A heavy, violet tome, Our Share of Night is a story that spans generations of a family that live like royalty in a politically fraught Argentina. The story reveals itself through the point of views of many characters, but it is centered around Gaspar, the son of a powerful medium. Gaspar is believed to have inherited his father’s power of communicating with the Darkness, which is a demon that is worshipped by his powerful family. His family will do whatever it takes to get what they want. Much of the harm done, is done in the most vicious of manners. Mariana Enriquez writes with a fury that reveals itself through horrible imagery. The themes of political strife, classism, and homophobia are all present. Through all of that, the reader witnesses the desperation and love that goes into trying to protect Gaspar.

Our Share of Night is spectacular in its length and subject matter. It is dark, and it takes its time, but the pace never feels too slow. It is a tough, brutal read, but I couldn’t stop reading, even though I know that the images conjured through these words are going to stay with me for a while. This isn’t fun, fleeting horror: it is horror that wounds its reader.

3.5 stars, rounded down. I wanted to love this. O did, in fact, love many parts of it. But it could have had 30% of it cut out without impacting the story itself.

Thank you so much to Netgalley for giving me an arc of this book. I was really excited to read this book because it was on my list of most anticipated reads but there was just something about the story that didn't click with me. For a while I steered clear of literary fiction because I just wasn't interested in it but I wanted to give it a chance with this book because the premise seem exciting. For me, there wasn't a continued momentum when it came to this book. I felt that at times the story wasn't exactly cohesive and it suffered from being so long. It wasn't bad and I think I will recommend this to others because I still want to discuss this to see what others think about. Anyways, thanks for giving me a chance to read this!

Loooved this book. Loved how immersed I was. It’s truly haunting. I loved the Argentinian culture and can’t wait for more from this author.

This book was so unusual! Unlike anything I have read before. It's a bit on the long side but I really enjoyed the story throughout. Classic magical cult family drama with a lot of character pain interwoven throughout. It's the story of Juan and his son Gaspar in Argentina from the 1960s to 1990s ish through Gaspar's childhood until he's an adult. It follows Juan's many desperate attempts to keep his son safe and Gaspar's traumatic childhood.

I reckon the book could have been shorter, it did drag on in places, but I did like it for the most part, especially the friendship between Gaspar, Pablo, Victoria and Adela.

This is VERY VERY dark and sooooo addictive almost!! The writing is exquisite - this is what I'd consider award-worthy fiction. The way the story is crafted is sheer brilliance. A twisted tale, a dark delight. Highly recommend.

To start, I believe this novel is considered an epic, which would explain the length of it. I’m no stranger to chunky books, and often seek them out, but I did find that this went on for a little too long.
Told in various POVs, as well as alternating time stamps, this is the story of Gaspar, son of both a medium and priestess. Most of his story doesn’t make sense until we learn of his mother, and what became of her, though that isn’t until the very middle of the book.
It’s a horror novel at its core, and told very well. I love the short story collections which are also written by the author, and could recognize her unique voice throughout this whole thing.
That being said, I did find myself skimming towards the end. I think it didn’t need to be as long as it was, though that’s my only gripe.
Truly unique and terrifying.

I always struggle to rate books like this which I recognize as being of high quality but which I had mixed feelings about and struggled to relate to or enjoy.

Mariana Enríquez writes evocatively and the story, though mostly based on themes we’ve seen before, is uniquely constructed.

The length of this one really makes it a tough hang. I’m not generally bothered by longer novels, but this one was at least twice as long as it needed to be and the result is that it drags in parts. The second half of the book is markedly better than the first, so that helps in the end if you can manage to stick it with it until then.

Some of this, at least for me, was the result of which character was narrating. We get better and more intriguing perspectives in the second half of the book. It’s tempting to thus say that the order of narrators should have been different, but the plot unfolds in such a way that I’m not sure that would work.

I wish this book had been more, shall we say, likable as well. Other than Gaspar and the other kids, most of the characters are pretty unappealing, even if their aims are ultimately heroic or at least on the right side of the internal good/evil debate of the story.

And while this isn’t truly Horror at its most grotesque, there’s a lot of really gross stuff in here that wasn’t my favorite, and there’s a lot of mutilation and torture of kids and (to a lesser extent) animals that was off putting.

The general vibe of the book isn’t dissimilar to that of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, which I loved, but it seems that what Enríquez does lends itself better to shorter format work, whether that’s a story collection like Smoking in Bed or just a shorter novel.

In all, worth a read as long as you’ve got a strong stomach, but definitely one that would have benefitted from a more condensed story.

The thing about big books is the comfort of really losing yourself in the story in a way that's different than with shorter books. This big one was perfection and I can't stop thinking about. The book hangover is going to be brutal.

An excellent dark horror, family saga that I'll be raving about always

thank you to net galley for the chance to read and review this stunning book

I accepted an ARC of Our Share of the Night from Netgalley. This is my honest review.

It's still December, and I'm calling it now: It's highly unlikely I'll read a better horror novel in 2023. Our Share of the Night is an epic novel filled with body horror, trauma, friendship, familial love and hate.

We meet Juan, a recent widower, traveling with his young son, Gaspar. Juan is filled with love for his son, but also anger, and the ability to hurt his son and anyone who gets in his way. Juan is a "medium" for an international cult that worships a dark, cruel god -- perhaps Darkness itself. He has been given no choice in this, having been purchased from his parents as a child.

Juan has a heart defect that he knows will kill him sooner than later, and he knows this cult wants his son -- either as the new medium, or a new vessel for Juan. He's determined that neither will happen.

The book encompasses a significant period of time, and a number of POV characters. Eventually we meet up with a slightly older Gaspar, who lives in an empty mansion with his father. He remembers little of the past. His father is often distant, and angry, and cruel. And sometimes perhaps insane.

The reader is privy to much more than Gaspar is at this stage, seeing connections he can't, and the workings of the occult. He is unaware he's setting up a friend to be sacrificed.
This portion of the book was extremely moving to me as Gaspar is abused by his father for reasons he can't understand. Juan commits a vicious act of cruelty and betrayal. I can only say that anyone who survived an abusive household will understand there are different types of horrors. One of those horrors is feeling unloved by a parent, and the shock when you realize you're not safe with them.

Gaspar had a friend group that helps him through this time, and we follow their journeys almost as much as Gaspar's, as they learn to live with loss, and the pieces of the aforementioned other world that clings to them.

The reader knows that Gaspar will eventually have to face the cult. Did I mention the cult is also family?

Things you should know:

This is a long book. Because I accepted a digital copy, I don't have page numbers, but depending on the source, it's between 600 and 730ish pages. It feels like the latter. You'll be spending lots of time here. If you just want the horror, and don't want to become involved, there are quicker books.

The book has a lot of body horror, and general supernatural stuff, including doors leading to another very vicious world, but there are long stretches between these moments where it's more about a feeling of dread and various characters working through trauma. A number of times I would be jolted anew at how dark, and gross, the story could be.

Our Share of the Night is a translated work from an Argentine author and is set in Argentina, and you will feel very immersed in this setting. The translation seemed smooth enough that I was rarely confused, but there were moments where I wondered if something was lost in translation.
Poets and poetry are mentioned A LOT!

The almost constant backdrop is political unrest. I think a lot of what you need to know can be picked up from context, but politics do play a heavy role. The cult is run by rich people who exploit poor, often Indigenous, people.

We spend time in London in the sixties, and Argentina the rest of the time, particularly in the 80s and 90s, and this portion has a focus on the AIDS crisis. The London portion might very well scratch a little bit of any serial killer itch you might have. 

There's LGBTQ+ rep, but slurs and outdated terms abound. There are a two people who are called a couple, but also twins, who want to swap sexes, but there seems to be more of a supernatural/spiritual incentive than really being trans. At least 3 of the protagonists are gay or bi.

An outdated term for people with Down Syndrome is used between friends.

Not every question of plot point is wrapped up, and there's clearly room for another book. Which I would read!

Our Share of the Night took me a couple weeks to read -- I read other books as well -- because I was so involved that I needed breaks from a very dark story. While most of the characters are varying degrees of evil, I did care about a few, and I imagine you will too. Others I wanted to suffer -- and suffer they did!

I feel that I could read the book several times over and find additional layers and nuances I missed.

Our Share of Night
By Mariana Enriquez
I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for letting me read this book.
This sounded so interesting I was very happy to get approved to read it.
I thought the overall plot was fairly good but different. Our man of the story, Juan, is a medium. He is a conduit for the darkness. Boy, is this book dark and so very, very, long! There is so much that could be condensed.
Juan has a son named Gaspar. Gaspar is already getting stronger than Juan was at Gaspar's age. Juan doesn't want his son to be a medium.
A medium physical changes into a monster at these sick ceremonies and mutilates or kills victims. The mind changes too, Juan is cruel and crazy many days. Abusive to Gaspar.
This book is filled with, not horror, but just sick stuff. Child abuse, shock value stuff like a bag of eye lids, and kids watching men have sex.
The time line is all over the place too.
I like horror books but this was unorganized, instead of suspense it had just gross/sick material, and none of the characters were interesting enough to become attached to. I felt sorry for the son through most of the book but I didn't really feel I knew him. If you have characters, make someone likeable and not in a cult that worships a bloodthirsty monster!

3.5 stars, rounded up. Imagine if Isabel Allende wrote a cross between Lovecraft Country and Firestarter (except that it extends the Firestarter portion into the child character's adulthood). Toward the end it does seem to lose interest in the (supernatural) horror side of the story, spending a lot more time Allende-style on the travails of the marginalized in Argentine society in the 1980s and '90s, and the resolution of the Lovecraft Country-ish part feels like an afterthought. Which is a shame, as the less real-world parts of the plot I found the strongest. (There are a handful of scenes that will stick with me for quite a while...)

This is a book that rewards patience. The reader is dropped into circumstances with very little explanation in the beginning in a way that I wanted to be frustrated with. At times I felt like all I wanted to do was figure out what was going on but the book was withholding that, putting it out of reach. But as the story starts to reveal itself, the book became impossible to put down and the pay off for the slow pacing in the beginning is absolutely thrilling.

Firstly, I'd like to thank Random House and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an e-ARC of this work. Our Share of Night is an episodic look at family legacy, perversion of morality, and testing fate. I appreciate Enriquez's ability to build onto high tension established from the beginning of the novel. I do think in many ways this could have been improved with enforced brevity. Overall, I enjoyed reading and seeing Gaspar grow into himself and fight for his own right as a human to forge his own path.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group Inc for an egalley. All opinions expressed are my own

What it's about: Set in Argentina during a military dictatorship, a father attempts to protect his young son from a dynastic family that wishes to use the young lad for occultic purposes.

I love to try a new author, a new genre, a new style of writing, etc. When Goodreads released an article on the books being released in 2023 that their members were excited about I browsed and selected a few titles that dared me to look outside my comfort zone. Our Share of Night was one of those titles. Although literary fiction is a familiar genre for me, horror is not one which I have dived into very much.

It proved to be a very challenging read.

According to storyflint. com," horror stories are designed to frighten the audience, often uses suspense, fear, and shocks to keep people on the edge of their seats. Some great horror stories are allegorical or symbolic, while others are more literal."

It took me 10 days to complete this novel as I would read one part at a time and then take a rest and allow what I had read- "digest."

Then I decided to wait 48 hours before I wrote my review.

This is what I know to be true- That this book has won the hearts of so many reviewers and critics and I learned a lot reading their words. Although this book didn't win my heart, I don't think it has anything to do with the genre or the writing. I believe it just comes from me being unable to connect with the characters or feeling swept up in the writing.

Overall, I am glad that I stepped out of my comfort zone and gave this book a try.


Publication Date: 07/02/23
Goodreads review published 10/02/23

#OurShareofNight #NetGalley.

This was such a unique story! It moves back and forth in time from London in the 1960’s to the time of Argentina’s military dictatorship and what followed. I enjoyed it and the spooky elements were great!

After the death of his wife a father a d son decide to go on a road trip. They go back to their ancestral home where the matriarchs family called the Order commits unspeakable acts searching for immortality. The order tries to get the son, Gaspar to follow them. It is his destiny. Unwilling, the father and son leave. Trying to outrun the Order will be challenging, especially since they are willing to do anything it takes to ensure their survival. How far will Gaspar’s father go to protect him?

Thank you netgalley and random house publishing for this arc in exchange for my honest review.

(ARC from NetGalley) I do believe we lost something in the translation of this book. Although Juan and Gaspar had fantastic characterization and you could clearly see they had a complex relationship, the horror elements lacked the atmosphere.

Still brilliant and I’ve never read anything quite like this, but just missing that razzle dazzle.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I don't really know what I was expecting from this book going into it. I think the way its written makes it a bit difficult not only to rate but to read. I wasn't sure if maybe the translation was part of it or not. But I found myself skim reading. Which to me is a sign that it wasn't for me if I wasn't trying to absorb it to remember later.

i feel completely honored to have received an arc of “our share of night.” this novel is an incredible feat from the literary master mariana enríquez. this is not a collection of short stories, but a full length novel. we meet juan peterson, a man trying to escape his violent cult past, and his son gaspar. juan is not a loving father in the traditional sense, but he has dedicated his life to finding a way to keep his son away from his evil grandparents who worship a vengeful god and perform odd rituals. we follow both juan and gaspar in argentina as they both try to live somewhat normal lives.

this novel is split into multiple sections, not chapters. enríquez expertly weaves together several points of view and time periods to create a visceral experience for the reader; there is not a moment that drags on too long or feels boring; every page is emotionally charged. the world building and explanations of magic and the occult are brilliant. i absolutely loved this novel and i feel so special that i was able to read it early. once again, enríquez has proved her talent in creating horror that does not conform to any tropes and fully shocks the system. you have to read this.

thank you so so so much to netgalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review!

a maniacal horror. This one stuck with me for a long time. The cult and behavior within this novel was truly terrifying.