Price range: £5.99 through £9.99
She’s not the first lighthouse keeper to lose her mind on the shores of Cabo Polonio, but she’s determined to be the first to survive it.
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.
There, she has only a month until her husband and her secrets catch up to her. But the position comes marred by the legend of La Loba, who stalks the lighthouse and the nearby fishing village, and by the spiraling visions that begin to plague Delmira.
A century earlier, Amalia arrives at the same lighthouse. Held captive and desperate to escape her dire situation, her story may hold the answers to Delmira’s torment.
Both of them, desperate for freedom and determined to survive, must find a way to outlive the horrors of Cabo Polonio.
File under: The Ocean Calls | You Don’t Belong Here | Legends and Lobos | Feminine Rage
“As haunting as a sea lion’s call, Loba is filled with jagged edges and viciously sharp teeth. Valentina Cano Repetto has expertly crafted a haunting atmosphere full of ancient lore and drowning darkness. Loba lures you in with its vivid prose and emotionally charged mystery. It swept me away from the very first chapter – gripping me with its icy fingers until I had no choice but to be swallowed by the sea.”
– Grace Morrow, author of We Become Darkness
“Loba is a yell of defiance against generational trauma, violence, and misogyny. Twisty and atmospheric, this cathartic horror will captivate you with townsfolk who know too much, lost treasure, a haunted lighthouse, and otherworldly sea lions.”
– Eli Snow, author of The Divine Gardener’s Handbook
“This gothic horror set in Uruguay is immersive, eerie, and bloody, rich with the palpable sensations of salt water and cold metal railings.”
– Booklist
“Loba is a haunting, feverish gothic horror that sinks its teeth into questions of womanhood and survival. Set against the windswept isolation of a Uruguayan lighthouse, amid the eerie cries of sea lions and the weight of local legend, it conjures visceral dread, an unforgettable sense of place, and two narrators whose unraveling keeps every page charged with uncertainty. Weaving together history and horror with remarkable skill, it is a deeply humane novel about what women endure, what they inherit, and the fierce courage required to imagine another future.”
– A.T. Rainach, author of The Art of Living Forever
“The ghost in this book works the way a violent hunter works … I finished the book standing up, sat in my studio for an hour making nothing, and then I could not stop drawing. Loba lights that fire.”
– Leopoldo Goût, author of Rooted
“Loba is a fierce, hypnotic fable wrapped in salt spray and folklore, braiding together two unforgettable women into a story that turns Uruguayan sea lion myth into a devastating meditation on captivity, rage, and the slow, hard-won discovery of solidarity between these women who’ve been taught there’s no such thing. A lush, claw-sharp debut that announces Valentina Cano Repetto as a voice to watch in feminist magical realism.”
– Soumi Roy
