Reviews

This Delicious Death by Kayla Cottingham

whut_'s review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

dkyrisch's review

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4.0

It’s a godforsaken bloodbath!

“This delicious death” is the second book by Kayla Cottingham and it’s a ghoulish ride. It stars four ghouls…… Or characters who were affected by The Hollowing three years ago. A event that caused a small portion of folks to be transformed to flesh eating ghouls. Weird, isn’t that just how kids really are these days? Anyway, rather then just have ghouls running around killing everyone a synthetic flesh food for them to eat was invented for them to eat and life returned to normal. Kinda.

Zoey, Celeste, Valeria, and Jasmine are the four ghouls living in Southern California. They are also good friends and are travelling with each other to a music festival (Coachella it seems like) They are having a great time listening to music and not killing anyone when someone tampers with the food and causes ghouls to go feral. Next thing you know Valeria turns up missing and they find her killing a boy and eating him.

My kind of book!

This book is very well written and has a lot of meat on the bones. No pun intended! It’s written in the form of flashbacks by the main characters and we get inside their lives, how they turned into ghouls, and living in a LGBT world. You really felt for them…. Even when they go on flesh eating killing sprees. It’s a great bloody and violent book! Definitely YA but lots of gore.

Highly recommended!

I really appreciate SOURCEBOOKS Fire for giving me the opportunity to read this book in advance for a fair review and it has a publication date of April 25, 2023.

lovelyandmorbid's review

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adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

pastagoblin666's review

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

2.5

I mean yeah this was fun and silly and camp, and the whole "recovering zombies at a music festival" idea is pretty fucking cool. I just think it read too much like fanfiction to get into it.

cb613's review

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dark funny tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

amberly1997's review

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dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

 I enjoyed this book but I didn't love it, the atmosphere and world building was okay but needed to be flash out more. The writing was okay and The paced of plot was bit slow also the cover of the book was stunning. I don't liked the characters and I feel at they needed to flash out and the ending was fine

 

joann3's review

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  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.75

hostile17's review

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dark emotional funny mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

tyshaw001's review against another edition

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adventurous funny mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

The beginning is very slow.

emkral22's review

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4.0

This book was so entertaining! I really enjoyed the author’s first book, My Dearest Darkest, and this was a great second standalone. Thanks to NetGalley for the e-ARC provided for a review!
Here’s the premise: in the last couple years, much like Covid, a deadly disease swept the globe, called the Hollowing. The infected developed a taste for human flesh (like a zombie apocalypse but they didn’t turn mindless- unless they’re hungry) so the government developed synthetic human meat to keep the “ghouls” satisfied and non-violent. There’s also a registration and tracking system and a blanket amnesty for anyone who murdered anyone during the initial infection period- this could’ve been fleshed out (no pun intended) further, and you have to suspend your disbelief quite a bit with the premise to go along with the story, but I’m here for a good time, not to nitpick like this is CinemaSins. I do think this is the weakest part of the book, but I’m willing to overlook it.
The plot is thus: a group of four girls (ghouls, as they were all infected during the Hollowing and now they consume synthetic human meat) travel to a music festival the summer after they graduate high school and discover that someone has developed a drug to make ghouls go feral on purpose and is exposing people on purpose. One of the friends gets exposed and the girls have to come together to dispose of the evidence, find an antidote, and stop the persons responsible, while navigating normal teenage relationship drama.
The author writes in the acknowledgements that her first book took her a decade and this one was about nine months- I do think the world building and some of the characters could’ve been more developed, but overall I had a really good time reading this book.