You’re using a story as a veil.
Old, rich, and deeply rooted in witchcraft, the Petronio family’s youngest daughter is getting married. There’s just one problem: the mother of the bride, Mutya, is an evil witch—and she’s out for vengeance.
Kelly hasn’t been planning weddings for very long, but she takes the job despite her misgivings. However, the wedding will be taking place at Chateau Petronio, where her film director father once tried and failed to shoot a horror film. Where Kelly, at the age of eight, came across a mirror that enabled her to See the Unseen and changed her life. Suddenly, she’s not so sure the Petronios picked her just for her resume. With the help of a motley crew of witches, can she defend the wedding from Mutya, solve the mystery behind the mirror, and impress the bride’s attractive older sister Marga—all in one night?
Grace Kelly Pantabangan is not just an ordinary wedding planner. Not only can she organize event calendars and suppliers, but she can also See the Unseen: kapre, sigbin, ghosts, witchcraft, all that good stuff—and she is going to need all her wits and skills to be able to survive her biggest project yet: the Petronio wedding. This book takes “momzilla of the bride” into a whole new, magical level.
To read this book is to suddenly find yourself in the middle of a garden maze, with only an unreliable narrator to guide you safely out. At every turn, you peel back another layer of the story and find understanding, and yet the narrative twists ever tighter, until you begin to feel that instead of finding the exit, you are only walking deeper into a trap. The ending is the beginning, and true freedom lies where everything first began.
Needless to say, the writing had me hooked from page one. I very rarely encounter a book written in the second person POV, and I think the author used it well in order to pull the reader into the story. The sense of disorientation shared with the MC makes for such an immersive experience. I found myself wanting to draw a map of the gorgeous Plaza Petronio, with its compound of mansions named after the family matriarchs, and to create a genealogy chart for the family saga that spans centuries of Philippine history.
For such a short novella, the author was able to explore so many serious and sensitive topics: queer representation, generational trauma as a vicious cycle, childhood trauma, dysfunctional families, and mental health.
It’s a delicious concoction of historical fiction, fantasy, romance, and horror. The horror part is where we find that the scariest hauntings are the ghosts we create from our own fears.
I hope you let this novella remind you that the journey to self-healing is possible and that it always starts with self-forgiveness. Life may seem like an endless maze, but maybe on your next turn, you’ll finally meet the version of yourself you’ve been searching for.
Overall rating: 4.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vida Cruz-Borja writes and edits fantasy and science fiction. Her short stories and essays have been published in F&SF, Fantasy, Strange Horizons, PodCastle, and various anthologies. She is the author of the award-winning collection, Song of the Mango and Other New Myths (2022) and the upcoming novella Mirror Marked (2025).
Visit her website here.
BOOK DETAILS
Mirror Marked by Vida Cruz-Borja
Genres: Fantasy
90 pages, Hardcover
Published August 1, 2025 by PS Publishing
ISBN 9781803945262 (ISBN10: 1803945265)
ASIN 1803945265
Language English
