Signal to Noise (Moreno Garcia novel)

Plot

In 2009, Mercedes "Meche" Vega returns to Mexico City to attend the funeral of her DJ father. While there she reminisces about her life in the city in 1988 when she was fifteen and how she accidentally discovered, along with her best friends Sebastian and Daniela, that she could perform spells by listening to songs.

Meche and Sebastian cast spells in order to gain money to draw the attention of their respective crushes: Constantino and Isadora, two of their popular, rich and attractive classmates. While Isadora slowly warms to Sebastian, Constantino continues to mostly ignore Meche, causing her to look for a record she will be able to use to cast a spell to make Constantino fall in love with her. At her father's suggestion she looks for a copy of "A Whiter Shade of Pale" which feels burning hot to her and thus will be potent enough to cast the spell. When she reveals her plan to Sebastian saying that a spell is the only way she could look attractive, Sebastian tells Meche she is pretty and kisses her causing Meche to realize she has a crush on him.

After months of looking Meche finds her copy of "A Whiter Shade of Pale"; however by this point she intends to use it to reunite her parents who are looking to divorce. Thinking that Meche still intends to use it on Constantino, Sebastian steals the record from her room, along with her copy of Duncan Dhu which Meche uses as her object of power to make herself more potent. He uses the album on "A Whiter Shade of Pale" on Isadora causing her to fall in love with him and using up all its power so that it is useless to Meche.

In revenge Meche bullies Daniela into hexing Sebastian. Meche intends for Sebastian to fall off his bike and injure himself, however she accidentally casts a death spell which her grandmother, Dolores, senses and manages to stop, causing herself to have a stroke in the process. Meche threatens Daniela and Sebastian into reuniting with her so that she can heal her grandmother, but instead of doing her bidding Sebastian breaks her Duncan Dhu album causing Meche to lose her ability to cast spells.

Heartbroken she goes to her father's house where he refuses to take her in and confesses he stole the money for her education and lost it in a poor investment. Meche then decides to leave and move in with her aunt in Monterrey.

Back in 2009, against her wishes, Sebastian attends Meche's father's novena and visits her while she is cleaning his apartment. She learns that he was briefly married to Isadora and even lived in Monterrey for a while but, despite being successful, never went to Europe the way he wanted to as a teenager. Sebastian tells Meche that he was, and still is, in love with her and finally gives her his objects of power, which were the sneakers he wore as a teenager. Meche is determined to leave him behind and return to Oslo where she now lives, but instead goes back to his apartment and asks if they can begin again, finally telling him that she loves him in Norwegian.

Reception

The novel received generally positive reviews upon publication. In April 2015 it was named one of the Best Science Fiction Novels of the Month in The Guardian.