Post (apocalypse) Hollowing.
Ghouls.
LGBTQ+ rep.
Best friends to lovers.

This was one of the most entertaining books I have read in a long time. It kept me hooked the whole way through the book. I didn't want to put it down to sleep. I love the post apocalyptic vibes it brought with still being a sorta normal daily life for them still. Very similar to iZombie is the best way to describe it. I was not expecting the plot to go the way it did. The author did great at keeping you guessing who did what and how things would play out. I 100% recommend this book.

Thank you to Netgalley for the chance to read and give my honest review of this book.

Thank you to NetGalley, Kayla Cottingham and Sourcebooks Fire for my free e-book in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to read something a little different and man did this one check that box! I was instantly so addicted to the storyline and the main character. I read it in two sittings and I didn’t find a single moment dull. Definitely enjoyed and would recommend.

Thank you to Netgalley, Author, and Publisher- Sourcebooks Fire. I went into this book not really knowing what it was about beyond Zombies, but make them normal. I was thrilled with this book. It had a voice all it's own and its humor was just a delight. Read this book if you like:
Sapphic Best friends to lovers
Trans-Rep
Pandemic-remixed
Coachella type Setting
Oh yeah, and Horror

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

This was a pretty good mystery! I enjoyed the story line and thought it was well developed. Normally, I have trouble picking out twists and turns and didn't see all the ones in this. It was good! I enjoyed it! Kayla has a particular way to get you hooked on the characters and story and it's hard to want to stop. It was really good! I enjoyed it!

This Delicious Death is really solid YA horror. A group of four friends head to a big desert music festival to blow off steam before graduation. They may have survived the horrifying event known as the Hollowing. They may now be ghouls who crave human flesh. But they have their coolers full of synthetic flesh, Synflesh, and are ready to have a good time. But someone has other plans. The friends discover that another festival goer is drugging ghouls into a feral state which makes them attack and kill people. Can they figure out who's doing this and stop it before they lose themselves to their cravings forever?

Somehow Kayla Cottingham managed to take a horrifying virus that turns people into flesh eating ghouls… cute and funny?

But seriously, the characters were endearing (even if sometimes they acted like incredibly self absorbed teenage girls), the storyline was a fun and wild ride, and at the heart of it all - the friendships showed the ferocity with which teenage girls love one another. I would have loved this book as a young adult, and I even loved it as an adult adult. The humor of four girls hiding the body of a boy they just ate together and one of them not being able to remember his name had me laughing out loud, while the rejection of Zoey by her family had me deep in my feelings the next moment.

The flashbacks at the beginning of each chapter really helped to flesh (pun intended) out the story and give context for where each character was coming from. It feels like the type of story that would make a great tv series or movie!

Thank you to NetGalley, Kayla Cottingham, and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The nitty-gritty: Can a story about teen cannibals be fun? Why yes it can, in Kayla Cottingham's latest, a fast-paced horror tale with humor and heart.

I have to admit it was the cover of This Delicious Death that grabbed my attention, and I’m happy to say I had a lot of fun reading this book. Kayla Cottingham starts her story off with a long list of trigger warnings—25 to be exact!—so do be aware going in. I found the cannibalism and gore to be perfectly acceptable for this kind of story, but readers who aren’t into graphic violence and horror should probably stay away.

The story takes place two years after a dangerous pathogen was released into the population. Many people got sick and suffered from flu-like symptoms, but most recovered. Those who didn’t found themselves unable to eat regular food. Instead, they developed a craving for human flesh, and with no way to subdue this craving, there were many casualties in those first weeks and months. The event became known as the Hollowing, and people started calling the infected “ghouls.” But scientists developed a type of synthetic human flesh called SynFlesh, and little by little, ghouls were able to reintegrate back into society and live (mostly) normal lives.

Zoey, Celeste, Valeria and Jasmine are all high school seniors and best friends—and they’re also ghouls. As a final fling before they all go their separate ways in the Fall, the girls decide to take a road trip to Desert Bloom, a music festival being held in a remote part of the Mojave Desert (think Coachella). At first everything goes smoothly. The girls meet the members of a band called No Flash Photography and have fun hanging out with them. But Val disappears one night, and when the others finally find her, she’s hunched over the dead body of Kaiden, one of the band members. Despite eating only SynFlesh, Val has lost control and killed someone, and now the others have to figure out what to do. 

I won’t go any further into the story, so you can discover what happens for yourself, but I will say that Cottingham does a nice job of combining horror and mystery, as the four girls try to figure out why Val went feral, who might be responsible, and how they can stop more festival-goers from dying. This is a fast-paced story with likable characters and lots of diversity (more on that later), and the author also uses flashbacks to show what the characters went through at the beginning of the Hollowing. I thought the flashbacks in particular were very effective at adding lots of layers to not only the four main characters, but to the side characters as well. Each one has their own tragic backstory, because hey, the Hollowing was sort of a zombie apocalypse! For example, one of the band members (who turns out to be a ghoul) killed and ate his sister, and Zoey lost her close relationship with her parents because they were so afraid of her.

The Hollowing was a great idea and deliciously gorey. I certainly wouldn’t want to be a ghoul myself, though. Although it appears ghouls are treated well, they still aren’t considered equals to non-ghouls, and it was heartbreaking to see what they have to go through. All the girls are monitored closely by a government agency that tracks their movements (they have to report that they’re going to Desert Bloom). There’s also an app called HollowLife that the girls use to report what they eat, when they eat it. And of course there’s a stigma around being a ghoul, and ghouls try to hide who they are if possible. The government is trying to control them so there aren’t any “accidents,” but of course it doesn’t always work.

Cottingham tempers the gorey parts with plenty of humor, and her dialog is especially good. The set-up is absurd anyway, and she makes the most of it with witty dialog and ridiculous situations all of which make the story lots of fun.

I loved the inclusion of a trans character. Celeste is trans, and she’s also a big social media influencer. I really liked the idea that her followers know she’s trans, and they appreciate her for who she is (they do not know that she’s a ghoul, however). In fact, there’s lots of diversity in this story, including Zoey who is bi—she crushes on both Celeste and Cole, one of the No Flash Photography band members. There are a few hints that one of the other girls is bi as well. There’s a low-key but sweet romance between Zoey and Celeste, and I liked the way it played out at the end of the story. But really, the reason to read This Delicious Death is for the ghoul-action and the way the girls change whenever they feed. It was so much fun! 

As for negatives, I wish the author had done more with the music festival setting. I didn’t really “feel” the concert vibe when the girls get to Desert Bloom, and for some reason the festival felt almost deserted, when it should have been teeming with life and noise. I also laughed when the author revealed that three of the girls are headed to NYU, Yale and USC—statistically that would be highly unlikely. But these were really my only complaints. I think This Delicious Death would be perfect for the screen, either as a movie or a NetFlix show, and there’s plenty of fun to be had for both teens and adult readers alike.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

This Delicious Death Review!

Thank you Sourcebooks Fire and Netgalley for this gifted e-read in exchange for an honest review! This Delicious Death is out April 25, 2023!

There are some times where you just need a cheesy, comedic, horror and this is one of those. Who doesn’t love reading about cannibals?! 😂 This Delicious Death was a 3.75/5 ⭐️ for me! I really enjoyed the music festival setting, reminded me a lot of Coachella (even though I’ve never been 😅) and perfect timing to dive in. I thought that this supernatural setting was unique and such a weird pandemic! Each chapter began with a backstory, which I really enjoyed, it made the book read really quickly. I thought the ending was pretty cute, just really rushed.

Review: OMG!! I loved this book so much!!! It was just the right amount of thrilling and adorable all rolled into one!! I loved the hollow/ghoul aspect and it made me think of Darcy Coates Voices in the Snow, but a lot more tame. The fact that this group of teenagers had to band together to help save other ghouls was amazing. I just loved the story soooooo much!! I went into the book blind just drawn in by the title alone. Thank you @sourcebooksfire & @netgalley for my advanced copy!! Would definitely recommend!

First, thank you to SOURDCEBOOKS Fire, Kayla Cottingham, and NetGalley for providing this eArc in exchange for my honest thoughts. This book will be released on April 25, 2023.

This was an absolute thrill ride that had me on the edge of my seat from start to finish.

Let's start from the beginning- This Delicious Death takes place three years after the Hollowing, an event that turned a small percentage of people into flesh-eating ghouls. Four best (ghoul) friends ghouls, Zoey, Celeste, Valeria, and Jasmine, are attending a music festival in the desert as a last hurrah before graduation. However, when festival-goers start disappearing, the girls quickly realize that someone is drugging ghouls and making them go feral. If they don't figure out how to stop it, and soon, no one at the festival is safe.

What I loved about this book was the ghoul gang, aka the main characters of this story. Flashbacks take us on a journey through their lives and how they became ghouls, and their experiences in a world that was already wary of them, now even more wary and hateful. The LGBT representation in the book is also fantastic, I was really impressed by this book's ability to hold its own among the queer horror it's being released with this year!

This was a super fun read and I am so excited for more from this author!

This Delicious Death by Kayla Cottingham is a fun YA horror about a pandemic outbreak that causes people to turn into ghouls. Once you are a ghoul, the only food you can eat is flesh. This of course causes a multitude of problems. Thankfully, the government has stepped in and offered their assistance by providing synthetic flesh to all ghouls. So now ghouls can be integrated back into the general population with no problems, right? Right?

The four teen girls (who happen to all be flesh-eating ghouls) have the opportunity to attend a music festival in the middle of the desert like normal teenagers. They've packed loads of synthetic flesh and have each other to get through the weekend. Nothing could go wrong.

I really enjoyed the premise of this story. It was almost relatable to current times. What I didn't love was how the backstory of the pandemic and how each girl got infected and dealt with the virus was presented. It was basically a flashback at the beginning of each chapter which made it feel kind of disconnected. I think I would have rather had a whole chapter devoted to the backstory so that the current events didn't read so choppy. Overall I thought it was a fun, gory story and a fairly easy read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC of this book.

I actually don’t have a lot to say on this title. It definitively felt like it was on the younger side of YA but was a nice original book in a market that’s so crowded. The idea of synflesh and people basically being able to live amongst zombies was very unique and the backdrop of the musical festival was a great element.
There was also some effortless inclusion and diversity that didn’t feel pandering which was brilliant to see.

For me personally I found the four lead characters quite interchangeable and could have had maybe one of them removed. They all seemed so similar it was hard to keep it straight who was who for a while. I would’ve liked to have seen more done with the setting as if doesn’t play as big a role as I’d hoped and it was something really different that this book had going for it.

The plot itself resolves quite easily throughout with characters being able to deal with conflict and find clues very quickly. However it makes sense and isn’t trying to be an overly complex mystery in my eyes so I can look past this.

I would recommend this book to younger teens and think it could be a great summer read despite the negatives I’ve outlined.

Thank you Netgalley for the advance reader copy of This Delicious Death by Kayla Cottingham in exchange for an honest review. I loved this book, it was a wonderful new spin to an old story. I loved the friendship between the four girls who bonded after the Hallowing. The characters and storyline were completely believable and when I got to the end, I cheered. I won't spoil it and say what for, but if you read the book, you'll know.

Shockingly enough this is my first read from author Kayla Cottingham, despite high praise for her first novel My Dearest Darkest. That said, consider me an instant-buy and reader of Cottingham's work after This Delicious Death.
This YA Horror/Thriller is so much fun and was such a wild ride. We follow a group of four best friends who are at a super exclusive music festival, ala Coachella, known as Desert Bloom when chaos arises. However, these four friends aren't just normal teen girls, they are ghouls.
Post a major event known as The Hollowing, many humans live by eating human flesh, getting them labeled as ghouls. Thankfully, for our main characters synthetic flesh exists. However, as the festival proceeds on people start going missing, ghouls start showing up, dead bodies are found, and all chaos breaks loose.
The four main characters stories are told through flashback and present day chapters. And all of these characters feel so real. I absolutely loved them, their friendship, and journeys. It also felt like I was truly at the festival with them in the description of the festival set up, the shows, the outfits, etc. This story also has fantastic queer representation. This book was a page turner and so much fun. Cannot recommend this one enough.

An absolutely fun and exciting read about ghouls, tense stakes, and mystery....with a bit of shy romance!

This story was appropriately fast paced and the format of each chapter starting with a flashback in italics and then a continuation of what was happening in the present was absolutely perfect!! I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the characters' backstories "off screen" while still remaining in the present. It allowed me to feel connected to the characters without feeling like the story was interrupted with blurbs of "too much information.

The worldbuilding and character development was well balanced and had me imagining what it would be like if I was experiencing that new reality and what it would be like if I was partially surrounded by those who went through the Hollowing and were now ghouls.

I also enjoyed this story's take about monstrosity and controlling your monstrosity and dealing with the acceptance of yourself as a monster and the rejection of others who view another's monstrosity with prejudice. Each character had their own experiences with coming to terms with their ghoul status and it was great reading about that in their backstories and then reading how far they've come since then into the present.

The mystery and danger the ghouls were motivated to solve at Desert Bloom was tense but captivating! I was impressed with the ghouls' sleuthing and went through a mix of emotions when other factors came into play such as the budding love triangle, the betrayals, and the new realisations and information surrounding the mystery. And of course, I felt some other emotions like appropriate annoyance and anger towards certain characters (Kayla Cottingham wrote her bad guys well!!).

Overall, I really enjoyed this book! It was super easy to get into and I had a good time!

A fun feminist romp with just a twinge of murder mystery, a fun and energetic read you'll want to eat this one up!

Zoey, Celeste, Jasmine and Valeria are heading to Desert Bloom, the first music festival being held in a number of years. This is kind of their last big outing together before college so its important to the girls to have a great time together.
OH and they happen to be ghouls. Three years ago a mysterious pandemic (known now as The Hollowing) swept through the world and infected everyone. Most people recovered but the rest turned into flesh-eating ghouls(Hollow people). Now, with the invention of SynFlesh (lab created false human meat), the ghouls have reentered society and are living among us.
On the first night of the festival Val goes feral and accidentally kills a fellow festival goer. More people keep disappearing and the girls have to figure out how to stop the outbreak of feral ghouls.

This book was honestly a joy. The first chapter really snags you and gets you invested in the girls and their story. Each chapter has a short flash-back to events during the Hollowing and these flashes are riddled with horror and gore. Lots of fun. I really enjoyed reading this. The horror is at a perfect level for people who aren't big horror fans but still enough for those of us that enjoy a more morbid vibe.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire as well as the author for this ARC in exchange for my unbiased opinion.
#NetGalley #SourcebooksFire #KaylaCottingham #ThisDeliciousDeath
Oh SO fun!!!! This was a book I didn’t know I needed. Delicious is the perfect word for it! I love a book that manages to be fun and yet not lose the story in the process. This book combines heart and gore. That’s quite an accomplishment, if you ask me.
Zoey, Celeste, Valeria, and Jasmine are headed to a music festival in the middle of nowhere. They also happen to be cannibalistic monsters called ghouls. However, since the creation of synthetic human flesh, ghouls have been able to subsist on it instead. They’re no longer considered a danger to others….until now.
This book begins as a fun girl trip. Four friends on a road trip, with a cooler full of fake human organs. We come to care about these girls and their individual quirks. Zoey (our narrator) is in love with her best friend, Celeste. Celeste is a male to female trans person who seems to have no idea about Zoey’s feelings. Val is shy about her eating habits. Jasmine is also a member of the LGBTQ+ community. All four are happy to be going to the Desert Bloom music festival. However, when Val ends up eating a boy, it screws up everything. The girls have to find out why SynFlesh didn’t keep Val calm all of a sudden. What happens is bloody and fun and comes with some delightful and very original monsters that are way more threatening than the ghouls. This story made me laugh, broke my heart, and creeped me out. This may even be a new genre. Acceptable cannibalism maybe?? I also picked up on a little bit of Frankenstein vibes. The ghouls are presented as the monsters but are they really???? Or is someone orchestrating this?
This is a five star read!

This Delicious Death was a darkly comedic mix of gut-churning horror, queer romance and the power of female friendship, set in a post-apocalyptic music festival. If that does not hook you, I do not know what will!

Kayla Cottingham intrigued me deeply with My Dearest Darkest last year with compelling writing, flawed, three-dimensional characters and plenty of juicy twists. It also played so well with atmosphere and blurring that line between fantasy and reality. Already, I knew I had to pick up their next sapphic horror. This Delicious Death took me on the mad-cap ride of my life. This has everything you could ask for: terror, twists, turns, teenage romance and throats being ripped out.

As an important note, I really want to commend the extensive trigger warnings at the beginning of the book. They were fairly detailed and covered everything. It is always good to see these and I hope they become more normalised as a feature of books.

Once more, I feel like Cottingham excels in their characterisation. I appreciated how quietly diverse the book was, with normalised representation. These are authentically teenage voices, with dialogue that sounds genuine and without cliche. Zoey was an incredible protagonist, sparky and driven by her friendship with these girls. Watching her navigate the horrors of her past and transformation was heart-breaking and Cottingham really sits with the idea of the world totally shifting, with all the fallout ensuing. Also, her awkwardness in her crush is so endearing and their entire dynamic was sweet, making it so easy to root for these two to end up together. Amidst this, you also have an exciting and twist-heavy plotline of whodunnit with a literal interpretation of eating boys for breakfast. Cottingham’s overarching message is one of combating bigotry in all forms, something that hits that much harder in the current climate.

This Delicious Death cements Cottingham as a monarch of darkness. If stabby, slashy and sinister sapphics are your thing, this is an author you need to discover immediately.

A new YA Queer Horror hits the scene and carries us along with four friends attending a “Coachella” style concert in the middle of the desert a couple of years after the world has experienced a “zombie-like” apocalypse. Surviving in the post-apocalyptic world seems easy enough for our zombie (ghouls) teens since the government was able to create Syn-flesh to curb their appetite and has allowed them to remain in society. However, throughout the story, we receive glimpses into each of our character’s pasts and discover the traumatic journeys they’ve been on to make it through this worldwide apocalypse.

These traumatic experience in our story are balanced flawlessly with snarky quips, feminine rage, and bi-panic from our main character. Did I also mention there was a trans/bi friends-to-lovers romance occurring while these teens try to discover why some ghouls are being triggered at the festival? YA Queer Horror might be my new favorite genre.

I had such a fun time with this book! Would definitely recommend checking TW’s.

Thank you so much to Sourcebooks Fire and NetGalley for providing me with an E-ARC for review.