Reviews

Everything the Darkness Eats by Eric LaRocca

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jackiec14's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

kaiyakaiyo's review

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dark sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.0

Tw// this book contains a pretty detailed rape and hate crime sequence, along with pervasive homophobia. a dash of internalized ableism (?) peruse at your own risk

For the first 170 pages I would have said this book, while very very very much not my cup of tea, was at least written okay. The last 30 or so pages completely wrecked that with the handwaviest retcon ending I think I’ve ever seen. I closed the book and made a sound I can only textually describe as ????????? any amount of mounting unknowable horror became completely absurd and ruined an already pretty wobbly narrative

I disliked reading this book a lot, and the ending was shit, but I can’t say it was bad per se… I just liked absolutely nothing about it personally

the characters feel dropped into their own universe, and they make very little sense in the context of their town or each other. The neighborhood apparently hired homophobic hicks to beat the daylights out of a gay couple that moved in months ago in broad daylight, one of which is a cop, but the extremely flamboyant rich recluse just kites around town in a rolls royce? said gay couple is trying to adopt a child and “blend in” in HateCrime, USA for completely unexplained reasons? ghost … he just felt like an OC someone made and didn’t flesh out on tumblr? the fucking evil ferret thing?? what goes on. Very much short book syndrome, none of the characters or settings feel complete
the “cosmic horror” fell pretty flat for me; there’s only so many times you read about a floating orb before it wears off. its power show at the end was frankly laughable, though i cheered @ the couple making it out alive! nothing about the rituals or kidnappings (weirdly blasé compared to the truly violent bits) spooked me even a little. the only horrifying parts of this book were the violent homophobic home invasion and graphic gang rape and stabbing. those are pretty real life horrors though, so this read didn’t really feel like I was reading a horror book, just a really awful Twitter thread about world events with a weird spiritual ad in the middle. I don’t mean to cheapen the deeply traumatic and trigger events here; they were heartbreaking to read. my point is that these were the only events in the book to evoke any sort of reaction from me, and that reaction was a pretty familiar mix of dread/sadness/nausea that comes with hearing about bad things happen to fellow queer people. not exactly the fun spine-tingler read I was after. I HAVE to start checking storygraph warnings before grabbing books that sound vaguely interesting
the weird aside into the raging homophobic rapist and killer’s child molestation backstory… it added virtually nothing to the book. if we were going to get into “nuance” about why this town is full of vicious bigots, more pages should have been spent actually showing other townspeople. we met like 4. as it stands, it felt very random juxtaposed with the brutal stabbing that followed it. There’s some muddled point about trauma begetting trauma, but we just didn’t spend enough time on the moment for it to evoke any more thought than an SVU episode plot point compared to the other events of the novel. why include it at all ?
the writing style… it moved quickly, that was nice, but frankly each sentence felt like it relished in the violence being conveyed. gross, almost greasy language, too many similes, major overuse of the words “monster” and “guilt”, overall not fun on the eyes to make up for the lackluster content. the pages were also distractingly ugly. why the background. why. is this a 2009 MS word book report?

Not a good read, and I should’ve guessed that by how much time was spent making the book itself pretty. do in fact judge overly stylized books by their cover!

maybe people more wigged by cosmic horror would like this? people who dig social violence horror (is that a thing?) idk. adding this author to my do not read list bc frankly nothing about this made me even slightly curious about other work. chop

Content Warnings

sandysan_11's review

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3.0

I had no expectations for this novel. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t exceptional. A decent, quick read.

zoeygrey's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

edenofalltrades's review

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dark tense medium-paced

2.0

thelovelydove's review against another edition

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challenging dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

The writing is bad, I don't have another way to describe it. It is repetitive, the grammar is not good, and the word choices make me cringe. The author never lets you bond with the characters and I really didn't care about what happens to them.

The book is not scary and the only real horror is body horror. The author relies on violence for the sake of violence to create any feeling. There is a violent and horrible sexual assault that felt totally unnecessary. It felt very bury your gays.

I truly wish I had DNFed this or never picked it up in the first place. I would never recommend someone read this book.

Content Warnings

owlseyebooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

3.25

Most difficult to read SA I've ever seen.... I'm still trying to find words and get my mind right...

Content Warnings

jconfess's review against another edition

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Clunky and repetitive writing.

chuckstafer's review against another edition

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4.0

Goodness, this was a challenging read at times. VERY dark and subject matter that was very heavy for sure. LaRocca has a way of sucking readers in with his narrative and writing style though and even when parts of this book were difficult to read, I couldn't stop.

A very strange tale as well and touched on some interesting topics regarding idol worship, religion, homophobia more.

the_walkyrie's review against another edition

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2.0

Honestly the violence against the LGBT made me uncomfortable and I considered DNFing the book quite a few times as it felt gratuitous, and without purpose.

I kept telling myself that there HAD to be a purpose and it's why I finished it. But no. It fell flat and left me bitter and feeling sad.

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