Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez

A haunting exploration of female friendship, desire, and memory set against the sultry backdrop of Florida's swamplands.

It's been years since Ingrid has heard from her childhood best friend, Mayra, a fearless rebel who fled their hometown of Hialeah, a Cuban neighbourhood just west of Miami, for college in the Northeast. But when Mayra calls out of the blue to invite Ingrid to a weekend getaway at a house in the Everglades, she impulsively accepts.

From the moment Ingrid sets out for the house, danger looms: The directions are difficult, she's out of reach of cell service, and as she drives deeper into the Everglades, the wet maw of the swamp threatens to swallow her whole. But once Ingrid arrives, Mayra is, in many ways, just as she remembers - with her sharp tongue and effortless, seductive beauty, still thumbing her nose at the world.

Before they can fully settle into the familiar intimacy of each other's company, their reunion is spoiled by the reemergence of past disagreements and the unexpected presence of Mayra's new boyfriend, Benji. The trio spend their hours eating lavish meals and exploring the labyrinthine house, which holds as much mystery and danger as the swamp itself. Indoors and on the grounds, time itself seems to expand, and Ingrid begins to lose a sense of the outside world, and herself.

Against this disquieting setting, where lizards dart in and out of porches and alligators peek up from dark waters, Gonzalez weaves a propulsive, unforgettable story about the dizzying power of early friendship and the lengths we'll go to earn love and acceptance - even at the risk of losing ourselves entirely.

'Nicky Gonzalez channels Shirley Jackson (something I do not say lightly) in this disquieting, mesmerising 21st century southern gothic. In Mayra, the hazy borders of friendship and identity are blurred, made uncanny and dangerous, and I was hooked from paragraph one.'

'I ate this greedily; I swallowed it whole. Beguiling and moody and strange, Mayra shimmers with supernatural eeriness and the mercuriality of memory ... Gonzalez unspools all the disorienting, lonely-making work of getting unstuck and finding home and bliss - then, she terrifies you, has you turning pages while you're reaching for your keys, checking the locks, wishing you could text Ingrid and urge her to get a grip. This is a mesmerising, hallucinatory adrenaline rush of a novel, and Gonzalez is the future of horror writing.'

'The story that unfolds between Mayra and Ingrid lovingly embodies the vibrant beauty of Hialeah and the Florida Everglades ... Mayra is a haunting testament to the literal terror of being consumed by the very thing you're trying to escape.'

'Gorgeous and hypnotic, surreal and unsettling, Mayra is part coming-of-age story, part Twilight Zone episode, part thoughtful meditation on all the ways that memory is itself a haunted house. I loved this book.'