Book Review: Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas

I am currently engaged in the #ReadingWithMuffy challenge for 2026. The challenge (which you can see the prompts below) for February is a book that starts with the letter l, o, v or e. I am trying to read books I already own to meet these challenges, so I looked through my Kindle app and my shelves and came up with a decent list of choices:

• Looking for Alaska by John Green

• Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas

• Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

• Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church and What the Bible Has to Say by Preston M Sprinkle

• Voice Like A Hyacinth by Mallory Pearson

• One Yellow Eye by Leigh Radford

I considered number of pages and what I was vibing with, and I ended up choosing the longest book on the list (I forgot February is a short month): Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas.

The #ReadingWithMuffy 2026 reading prompts

This review will contain spoilers, but I will place these at the bottom and will indicate spoilers are below. I don't want to spoil anything for you if you are considering reading this masterpiece of a book.

This is a phenomenal book, but there are two things you need to know before diving into it:

1. Spanish is interspersed liberally in this text - so if you're reading it digitally, you might be better off (with integrated searching - I read it on Kindle and found it really easy to look up words), otherwise you might want Google Translate or a Spanish dictionary handy. Alternatively, just enjoy some Spanish words. I know a bit of Spanish, but not so familiar with Mexican Spanish, and certainly not some of the colloquialisms of the 1800s when this is set.

2. The male main character (MMC) is not a vampire. This is a book of multitudes, and one of them is a romance thread, but none of those involved in the romance storyline are vampires. This is not Twilight. Look elsewhere for steamy vampire romance.

Forget Dracula and Nosferatu, forget Buffy and the Cullens - these are not the vampires you know. This does for vampires what 28 Days Later did for zombies. It’s a game changer.

Set between 1837-1847, this is a beautiful story of love and loss, of what makes a true leader, set with a backdrop of war against humans and against the supernatural - a time of change and flux - who is the real enemy? And is it worth risking everything for love?

Told from dual perspectives of the two lead characters: Nena - the daughter of the ranchero, she is destined to be married to another ranchero’s son to help build alliances and protection for her home, but she’s ultimately rebellious in nature, wanting to be a curandera and more from her future; Néstor - a vaquero on the ranch who dreams of having land of his own and making Nena his wife.

This doesn’t fit a single genre: it’s historical fiction - set during the Mexican war with the USA (namely Texas), the story wouldn’t work without this backdrop; it’s a beautiful romance - two people from different social classes, a childhood spent stealing time together to a complicated adulthood, it’s beautifully crafted, not shying away from the (many) flaws of both characters; it’s a horror - these are not your friendly neighbourhood vampires, these are the monsters that haunt your nightmares, they’re animals and scavengers, there’s nothing human about them; they’re predators.

It’s clever and engaging - and I highly recommend it to everyone.

Okay - spoilers below!

I loved the dual perspective. Cañas does use some familiar tropes - she relies on the miscommunication trope a bit (if either of the characters actually said what they meant then the romance wouldn’t stall for so long). But it doesn’t feel like a trope if that makes sense? It doesn’t feel overplayed, it feels natural. The characters have been separated for such a long time - they were so close as children (and we learn just how close with glimpses of their memories of their childhood together) and they’ve been forcefully separated for almost 10 years - both believing the other was never going to be there again - they’re naturally testing each other to see if that old relationship is still salvageable and, more importantly, if it’s something they both want. They were both fatally wounded by the other leaving their lives in the first instance, they don’t want to show their true feelings in fear that the other will leave again, or that they don’t have space for them in their lives anymore, which will be just as hurtful. The reasoning for this trope was so clear, that it just felt like a natural choice for both characters.

The miscommunication trope also works particularly well because of the dual perspective. I also enjoyed that we didn’t see both perspectives on any event. Even crucial ones - it was like time was constantly flowing. The characters would reflect on what happened in the previous ones chapter, but we wouldn’t relive the moment through their lens. We’d experience the resulting frustration or anger or pain that they experienced but we wouldn’t actually experience the moment with them. It gave a sense of urgency to the plot.

There are some really beautifully written parallels, between the frustration of the group of the rancheros and their vaqueros, peones and others who joined them to join the Mexican army, and the frustrations of the vaqueros, peones and the others with their positions within the ranches. With the army, even the Dons and their families recognise that they have been abandoned - the Mexican government doesn’t care about their land, about their cause, and has not sent an adequate delegation of the Mexican army to help them protect their land. In parallel with this, are the words that Néstor speaks that Lena realises comes from the collected people who work “for” her father - they feel that they work the hardest, and yet their jacals are far less than ideal - they see the ranchero and his family living in the big stone house overseeing everything and profiting from their work, but they’ll never earn enough for another life, another choice.

This limiting of choices is also reflected in the vampires. At first, these monstrous beings seem to stalk straight out of the fireside horror stories shared by vaqueros - hunting anything, and anyone. They appear to target indiscriminately: livestock, wild animals, humans. That idea that this supernatural creature is not only real, but is positioned at the top of the food chain is terrifying - but that is replaced with the scene with the barge. Nena realises that these vampires are not simply animals with no real understanding of the damage they inflict, but they are being tortured and controlled by the Yanqui army - they’re being used to decimate the strong men of the communities, so that the Yanquis can then easily take the ranches away. This idea of them being captured and used is complicated and hard to fully understand the implications.

Is this a metaphor for colonisation? Capturing animals - whipping them and torturing them into doing their bidding? Is it another parallel for the rancheros? Holding the vaqueros and peones with their families to the grindstone where they will forever be tethered as they aren’t paid enough to leave? The idea that the Yanquis seem unfazed by the actions they are taking, which makes them seem truly cold.

The two lead characters are also flawed - and they work on their flaws throughout the book. It’s enjoyable to read two characters that, as a reader, I was very attached to these two people and their character flaws. Both of them followed a sort of redemption arc, and right up until the end it wasn't clear if one or both would die. Isabel Cañas writes these characters so beautifully that their growth reads as incredibly natural - in the same way she uses the miscommunication trope - her writing is stunning and I can’t wait to read more of her books.