The Devil Takes You Home

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By Gabino Iglesias

Publisher Description

This genre-defying, Shirley Jackson and Bram Stoker award-winning thriller follows a father desperate to salvage what's left of his family—even if it means a descent into violence.

Buried in debt due to his young daughter’s illness, his marriage at the brink, Mario reluctantly takes a job as a hitman, surprising himself with his proclivity for violence. After tragedy destroys the life he knew, Mario agrees to one final job: hijack a cartel’s cash shipment before it reaches Mexico. Along with an old friend and a cartel-insider named Juanca, Mario sets off on the near-suicidal mission, which will leave him with either a cool $200,000 or a bullet in the skull. But the path to reward or ruin is never as straight as it seems. As the three complicated men travel through the endless landscape of Texas, across the border and back, their hidden motivations are laid bare alongside nightmarish encounters that defy explanation. One thing is certain: even if Mario makes it out alive, he won’t return the same.

The Devil Takes You Home is a panoramic odyssey for fans of S.A. Cosby’s southern noir, Blacktop Wasteland, by way of the boundary-defying storytelling of Stephen Graham Jones and Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: NPR, Harper's Bazaar, Chicago Tribune, Vulture, Oprah Daily, CrimeReads, The Millions, and many more!

An Edgar Award Finalist • A Bram Stoker Award Winner • A Shirley Jackson Award Winner • A Book of the Month Club Pick • An August Indie Next List Selection • An ABA Indie Bestseller

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Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags

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1378 Reviews

3.5

Sarah Ragon

Created 4 days ago

Morado 🍉

Created 6 days ago

“I really enjoyed the first half or so. Loved it even. But as the story progressed I feel like it lost focus? Or maybe I did. I think there were a lot of added elements that didn't really contribute to the story. And then I predicted the ending. I never really fault a book if I "figure it out", originality is hard. And I appreciate the overall theme of the story, it just ultimately fell flat for me in the end. I'm bummed because I loved House of Bone and Rain.”

Splatterjunk

Created 11 days ago

“You can't go home again. Those slings and arrows the Bard spoke about truly never let up do they? Day after day, year after year, we rob Peter to pay Paul just to stay afloat but something else always comes along. Such is the life of Mario, following the illness of his daughter; from one horrific scenario into the next, down that infamous road with its good intentions. Mario is a part of two worlds: the first, the Latin American heritage he feels disconnected to, and the second, the white America he was raised in but where that same old story of racism and bigotry played out. A man of two homes, and yet none. Following the death of his daughter and a bitter divorce, and drowning in an ever growing pile of medical debt, Mario begins a life of organized crime; step by well-intentioned step, what follows is an odyssey into hell, a brutal realization that to not let go of the past is to clutch it with cold, dead hands. Told with the allegorical haze of a dream, each step of Mario's journey is shown to be entirely reasonable, appropriate even; however, every so often, and with increasing frequency, the calmness of the trip is interrupted by a random and brutal stab of violence, only to be excused by the characters already desensitized to it. Every time, we return to the uneventful road, Mario still shaking, the unuttered "What the fuck?!" still hanging in the air. After each descent, the reader crosses their fingers, hoping, even praying, that he will finally turn around and go home, that simply MUST be the final straw, and that nothing can be worth this. But you can't go home again. 4.25/5, stay out of the tunnels”

GaboGdeP

Created 12 days ago

“Disappointing unfortunately. I wanted to like the book because I like Gabino, but it didn’t happen. Good fiction shows you a world and asks you what you think about it, but this book tells you how to feel and, though I agree with Gabino’s views thoroughly, I don’t think it’s good fiction writing to do that. Repetitive, descriptions were clear but too straightforward, overuse of simple similes and metaphors. Also quite patronizing? Lots of meditations from the main character, but I prefer more subtlety and symbolism. Action is cool, otherwise story is not deep or that special. Some elements seem superfluous or forced, as if to add tension or atmosphere unnaturally. Also not polished in terms of editing.”

About Gabino Iglesias

Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, professor, and literary critic living in Austin, TX. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed and award-winning novels Zero Saints and Coyote Songs. Iglesias' nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Electric Literature, and LitReactor, and his reviews appear regularly in places like NPR, Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, Criminal Element, Mystery Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He's been a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards twice and the Millions Tournament of Books, and is a member of the Horror Writers Association, the Mystery Writers of America, and the National Book Critics Circle.