Something Followed Us Home: Tales of Latiné Horror

Last week saw the release of Something Followed Us Home: Tales of Latiné Horror, edited by Cynthia Pelayo. This anthology features 18 short stories by a variety of Latine authors. Some I’ve read and enjoyed before, such as Isabel Cañas, Zoraida Córdova, and Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro. Some are authors I’ve been wanting to read, including Mariana Enríquez and Leopoldo Goût. And many others were new to me here!

These stories range settings, types of characters, and atmosphere. While I enjoyed many of them, my biggest issue with this anthology is that, contrary to the subtitle, most of these don’t feel like horror. Some do, and those were my favorites. But many feel, at best, horror-adjacent, and some aren’t even that.

The Stories:

• “Blue Flowers” by Agustina Bazterrica – Very short story that feels like being dropped into the middle of a dream… or a nightmare. Family, mirror selves, and repressed memories.
• “This Hand That Feeds” by Isabel Cañas – Kind of more like a folk story. Wolf woman marries man who suppresses her wolf side. She may have to fight back to become free again.
• “Her First Cruise Ship” by Ann Dávila Cardinal – Horror comedy maybe. Not my cup of tea.
• “My Boyfriend” by Gerardo Sámano Córdova – Also kind of horror comedy? Satire? I liked it but it was rather uncomfortable.
• “The Immaculate Rebirth of Nicki Duran” by Zoraida Córdova – This was good! Creepy pregnancy out of nowhere! Weird ending.
• “Guardian Angel” by Mariana Enríquez – Creepy, incestuous, maybe a delusion at the end? Or a demon?
• “The Return of La Muelona” by Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro – This was good! This had more of a classic, creepy town setup of colonizers, exploited workers, women wronged, and nature wronged. Justice must be served.
• “Pomelo” by Xochitl Gonzalez – I like the writing style. It feels like magical realism, but it’s fantasy. Good but not horror.
• “LUZ Y FER” by Leopoldo Goût – This is more like a government conspiracy thriller. Info doesn’t make sense? But engaging writing.
• “Specter” by Ananda Lima – College student with a monster figure haunting her. Interesting, technological perspective. And this was indeed horror!
• “Mechanical Servants LLC” by Juan Martinez – About a kind of directionless middle-aged man struck in the past. Weird.
• “The World from Above and the World from Down Below” by Mónica Ojeda – Very poetic writing style! Life, death, resurrection, and whether it’s better to just let go and grieve. Sad and haunting.
• “The Rooftop Revolution of Selly Aviles” by Daniel José Older – Humorous, somewhat abrasive first-person point of view. Off-putting.
• “El Jíbara de Puerto Rico” by Cynthia Pelayo – This was good! Similar vibe to one other story here. About Puerto Rico’s history, death, and holding onto our stories.
• “Whispers from the Root” by Lilliam Rivera – Multiple people wake up with a missing body part. I’m not sure why…
• “Fidelity” by Alex Segura – Mundanities of being a stay-at-home mom; she’s not sure she can stay faithful; slasher randomly?
• “We Are Gathered Here Together” by Diana Rodriguez Wallach – I wasn’t sure about the setup, with multiple unlikable characters. But then it had a fun twist!

Final Thoughts

Something Followed Us Home: Tales of Latiné Horror is a mixed bag of stories. I can’t say it delivers on its promise of Latiné horror… the majority don’t seem to be the right genre at all. But there are some gems in here, and several authors I’d like to explore further.

Special thanks to Atria and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy Something Followed Us Home: Tales of Latiné Horror here – it’s available as a paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

Something Followed Us Home: Tales of Latiné Horror edited by Cynthia Pelayo
Audience	Adult
Genre	Horror
Number of Pages	336
Format I Read	Ebook (NetGalley ARC)
Original Publication Date	September 29, 2026 (English translation)
Publisher	Atria/Primero Sueno Press

Official Summary

“Insightful, humane, and original, Something Followed Us Home features the most exciting voices in dark fiction today and is a must read for any weird/lit/horror fan.” —Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie and A Head Full of Ghosts

Dive into the chilling depths of Latiné horror with this groundbreaking anthology, edited by Bram Stoker Award winner Cynthia Pelayo, 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.

Gathering chilling work from some of today’s most acclaimed Latiné voices, this horror 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. Blood, devotion, and memory intertwine as the past presses back with teeth.

Something Followed Us Home is an unnerving, visceral, and impossible-to-shake collection that proves that what is carried forward does not remain quiet, and what follows us rarely leaves without taking something in return.

Featuring stories by: Agustina Bazterrica, Isabel Cañas, Gerardo Sámano Córdova, Zoraida Córdova, Ann Dávila Cardinal, Mariana Enriquez, Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro, Xochitl Gonzalez, Leopoldo Goût, Ananda Lima, Juan Martinez, Mónica Ojeda, Daniel José Older, Cynthia Pelayo, Lilliam Rivera, Diana Rodriguez Wallach, Alex Segura