What in the world did I just read? I honestly had no idea what I was letting myself in for, and if I had known what it was all about, I might not have been so quick to jump in. In a word, this book is disturbing. And yet I couldn't look away. I saw that this book was classified as supernatural horror, and it definitely is all that. But it is a melding of genres and themes that include mystery, historical fiction, dysfunctional relationships, family, secret societies, ritualistic murder and torture (which includes children), demonic possession, queer relationships and being queer in Argentina, the AIDS epidemic, and I'm sure there are others things I'm missing. If any of this sounds like they may be triggers for you, then I would recommend steering clear.

I don't know what this would be like to read in Spanish, but the translation seems to be a good one and the writing absolutely drew me into this story. There were times, especially after reading about the torture of children, when I HAD to walk away. But the story continued to call me back. While the story is told over a long period of time and from different points of view, the story seems to revolve around Gaspar, who is a child at the beginning of the story. And I kept reading because I wanted to know what would end up happening to him. Without revealing any spoilers, the ending left me feeling a little bit dissatisfied, mostly because I wanted something a little bit different. But I am not a writer and perhaps the story HAD to end the way it did. But it left me feeling a bit melancholy.

There was one section, told from the point of view of a journalist, that I found less interesting than the rest, partly because it pulled me out of the story, even though she was investigating things that happened to the other characters. It wasn't so much that it had nothing to add to the story--it did--but her character seemed to come out of nowhere. I did like the way the author eventually connected things together, especially with the man Gaspar and his dad ran into early in the book, but I had no idea who it was until they did.

Overall, I would recommend this with care, especially if certain things are triggers for you.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Our Share of Night is a complex book that blends a very real horror and dark point of Argentinian history with a supernatural Darkness that was summoned and worshipped by some demented evil occultists. I have studied Argentinian history and am familiar with the human rights atrocities that occurred and the families who still long for answers about their disappeared loved ones who were lost. Enriquez blends history with a cult whose members believe that they have the right to live forever even if involves torture, murder, rape, or even taking over another person's body. This book definitely shows the evil things that humans are capable of, especially when they see themselves as being part of an elite chosen few and are entitled to whatever they desire for their own purposes. They will serve the Darkness and anyone that gets in the way will suffer.
The story itself is amazing; however, there were times where the pacing seemed slow and redundant. This made the book seem twice as long and I found myself literally falling asleep while reading it. I am happy that I did finish the book, but there were times where I considered DNFing it. I typically read 2-3 books a week and this book took 2 weeks for me to finish. I do recommend this book, but there are multiple trigger warnings and be ready for a story that feels longer than it actually is.

OUR SHARE OF NIGHT by Mariana Enriquez is a master class of the unexpected, and the tragic. Juan is trying to protect his son, Gaspar, from a supernatural destiny. His ancestors are part of a cult that does horrific things to people in order to gain immortality. The book spans decades as you spend time with Gaspar, his family and his friends. the relationships developed are strong and desperate with a loyalty that time and pain cannot diminish. The book is long and the multiple characters can be hard to keep track of, but Mariana Enriquez’ unique storytelling style kept me fully intrigued. Gaspar might just be my favorite tragic character of all time.

Our Share of Night is a slow burn political and occult horror about multigenerational family and national trauma. It’s about a powerful family’s ties to the occult and the lives they ruin in search of maintaining their power and wealth and searching for immortality. We begin the story following Juan, a medium who is used by the cult to communicate with the world of the gods, the darkness. Juan has recently lost his wife, who was a member of the cult. With his son starting to show that he too has the abilities of a medium, Juan decides he will do anything he can to keep his son away from the cult. With the story being told through various voices it also shifts style, at times reading like a coming of age story, at times dark academia and at times lovecraftian. Throughout it has an oppressive and ominous atmosphere both within the story and what is happening in the backdrop historically. After having finished reading I keep going back and thinking about it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I hated to do it, but I gave up on Our Share of Night. I started it in ebook form for about 16% of the book then picked up on audio. I have listened to almost 10 hours and there are still 17 to go.

It's not bad, it's just too long for me. I was intrigued by the supernatural and cult elements, but I never would have picked it up if I'd have clocked the page count. I'm not great at hanging with super long books (The Shining excepted). If you like long reads with cool paranormal, culty elements (and demons!) definitely recommend giving it a try though.

Our Share of Night weaves tapestries of complex characterization, lore, and generations of relationships together to achieve what feels like a modern classic. Enriquez packs this book to the brim with horrific imagery and unforgettable moments, never letting the reader become to comfortable with the emotion at the forefront of their mind. A massive 600 page tome that justifies its length, Our Share of Night drags the reader into the darkness, allowing us to see through the murk from every perspective, and form a stunning picture of human behavior cloaked in the supernatural.

Thank you NetGalley for this read in exchange for an honest review! I wish I could read “Our Share of Night” by Mariana Enríquez in its original language. This novel is hauntingly raw and I found myself enamored with the writing style. As a reader you are sucked up into the environment, never know what to expect or where it’s going to lead. I believe this is a book I would definitely have to read again to fully comprehend its depths. This work was dark and mysterious, and I’d recommend it to any fans of historical & horror fiction.

Great book! Chills at times and a very emotional story of a family legacy. Content warning: discussion of suicide

OUR SHARE OF NIGHT was so fabulous I scarcely have words to describe the way it made me feel. This book was a saga of the deepest kind of love, horror, and grit combined into one unforgettable story.

Loved Enriquez's previous short stories, so I was intrigued by her latest novel. This was a wild ride, that I enjoyed but it often felt lengthy at times for no particular reason.

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.