Reviews with content warning for Death - Eat the Ones You Love

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Reviews tagging 'Death'

Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin

31 reviews

rorikae's review against another edition

4.0

dark slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

"Eat the Ones You Love" is a strange book but also delightful in its own odd way. It has body horror, trying to find your place in the world, and a sentient plant. It's quite slow and mostly character driven but if you are interested in something sapphic with weird plants and characters trying to find their place in life then I would reccomend it. I'm a little bit confused by the ending but as a whole, I think it's an intirguing book with a great sense of place, creeping horror, and commentary on suburbia.

Content Warnings

hedgewilde's review against another edition

5.0

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

kds247's review against another edition

4.75

dark funny reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

The Plant: “I’m just a baby” 🥺

This was one of my favorite reads this year. It had a slow, creeping horror that underlined this beautiful story of going back to your hometown, feeling directionless and drowning in nostalgia. It truly did live up to “queer little shop of horrors in Ireland but the plant is in love (obsessively) with the shop owner”.

The writing was gorgeous and very atmospheric. The author describes things so uniquely that I had to make a bunch of highlights. Also the combination of first and third person point of view telling the story really made it feel like Joe in You. Which makes sense since the narrator is a very similar character.

Content Warnings

withlivjones's review

4.0

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

A sapphic Little Shop of Horrors, what’s not to love? I really enjoyed the setting of the book, it was super eerie and atmospheric in the way that derelict shopping centres in suburban hell can feel like weird liminal spaces. My favourite part was absolutely the narration from the plant’s POV, its scheming and obsession with Neve was kind of giving Joe Goldberg and the way it always seemed to be one step ahead made the whole story very tense - it’s a shame we lost that POV towards the end when the focus turned more towards Jen. I would’ve loved a more drawn-out, climactic ending sequence that really played into the plant/body horror from earlier in the book, what we ended up with was a little anticlimactic with how it was over in the space of a couple of pages. Still creepy and thrilling and very fun to read, though.

Content Warnings

sophirv19's review against another edition

3.75

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Something tickles my brain in all the right places with creepy LGBTQ+ horror and Eat the Ones You Love ticked all the right boxes.

This just got weirder as it went on, in the absolute best way, but I'm not sure I liked the ending? I feel like it would have made sense if it was just fleshed out by like 50 pages, give it more space to breathe. I don't think it's a bad ending at all, just not the one I think the brilliance of the book deserved.

Content Warnings

measlibrary's review against another edition

2.0

dark tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I wanted to enjoy this so badly but was bored & confused by the end of it.

Content Warnings

vexatiousbird's review against another edition

3.5

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Entertaining read with a lot of potential that ultimately didn't go anywhere. I mean… a thing happened. It just didn’t deliver on the promise, and ultimately felt kind of pointless. Anticlimactic. Weirdly quaint ending.

It really felt like it was building up to something immense. Hungry plant has its sights set on the world! Everything is developing ominously. But… poof! It’s over already.

It’s like there was some disagreement over whether this should be a happy ending, or a horrific ending where the plant gets everything it wants, and the conclusion was: one death, a building collapse, and the plant neutered in a safe little pot where it can’t eat anyone but can I guess give them weird but safe dreams? How is the part of the plant that’s inside Shell even tolerating this rather than threatening her and bursting her open in a temper tantrum? It doesn’t even make sense and it’s very frustrating.

Content Warnings