, animal death, death, graphic violence, mental illness, sexual content, and racism.

Plot Summary

The novel unfolds in three timelines, telling the story of Alba Quiroga, Minerva Contreras, and Beatrice Tremblay. The narrative begins in 1998 with Minerva, struggling to complete a thesis on horror writer Beatrice Tremblay’s novel The Vanishing. Minerva needs access to the personal collection of Carolyn Yates, a prominent donor to Minerva’s school and one of Tremblay’s close friends. Carolyn initially stalls Minerva, but her grandson Noah (a fellow student at Stoneridge College) invites Minerva over for brunch, and after meeting with her, Carolyn agrees to give Minerva access to Tremblay’s papers.

In 1908, Minerva’s great-grandmother, Alba, lives on her family’s farm in Hidalgo, Mexico. She is thrilled at the arrival of her sophisticated uncle Arturo from Mexico City. Alba’s father has just died, and Arturo hopes to convince her mother to sell the farm, but Alba’s brother, Tadeo, who has taken over management duties after the death of their father, refuses to sell. Alba is drawn to Arturo, and the two share many moments of fraught sexual tension, despite their age gap. One of the workers from a neighboring farm, Valentín, is also courting Alba. When Tadeo goes missing, Alba and Valentín believe his disappearance is the work of witches, but Arturo scoffs at them, calling their belief in bewitchings backward.

Minerva begins to peruse Tremblay’s papers. Like Minerva, Tremblay was a student at Stoneridge College. She was friends with Carolyn Yates and a young woman named Virginia “Ginny” Somerset, who was interested in the supernatural and went missing while still at school. An art student, she felt that her paintings were guided by the hands of spirits. As the school year progressed, Ginny began to become even more fixated on the paranormal, causing those around her to worry. At a school dance, Ginny became sure that something otherworldly was following her. Tremblay wondered if there might be some credence to Ginny’s story. Ginny organized a séance during which her voice seemed to take on the character of someone else, but afterward she appeared to have forgotten the strangeness that transpired and focused instead on her studies and her upcoming marriage.

In 1908, Alba, Arturo, and Valentín clash about how to respond to Tadeo’s disappearance. Alba and Valentín, who put more stock in the supernatural than Arturo does, go visit Los Pinos, a small community of witches that live near the farm. One of the witches gives Alba a charm to ward off the teyolloquani, a fearsome “heart-eater” that the witch is sure has bewitched Alba’s family. Alba continues to be torn between Arturo and Valentín, unsure which man is better suited to her in the long term.

Minerva continues to work on her thesis and sort through Tremblay’s papers. As a resident director for her college, she’s tasked with moving the belongings of one of her fellow students, Thomas, out of his dorm room since he abruptly left the school at the end of the previous semester and left his things behind. Minerva feels sure that he’d transferred, but as she sorts through his belongings, she realizes that he was studying the supernatural and that the details of his transfer don’t add up. She begins to worry that he, like Ginny, has disappeared. She finds out that Thomas had been Noah’s tutor, but when she asks Noah about Thomas, his response, although not necessarily evasive, leaves Minerva with more questions than answers. As Minerva continues to read through Tremblay’s papers, work on her thesis, and look into Thomas’ disappearance, she too begins to experience unexplained phenomena. She feels as though she is being followed and thinks that something evil might be pursuing her.

In 1908, Alba has a strange dream in which she feels a presence envelop her in bed. The presence seems both malign and alluring, and she is not sure what to make of it. She continues to be distracted by the idea that something is bewitching her family, and her fear mounts when Valentín is found dead. Arturo is certain that a wild animal attacked him, but Alba is even more convinced than ever that there is a witch on the prowl. Confused, she goes back to Los Pinos to consult the witches. She asks the witch about a spell to kill the teyolloquani that appears to have taken the form of her brother Tadeo. She learns that her uncle Arturo is a powerful warlock and likely the one responsible for both Tadeo’s and Valentín’s deaths. At first, Alba refuses to believe them, but the witch warns her that Tadeo is likely too strong to be killed, but does relate one spell, the only one that might work. Alba vows to kill Arturo.

As fall turned into winter in 1934, Ginny struggled. She felt sure she had been bewitched and that something evil was pursuing her. Ginny’s fiancé Edgar Yates and her friends worried that her interest in the supernatural had gotten out of hand and that her mental health was in serious decline. One night, Ginny went missing. Carolyn and the other girls attributed her disappearance to a forbidden love affair: They alleged without real proof that Ginny was having a clandestine relationship with Santiago, a Portuguese campus worker with whom Ginny was friendly. Edgar and Tremblay remained unconvinced, but because of the theory that Ginny eloped, the investigation into her case stalled and was ultimately suspended entirely.

The further Minerva proceeds with her research, the more convinced she becomes that she has been bewitched. A cat that she takes care of turns up dead, she finds a rat carcass in her bed, and she sees strange lights outside at night. She learns about “witch marks,” protective drawings to ward off evil spirits, and begins to carve them into the wood in her room. She makes herself a talisman from a dead bird and carries it everywhere. She learns that Thomas was researching Ginny and theorizes that the same evil presence that has been following her was also responsible for Thomas and Ginny’s disappearances.

In 1908, Alba lures Arturo to her room with the promise of being able to feed on her blood for the rest of her life, and he is easily drawn in. He feeds on her and the two have sex, but unbeknownst to him, she has concocted and swallowed a batch of witch poison that takes effect when he drinks her blood. With great difficulty, Alba kills him. She finds that she is pregnant and decides that she will remain on the farm and teach her child about the danger that witches pose and how to vanquish them.

Minerva visits the room that Ginny and Tremblay shared and finds Ginny’s witch marks in the wood. Just then, Carolyn approaches the door, but cannot enter the room as the protection imbued in Ginny’s witch marks still holds even after all the intervening years. Minerva now believes that Carolyn is the witch who bewitched and killed Ginny. Carolyn convinces Minerva to leave the protection of the room by threatening to kill Minerva’s friend Hideo. They go to Carolyn’s family’s abandoned factory, and Carolyn admits to having killed Ginny and Thomas. Minerva slices her arm, allowing it to bleed on the floor so that Carolyn will feed on her. Carolyn begins to drink Minerva’s blood, which has been poisoned by a batch of her great-grandmother Alba’s recipe for witch poison. Horrified, Carolyn collapses to the ground and evaporates into nothing.

Carolyn’s disappearance is never solved, and Minerva remains unsure whether Noah is a warlock who abetted his grandmother. She stays on campus, working on her thesis and preparing for the next stage in her academic career.