Publication Date: March 10, 2026
Demons clash with inheritance claims as secrets unfold and violence is unleashed over twelve harrowing hours trapped in a house with the worst thing imaginable: family.
When Papi Ramon, the patriarch of the wealthy Abreu family dies, he gives the family one last message in the will: “One of you is el bacà, the demon that I made a deal with. Get rid of them or you will be damned.” Xiomara, the uncontested favorite of Papi Ramon (and therefore the least liked in the family), watches as everyone dismisses this as the joke of a senile old man and demands the lawyer obtain the previous will Papi wrote.
While the lawyer drives back to his office, a storm breaks out, forcing the entire family—Xiomara’s aunts and uncles and cousins—to remain in the house. And the words of Papi’s will hangs over their heads even heavier than the rain clouds. Over the course of the night, scandal after scandal is revealed to the public about the family. Suddenly a tense few hours of surviving her family turns into a vicious night of recrimination, violence, accusations…and murder.
Xiomara is faced with an impossible task: uproot a demon and somehow kill it or excise the ghosts that linger within her own family.
And the clock is ticking…
A young woman must expose the devil in the details of her grandfather’s will before her dysfunctional family tears itself apart in Vincent Tirado’s clever slice of closed-room horror, You Should Have Been Nicer to My Mom.
Xiomara Castillo arrives at the home of Papi Ramon Abreu, her recently deceased grandfather, to hear the reading of his will. She is reluctant to be at the old house, full of creaking floors, long hallways, and hazy, troubling memories. Papi Ramon was her closest link to her dead mother, Josefina, who died years before in a car accident. It does not help that the Abreu family is as dysfunctional as they come: Xiomara’s aunts, uncles, and cousins all have an interest in what Papi Ramon, the Dominican Republic native who created his own business, A-B Millennium, may have left behind. Xiomara, however, remembers one thing clearly: how cruel they all were to her mother, Papi’s favorite child.
Xiomara feels the energy of the house immediately, walking up to the doorway: “It was like the house itself was sick. Infected. A virus that was once confined to a single moment now spreading itself over the vast length of the house.” Thunder rumbles ominously as Xiomara reunites with Uncles Manuel and Rafael, and Aunts Aury and Marisa, as well as her cousins Henry, Wanda, and Yaritza. Her old childhood friend, Naomi—daughter of Papi Ramon’s caretaker, Judith—is there, as well. Is she included in the will, Xiomara wonders…and why would she be?
As the Abreu clan catches up on their lives, Xiomara tries to reconnect with her memories of Papi Ramon, her mother, and the house that holds secrets like a tomb. Plus, a mysterious note is delivered to the mailbox that asks the family to “confess their sins.” Xiomara’s dread mounts until the lawyer arrives. When he reads the will, taken from a sealed envelope, all Hell breaks loose:
“If you’re reading this, one of you is a demon, el bacá, who I made a deal with many years ago … You will only have twelve hours after this is read and its presence exposed to the world. If you do not find and get rid of the demon within twelve hours, you will all be damned…”
From this dire warning, Tirado takes readers on a slightly campy, yet entirely enjoyable horror ride. Xiomara takes Papi Ramon’s warning to heart, while the others blow it off as the ramblings of a former pastor and man of God. The lawyer leaves before the storm to search for the “official” will, leaving the disaffected family unit to wait out the weather. Things quickly go south as several scandals around the Abreu clan break into the news and social media. Soon, the entire family is at each other’s throats…as well as a beast with claws and teeth that attacks anyone stealing from the home.
The story is a fast-moving “locked room” mystery with dashes of horror and gore that intrigue more than terrify. Who is the demon? And how can Xiomara destroy it? Tirado’s take on family dysfunction is spot on, binding an otherwise over-the-top demonic storyline with true-to-life evils that stalk children in the form of verbal and emotional abuse at the hands of supposed “loved ones.”
As the clock winds down to the twelfth hour, Xiomara hunts for all Papi’s hidden clues within the house, running from vengeful and suspicious relatives at every turn. A few of the scenes lack consistency, but the portrait of a damaged family and its lingering legacies is well worth the reader’s time. And the ending? Pitch(fork) perfect.
You Should Have Been Nicer to My Mom is a rip-smart modern Gothic tale about hellish families and the devil that hides within all of us.
Vincent Tirado is a nonbinary Afro-Latine Bronx native. They ventured out to Pennsylvania and Ohio to get their bachelor’s degree in biology and master’s degree in bioethics. Their debut YA novel Burn Down, Rise Up was the 2022 winner of the Pura Belpré Award and was a finalist for the 2022 Stoker Awards and 2023 Lammy Awards. Their sophomore YA novel We Don’t Swim Here was called “a chilling ghost story” by Publishers Weekly.
