Loba, by Valentina Cano Repetto, is not quite what I was expecting, but I enjoyed it a lot anyway. The gothic horror novel’s supernatural elements were scary for the 1950s protagonist, but the abuse against her and the 1850s protagonist were far more horrific for me, along with the usual gothic elements of isolation and not knowing whom to trust — even whether to trust one’s own perceptions and memories. Each woman, however, was determined to keep striving for a better situation, and I found the resolution to be quite satisfying.
From the publisher: … Delmira Torres knows fleeing to Brazil is the only way she’ll be free of her abusive husband. But to get there she’ll need money; it’s why she takes a posting at a lighthouse in Cabo Polonio, Uruguay, a small town where time doesn’t seem to move quite right.
The first few chapters focus on Delmira, who presents a typewritten letter from her husband, explaining that he has to stay at his current job for a month to fix some problems before becoming the keeper at this new station, so he’s sending his wife to tend it temporarily. The letter is a lie, but the official in charge accepts the situation since, as he announces to Delmira, he’s only going to pay her half of her husband’s salary (and pocket the rest). This tends to be pretty typical; every man Delmira has ever met has at least used her, and her husband has abused her physically and verbally for years (which is why she’s escaping).
Complicating things along with her secret, a colony of sea lions resides right next to the lighthouse, so she has to dodge them when going in and out (the book’s name comes from Loba, the fierce sea lion matriarch). Hardly any visitors come, because of that and because the lighthouse is known to be haunted. The only two people who are at all friendly to Delmira are Mirta, a cook in the nearby village, and Jacinto, a fisherman who loves those sea lions much more than he likes the villagers who sometimes hunt them. Delmira often is semi-paralyzed by flashbacks to her life as an abused spouse, and she quickly becomes sleep-deprived because of the lighthouse schedule and the nightmares, or hauntings, that she experiences. In addition, time seems to keep speeding up and slowing down; is she imagining that too, or is this something the hostile ocean is causing?
Then the story jumps back from the 1950s to the 1850s, to Amalia, shackled to a pole in a hut in that same village. She’s not even married to her abuser; a man rescued her from a shipwreck and claimed her, and frequently beats and whips her, and the villagers are fine with this because they think she’s crazy (and because they are awful, or at the very least, their lives are precarious enough that other people’s problems don’t concern them at all). In their view, she keeps trying to drown herself; in her view, she’s trying to get to an underwater cave where her pelt is stored, so she can turn back into a sea lion. Either she’s been chained up so long that she’s hallucinating a human past for herself, or those might possibly be the real memories.
I really enjoy the trippiness here of not knowing what’s real and not, with reasons to sway belief either way. I also really enjoy how these two women’s parallel stories play out and eventually connect. There’s tragedy and lots of pain and betrayals and brutal revenge, but there’s also some solace and eventual understanding, of the situations and of other people. Atmospherically, I also appreciate the setting, which keeps whipping back and forth between sun-drenched seaside sand, cool dark undersea dreams, and creepy interiors. It’s a good book with engaging characters and intriguing mysteries, the kind of horror I really like.
Loba, by Valentina Cano Repetto, is being published today, Nov. 10, 2026, by Angry Robot Books.
Content warnings: Domestic abuse, including rape, physical and verbal abuse, torture, slavery (more or less), loss of agency and self-harm, hunting and slaughtering animals, arguable mental illness, and time shenanigans.
Disclaimer: I received a free eARC of this book from the publisher for review.
