The Warning of the Crows, by Raquel Villaamil

There are books that beat me for the cover. A cover says a lot. It may already be because you find it simply beautiful, curious or shocking. Or because it is one of those that keeps you enthralled by its intriguing details, its color or whatever it is that captivates you indefinitely. The point is that in this case I read the book because the image won me over.

Little by little I discovered that the image corresponded to a ghostly location, in line with what was offered on the cover. Ballymote was the birth town of Brigit, the protagonist.

There is a saying that you should never go back to the places where you were happy. What to say about those others in which you were not ...

But Brigit returns, magnetized by fear and excuses, by the darkest memories and existential debts. Accompanying Brigit we know the familiar between the inhospitable, the romantic between the gloomy.

The long-awaited announcement of the crows ends up being an impossible but necessary reconciliation, where Brigit will have to steel herself to undo the mists of her past and mend the mysteries of her family and her life.

A plot full of fantasy. But we are talking about a fantasy with sediment, for that same constant balance between good and evil, a possible love that can be seen in the shadows, an answer to all the doubts of Brigit's soul.

In a fluid and dynamic tone, where the sensations of the characters are transmitted through abundant dialogues, this plot invades us from the first page to approach an enigmatic world born of Poe's cavernous voice with the set design by Tim Burton. A setting of large spaces occupied by the haunting sensation of permanent chiaroscuro, of mists that never dissolve and that constrain what happens, as if a vast world were concentrating on Brigit.

You can now buy the book The Warning of the Crows, the latest novel by Raquel Villaamil, here: