In the aftermath of the turmoil of Argentina’s Dirty War, the rich create their own darkness, seeking immortality by destroying the lives of others. Juan, a man who was forced to work at the service of this darkness from a young age, knows his end is near, but his greatest hope is to save his young son from the fate he cannot escape.

1️⃣ This is considered horror. And it is absolutely horrifying. But it took me a short while to adjust to the rules of the world, which I didn’t expect from the genre.

2️⃣ The relationships in this book are so complex, with the possibility of animalistic brutality simmering beneath every interaction between characters. And the simmer often, abruptly, reaches a boil. This book contains atrocities.

3️⃣ This is a thick book. If you pick it up on Kindle (🙋‍♀️), you may not realize that until you notice have been at the 1% mark for 25 minutes. Going into the book with that knowledge should help. You’ll need to pay attention and work a bit with this book, but it’s absolutely worth it.

4️⃣ Argentinian literature is one of my favorite things. I loved seeing how Enriquez explored this time period in history through this complicated, horrifying lens.

5️⃣ Although I wasn’t sure what I was getting into with this book initially, it is very much worth the read. As best you can, prepare for horrors you don’t want to face and wade into this story.

I wanted to start off by comparing this to a book that possessed the same effect as Our Share of Night, but I simply can't come up with a single book. Nothing from the years of books I've read. I could say the reason for that is it's told not only in the voice of someone that tells of a place I have so seldom read about, Argentina, but it's done in a similar poetic, enchanting, and laser-focus manner on all the minute details, such as the late, great literary pillar, Peter Straub.

If you want to know what literary horror is, this is just about the greatest example you could ever have.

The horror in Our Share conjure some of the most gruesome images that will surely haunt me 'till my dying day. The folkloric aspects are so enticing that, at times, I can imagine someone romanticizing and glossing over all the awful (and very real) destruction of death and destruction, orchestrated by crooked politicians and evil leaders, and instead, focus on the magic and wonders of a young man trying to figure out life.

This tome checks off just about every damn thing a reader of the dark, twisted, and scary could ever desire. It's the first time this book has been translated in English, as well, which makes me wonder just how many exquisite books and authors I will never be able to enjoy because I don't speak their language.

This giant story is a lot. Author Mariana Enríquez is a very accomplished bilingual writer, but much of the subject matter covered here just wasn't my cup of tea. On one level, Our Share of Night is the story of Juan Peterson and his family: recently deceased wife Rosario and young son Gaspar. But Juan and Rosario's family histories are so intertwined and complex as to be bewildering. I took copious notes in an effort to keep track of all the many characters within several generations spanning 1904-1993 and beyond in both directions, but my confusion stemmed more from disbelief and horror than information overload.

The cruelty and madness within this family parallels political turmoil of South America's dictatorship, socioeconomics relating to colonialism and slavery, and the rigors of diaspora. There are many themes throughout this book having to do with physical and mental suffering, torture, violence and wounded or missing appendages. There is a secret occult society called The Order, that worships a cult of the Shadow, a wildly destructive, orgiastic force of evil. Juan has been a Medium connecting The Order to the Shadow since childhood and has suffered so much in that capacity that he'll do anything to protect his son Gaspar from the same fate. Tall and seductive Juan is a vampirish figure, beautiful in an otherworldly way; a widower caring for his young son but at the same time abusive towards Gaspar. Also he has graphic sex with partners of every gender, including his doctor, sister-in-law, and random photographers. This book was too long and too out there to hold my interest; I would recommend it to fans of epic paranormal sagas featuring gratuitous sex and gore.

Deeply unsettling and weird in the best possible way. 10/10 no notes I preordered it immediately after getting to the halfway point.

This was DARK. Very dark. And mysterious. And addictive. And so perfectly paced. Definitely one of my new favorite horror novels!

Good lord, the next time I decide to pick up a book this long, do me a favor and stop me. Just knock the damn thing out of my hand, or deny my netgalley or edelweiss request ok?!

It wasn't a bad book by any means, it was just toooo damn loooong. I'm postive we could've achieved the same outcome in oh, say, 300 less pages?

In a nutshell, a boy is born to a father who has a magnificantly terrible ability to communicate with an evil darkness and has inherited his powers. His father is sickly, dying a slow death, and is endlessly abused and forced to perform Rites and Ceremonials at the hands of his adopted family, who want to harness this darkness for their own dark, demented means. His father knows nothing will stop them from coming after his son once he's dead so he protects him, marks him so that his family will never be able to find him and force him to suffer the same destiny.

All of this is basically covered in the first section of the book. During the remaining 75% of the novel, we are frustratingly bounced around at a snails pace across a multitude of time periods and by a handful of connected narrators who continue to shed their particular light on what we already knew, the whole time wondering where we are being led and if we are ever really going to get there. And we do, readers, we do. But man, if there was short cut to get there, I would have gladly taken it!

Also, to be fair, this was a big buzz book in 2022, and by now I should know that me and big buzz books don't usually get along so well. So I'm not surprised to find myself underwhelmed.

Here's looking forward to seeing what 2023 has in store for me!!

3.5 stars

Mariana Enriquez writes about characters you will love and darkness that you couldn't have imagined yourself. I really hope this gets turned into a movie some day.

This was an enjoyable, but long read. Some aspects felt drawn out and by the end I felt like there were a lot of loose ends and things I wanted answered. There was so much AMAZING content in here that still could have been expanded upon. I'm usually all for when things are left open for interpretation, but I feel like the ending left us with not much. I was really expecting a big bang! There were for sure moments where I was shocked and actually covered my mouth while reading, and that's always a good feeling. I guess I was just left wanting more overall. Like I said though, I loved these characters. Gaspar and Juan especially will live with me for a while.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hogarth for the advanced copy.

Demons, violent cults, monsters made out of darkness - this book is not my usual cup of tea, but I was surprisingly intrigued. Told in alternating timelines, the story mostly follows a medium, Juan, and his son, Gaspar, as they try to escape the clutches of a demonic cult committed to discovering immortality through torture and murder. There’s a lot more to it, of course - like a very interesting history of Argentinian politics - and like most long books there were some parts I enjoyed more than others.

Ultimately, I liked more than I disliked, but be warned - there is some truly disturbing imagery within these pages and I had more than a few uneasy nights as I made my way through this. I also felt like the climax was a little rushed and rather than an ending, it just ended.

Read if you like: death cults, sleepless nights, nightmare fuel, horror with a side of poetry

I applied for this ARC because of the cover & the intriguing blurb. This book took me several days to finish, and not because it was bad or boring, but simply because it felt like ...a task. It was not one you can quickly breeze through (in my opinion) and I'm not sure if that is due to the translation or the author just writing in a certain style. It was worth the read, however cumbersome and I would read more by this author.

I was so excited to receive this ARC and I blew right through it. It was one of my most anticipated novels for 2023 and it did not disappoint. I am not much into horror novels. I usually only read them around Halloween but I have heard so much good about this one that I just couldnt wait that long. This book is dark and mysterious and impossible to put down. This novel was expertly crafted in its writing and storytelling. Every element blended seamlessly.

unfortunately this is a dnf. the writing style wasn't for me. thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the e-arc.

There is so much to love in this book. The characters are really interesting, the occult elements are fascinating, and it does a great job weaving the true history and danger alongside the supernatural. However, I felt like so much of the imaginative and interesting parts were weighed down by the descriptions of day-to-day monotony. I would have enjoyed it more if it had been 200-300 pages shorter with a tighter focus. 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4

A few years ago, I remember reading this tweet by Alexander Chee that said something along the lines: "There are other ways of expressing that you love someone other than constantly worrying about them." And yet, what if you live in a world that makes other people's existence and well-being so precarious that worrying about them is all we can do? I think "Our Share of Night" is ultimately a book about the corrosive effect of violence on love and care; and how impossible it is to have any healthy attachment and relationship when you are fighting for a better future for the ones that you love.

I think books about dictatorships are hard to do well, especially when you are dealing with events so traumatic and infamous that you have decades of written legacy to contend with. It is not merely trying to do justice to the violence, it is also making sure not to fall into tropes and traps of post-memory fiction as a genre. In transforming truth through the lens of horror and fantasy, Enriquez has created a unique and marvelous text that speaks to the violence of dictatorship in a new and refreshing vocabulary of loss and love.

In re-reading it, I was shocked to realize that, despite knowing the story well, I was still swept in Juan's attempts to save his son's future, in the history of the cult that stole his own existence, and the heartbreaking desire for redemption and salvation. It made me think of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice: of course, Orpheus went to hell to get her back, of course he couldn't save her.

Unfortunately a rare DNF with this one.

I had really high hopes, as I enjoyed her book THE DANGERS OF SMOKING IN BED, but I think this book may have a case of misrepresentation. Promoted as a literary horror, I was getting almost more of a YA Fantasy element.

I was definitely intrigued in the beginning — I liked the father son relationship, and the mystery behind the wife’s death, along with her elusive family. It’s an interesting enough premise, and I liked that this was slowly unraveling. I also thought the subtle horror elements were setting up the story well — the ghostly traces of memory lingering around them.

However, once the family enters the picture, it lost its touch. It seems to launch into over the top, overwritten fantasy elements (demon slaying? transformation?) that felt tacky. I don’t think it did the story justice and completely steered the book in a different direction.

The dialogue depleted and again, it seemed like the audience of this book was not literary horror — which is fine, but just some mismatch there.

Perhaps the translation contributes to this — of course, there will always be elements I don’t understand in a translation, but it felt like rudimentary writing in some areas, and some of the sentences weren’t landing, which added to the sense of YA style.

I think this book may be for a different reader than anticipated. Glad I gave this one a try, but sad to say it was not right for me — I would have hoped to power through it if it were shorter, but with that length, I couldn’t get much past the first large section. There was no driving factor to make me interested in the side/backstories.

This book took me a long time to read. I was on two 6 hour flights and thought, 'Why haven't I finished this book yet? Then I realized it's over 600 pages long. This was a very bizarre story told in different time periods with different characters perspectives. It wasn't that hard to follow but I felt it could have been cut by 1/3. There were some characters' backstories that were not needed to understand what was going on with the main characters and plot. This is a supernatural horror story along the lines of 'Mexican Gothic', but more disturbing and gross.

Argentinian father and son duo Juan and Gaspar are married to a rich woman whose family belongs to a cult called 'The Order'. This cult believes that by sacrificing children and willing volunteers, they will achieve eternal life. Juan is a conduit to 'The Darkness', which is a power that turns him into a monster that performs the sacrifices. When Juan's wife Rosario dies mysteriously, the Order is determined to find him and Gaspar to ensure that 'The Darkness' continues. Part One of the book explains the process of the cult, and Juan and Rosario's roles. Then there is a whole section that goes into how they met, their college life, and his first experience with the darkness. When Juan becomes ill, The Order tries to import his essence into his son Gaspar, believing he has inherited the power from Juan.

There are a lot of disturbing parts of this book involving tortured children, body parts, and mass graves. Some of these sections are references to Argentina's 'disappeared persons' during the revolution that opposed the junta. Many of those were killed and put into mass graves. So the author alludes to that atrocity.

The writing was well done here and beautiful in parts:
"He took Gaspar’s face in his hands, leaned down to look him in the eyes, and caressed his hair, the box on the ground between them, and he said, you have something of mine, I passed on something of me to you, and hopefully it isn’t cursed, I don’t know if I can leave you something that isn’t dirty, that isn’t dark, our share of night."

However, the book just needed to have more structure and flow to make it more engaging to the reader. I'd heard great things about this authors' prior book of short stories so expected more from this one.

I ... want to chalk this up to a story lost in translation because I enjoyed Enriquez' short story collection so much and this ... what was this? There was so little emotion in the text, it felt like reading a textbook about a fantasy book.

The book is broken up into six parts and each part follows a different character/time period and kind of builds off of the other parts - and at first I thought that was really neat! It was almost like reading a short story collection but everything was connected, but that marvel was soon lost on me once I had to read two chapters in a row that were so slow paced so so ..... seemingly about nothing. <spoiler> I'm talking specifically about Rosario's chapter where she realizes that the Order is not exactly what she grew up thinking it was 20% into her part and then we still have to follow her around London as she's making this realization time and time again like girl ... we get it moveon.org let's get the plot moving </spoiler>. Gaspar's chapters were the only ones that were truly ... engaging to me and maybe its because he was so in the dark that it actually gave the story a feeling of mystery ... intrigue ... flavor ...

I think the overall demon shape-shifting cult-secret society plot was so corny but I did like how the demon shape-shifting soul-transition was an allegory (?) of generational trauma. Seeing Gaspar slowly turn into his father as a young adult was HARD to read but I was also like okay I see what you're doing here. He is becoming his father in the worst way and in the story its like psychic shit but in reality that shit just happens you know? I'm always down for a horror allegory about real life situations.

All that being said ... I really don't know how to rate this book but because I only enjoyed 2.5 parts, I feel like it's only fair to rate it 2.5 stars (rounded up to 3).

Thank you Netgalley for an early copy! Sorry it wasn't a hit!

I wanted to read this book because Paul Tremblay has recommended the author so much. This story is so beautifully written and Mariana has such a unique voice. She has created such a fantastic world and did a wonderful job jumping back and forth between time to tell the different narratives of the characters.

At times I hated Juan for how he treated Gaspar and just wanted him stop being a jerk. But by the end you realize how he weaved everything together to help him.

The descriptions of the locations made me feel like I was really there in another country and could see the sights and smell the smells.

I enjoyed following Gaspar from his childhood into adulthood and felt like I got to know him in a way that I don’t normally get to with other characters in books. The author did such a fantastic job with this. I’m looking forward to reading more of her.

A wonderfully dark and twisted story of a family living in and escaping from a dark order. Mariana Enriquez weaves political upheaval and instability into this story seamlessly. The violence is sudden, sporadic, and inevitable. Always shocking. The darkness surrounds and consumes the characters within the story, and encompasses the entire country. And yet this is still a tale of a small family trying to do what's best for themselves and each other even when completely submerged within this darkness.

Ended up being a dnf for me. I have been trying for over a week now and the writing style isn’t working for me. It’s a shame because this sounds like it could be good, but I won’t be continuing with it, won’t post on Goodreads since I couldn’t finish it

3.5 stars.
This book was very dark and unsettling. The premise really caught my attention, which made me excited to read it. While slow at times, the story was very genre-bending and I found myself constantly wanting to know what was going to happen next. The writing was fantastic; Enriquez is quite the talented author. While I enjoyed the story, I kinda found myself wanting more from it, especially since I loathed many characters. Overall, it was a good book and I think my rating would benefit from a second read at some point.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.