🪷🌱 Eat The Ones You Love 🌱🪷

• Sarah Maria Griffin @sarahgriffski

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First of all, I know what you’re thinking. A sentient plant? If you haven’t already gathered from that rollercoaster of a pitch, this book is Weird. This may be the wackiest book I’ve ever read (and I mean that in a wholly complimentary way). When recently dumped, out-of-work Shell stumbles upon a flower shop and takes a fancy to the owner, she makes a spur-of-the-moment decision. She resolves that she’ll work as a florist, at least until she finds another job. Who knows, maybe she’ll fall in love with the art of flower arranging in her new life. What she doesn’t anticipate is a sentient, stalking, controlling plant called Baby that wants to consume her.

The humour in this book was top-notch. The descriptions were so vivid and true-to-life. When Griffin was writing about the slow death of the run-down local shopping centre, I could see it in my mind’s eye so clearly. We all know a Woodbine Crown Court – it’s something that most of us go about our daily lives not noticing, a part of our landscape.

The small cast of characters are wonderfully fleshed out. I think the modest cast was a perfect tool to give Griffin the opportunity to really explore each individual character, especially Shell, Baby and Neve. My favourite scene in the whole book was when Shell had to confront her past at a dinner party with her old friends – the shocking and unnervingly close-to-home sensation that maybe our friends aren’t the people we thought we knew.

It also includes a lot of insights about life, which I loved. About adult and female friendships, about the secret fear that everybody in your life hates you, about the life we purport to live online versus reality. It’s a real smorgasbord of craziness interspersed with some hard-hitting truths, occasionally masked with humour.

If you’re looking for a sapphic weird horror, featuring hungry, sentient plants, with a dash of literary fiction in there (an oddly specific recommendation, I know), then this might be just the book for you! Think Little Shop of Horrors but set in a dying mall with a carnivorous orchid, slowly devouring everyone whole. Okay?

Eat The Ones You Love is out June 3rd! Thanks to Titan Books and NetGalley for the digital ARC!