For fans of Mexican Gothic and The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina, The Ordinary Bruja is a psychological horror and magical realism novel about grief, ancestral secrets, Dominican brujería, and one woman’s fight to reclaim the magic her family tried to bury.
When strange messages appear in mirrors, and the scent of cigar smoke follows her through her small Ohio hometown, Marisol Espinal must confront the ghosts of her past, the truth about her mother’s death, and the family curse waiting for her on Hallowthorn Hill.
Her ancestor buried the magic. Now it wants out.
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Join me at GRIM FESTIVAL 2026 in Stockton, California, for a full day celebrating storytelling, horror, books, film, art, food, and all things wonderfully grim. I’ll be there as an author vendor with signed copies of my books, including The Ordinary Bruja, for readers who love gothic horror, magical realism, haunted families, ancestral secrets, psychological […]
Join Johanny Ortega, author of The Ordinary Bruja, at the Twentynine Palms Book Festival from November 13–15, 2026. This will be the first public event appearance for The Ordinary Bruja, a Dominican gothic horror novel about messy family dynamics, inherited magic, grief, silence, and the kind of haunting that begins long before the ghost […]