Have a hot ghoul summer...

Ever since the pandemic known as the Hollowing, Zoey and her friend's lives have changed. As a side effect of the pandemic, people were turned into flesh eating ghouls. Other than the side of cannibalism, they are normal teenage girls who just want to live a normal life. When they are afforded the opportunity to go to a music festival in the deserts of Southern California, pack up their trunk of lab grown organs for them to snack on and hit the road. What they don't know is that soon they will be in the middle of an attempt to turn the general public against ghouls for good.

I really enjoyed this book! I love a good found family trope and this book had it. I really enjoyed getting to peak into the backgrounds of all the girls and see where they were when they beceame ghouls and how they've overcome it. The plot twist was nice and I didn't see the bad guy being the bad guy.

I was lucky enough to meet Kayla at an author event and get some insight into her writing process which was so much fun! She was really sweet and I can't wait to read more of her books.

*Thank you to Kayla Cottingham, Negalley, and SOURCEBOOKS Fire for the ARC!

I love ya thrillers and mysteries and sometimes - it feels like there aren’t enough. This was nothing short of everything I wanted and was expecting. It was fun, we had some entertaining characters and I loved the main plot and following it through from start to finish. I had the best time, truly,

I love a good zombie story and lately, they’ve been a bit lame. I miss the early aughts when it was a ‘no holds barred, run for your life yet still make a few friends on the way’ survival story. Cottingham brings in this story with a modern day feel but with the survival of the old days and I really enjoyed it.

Ghouls are an interesting take on the zombie lore because they don’t just lurch around looking for brains, as any Supernatural fan knows, they can survive on the flesh of the living or dead and as long as they’re fed, they’re quite sociable.

When The Hollowing arrives, it’s manageable with synthetic meaty things but things go south for a group of friends when on a trip and the MC, Zoey, will stop at nothing to make sure her friends are protected.

Fun story with a great twist on the ghoul legend!

The Netgalley Shelf App cannot be trusted, I could not download this book and now it has vanished entirely. I am sorry, I would have really liked to review the book but I cannot access it.

This isn’t my typical type of read, but it was good. Cute. It seemed to drag on quite a bit in the middle, but it was decent enough to finish.

I received a copy from Sourcebooks and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I liked the concept of this story. It was way out of my normal reads. I kept forgetting this is a YA, which may be why I did not connect to it and found some of the characters a bit annoying. It was a quick read, integrating a post-pandemic world and Coachella festival. I did not like the back and forth throughout the story, just did not flow well. I really wanted to like this story but it was just meh for me.

Super fun YA thriller/sci-fi read.I really enjoyed the pace and story of the novel, but a teeny bit too young for me. Would make a great late teens book, though! Points for diversity and a twist on a classic werewolf/cannibal story

This Delicious Death caught my attention with its eye-catching bloody cooler cover. I mean, what’s not to love there?

The cooler is actually filled with synthetic meat because in this story the world has experienced something called “The Hollowing” which appears to be a plague that turned some people into flesh-craving ghouls. Some people just got sick and recovered, some people were eaten and others now and forever will crave the delicious flesh of humans. Fortunately for the remaining humans, science came to the rescue with a synthetic substitute to sate the flesh hunger and allows the ghoul folks to be reintegrated into society.

Sounds a little dangerous to me and this story proves that, well, IT IS!

Four teens all afflicted with the flesh cravings head out to their first event since the trauma of The Hollowing. They’re attending a Coachella-like festival with a cooler filled with flesh snacks. They’re so excited to finally have some fun. What they find instead is a nightmare and a maybe little romance.

This is a fun book in parts and in others it's a little sloggy. The pacing felt somewhat off. Sometimes it was engaging and gross fun and then it would slow down to a crawl and the last few chapters were a whirlwind of action. It’s very gory but there is a campy Scooby-Doo Mystery feel to the whole thing and there’s also a teenage love triangle as one of the characters struggles with her feelings for her best friend as well as a new boy she meets. None of this is a bad thing if that’s your thing but I am of little patience and some of it was frustrating for me.

There is good diversity representation here with the friend group and I loved the flashbacks to the time before - when all of the horrors were going down for society and folks were starting to go feral. In all honesty, I probably would’ve much preferred to read that book instead of the one I just read because I simply didn’t think running around the festival and following them as they attempted to solve a mystery was super interesting. But you may think differently. We’re all different people here.

3 ½ Stars

So, this isn't my typical book...

I like fluff & smut with the cozy murder and rarely do I love the YA.

But this book..... this book!

Take a bit of True Blood, mix with The Walking Dead and a bunch of teen/YA angst, love and anxiety and its the perfect recipe for a potential series.

PLEASE!!!!

gay? ✓ cannibals? ✓ gripping mystery? ✓

This book was so much fun, so often YA horror is toned down but I'm so glad we're moving back into full on gore/slasher territory. I would absolutely recommend this to fans of Yellowjackets, I think you'll love it!

📖My Thoughts📖

This is not a typical read for me, but it sounded interesting so I decided to give it a whirl. It had ghouls, four best friends on a road-trip to a music festival and even some murder and romance. It was a pretty interesting story. It was a fun book that had its cringeworthy moments and while there were some points I found it a little hard to stay engaged, it had a lot of other interesting moments that kept me reading. I think it was well written and had a good premise. Personally, I don’t think it was my cup of tea, however, that doesn’t mean you won’t won’t like it. I think for me the whole take on a pathogen getting out into the community being so similar to the pandemic has just gotten to the point that it’s bringing out a lot of raw emotions and making it a bit tough to read books with this sort of theme. There are a lot of trigger warnings (25 to be exact) all of which are listed at the very beginning of the book, so props to the author for doing that. I think this is a great book for YA readers that are into horror. If that’s something that interests you, definitely give this one a try!
Thank you Netgalley, Kayla Cottingham and Sourcebooks Fire for the opportunity to read and review this book. 🧟‍♀️🧟‍♀️🧟‍♀️.75

This book was such a fun read. Imagine going to a festival with your best friends but the kick is that you're a ghoul (cannibal). Some people turned into ghouls due to a virus outbreak a few years back and they wanted these people to be able to stay in society with a few requirements, like checking in every meal you eat to make sure you're not snacking on your neighbor. In this world they are living off of synthetic organs thanks to the government. I enjoyed the journey that Kayla Cottinggham takes us on! This is definitely on the lighter side of cannibal stories that I've read, so I would recommend it to plenty. There's also so much representation of the LGBTQ+ community!

THIS DELICIOUS DEATH was so good that I finished it in a day and immediately ordered a physical copy. Cottingham's sophomore novel is every bit as frightening, queer, and unforgettable as her debut novel My Dearest Darkest, and I hands down recommend it to everyone who loves good, gory horror that's as much about friendships and love as it is about trying to exist and be happy in world that fears your very existence. Bonus points for plenty of people eating, so if that's a hard no for you, read with caution.

Mini Coopers, music festivals, zombie/vampires/cannibal teenage girls?? So good, I was hooked in right from the start. Loved seeing the parallels to the pandemic we experienced but a more fun take on it.

Would recommend to anyone who loves Coachella vibes mixed with some spooky and sci-fi vibes.

This was such a fun read!! It is about a group of girls that are best friends and going to Desert Bloom. A music festival in the middle of the desert. One thing that makes the girls unique is they are hallow girls. Two years prior there was a virus that went around that made people turn into ghouls. Which means they don’t eat typical food. Flesh is perfected but scientist have created synflesh to help the ghouls be able to live with humans in peace.
At the festival weird things start happening and it seems as if another worse outbreak is helping. Jasmine, Val, Celeste , and Zoey might be the only chance Desert Bloom has before everyone gets eaten.

I wanted to love this because of how much I enjoyed "My Dearest Darkest," and I convinced myself I would despite it being basically a zombie plot line. And thus, I tried it but it didn't take. The writing is there. the characters are there. but it just wasn't for me.

I will keep looking out for what Cottingham comes up with next though!

A very fun and wild romp in the dessert at a festival with just a few cannibals. Would make a fun movie!

Oh my goodness, what a DELICIOUSLY WEIRD AND FUN story this was!

When you start off with a half page of trigger warnings (but the biggies are body horror and, erm, cannibalism)...your interest sure gets piqued. I'm not normally a fan of the zombie story, but Cottingham has the most fun TWIST. What happens after the "zombie apocalypse" when the government can work a bit of magic to let the afflicted fit back in to regular life?

How do people handle that? How do FAMILIES handle that?

This fun little book actually has main characters with some complexity. It's campy, a little gory (but not overdone - it's usually not my thing and this was handled well), and a lot fun. Throw in some LGBTQ rep, found family, friendship, and a little bit of romance (which stays really clean, funny, given that our main characters eat a dude.)

I feel like I can't do this story justice, but it is a really fun ride.

I loved everything about this book! A queer horror book seemed right up my alley and I was happy this didn't let me down. Incredibly funny and fast paced, the marginalized characters (specifically Celeste, speaking as a trans person) didn't seem tokenized but were fleshed out and didn't conform to stereotypes. This book was a unique YA read, with just enough horror to keep it scary but not enough to make it horrifying, which is perfect for new horror readers.

I had a great time reading this one! In the present, four zombie friends are attending a music festival, but we get flashbacks to how each of them became a zombie. They each have a different relationship with their families and you get to see how their biological changes have impacted their friendships and relationships and how they're coping. It felt like the story had a lot of heart. If I had any complaint, it's that we never learn what specifically caused the zombie apocalypse. I would love a prequel!

There's also a mystery to solve throughout the course of the story. I thought it was all unpredictable and exciting. There's a great cast of characters and I loved how the romances played out. As much fun as the fangirling over musicians and the zombie disaster were, it always came back to the characters and their bonds.

This book felt like a mix of Resident Evil horror and iZombie camp. I had a blast and would recommend it to anyone who's a fan of the horror genre, whether on the scary or the fun side.