This was on my most anticipated reads of the year, and while it wasn't quite the 5-star read I was hoping for, it was still a pretty great read. I do agree to an extent with some reviewers that the poetic language stood at odds with what seemed like a very plot-driven, propulsive premise, so that was an initial shock, but I got into the rhythm of Pearson's writing and found myself really enjoying the ride, even if it took longer to read and wasn't quite as bingeable as I'd initially anticipated.

I really wanted to like this book. It sounded so great. It was ruined in the execution, though. I would like someone else to take a stab at giving this plot the writing it deserves.

Mannnnn, I wanted this to be good. The writing is so flowery and pretentious I couldn't stand it.

The plot would be excellent....if written by someone else.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review.

Pearson has written a beautiful, interwoven story full of promise and permeating love. It's obvious that Pearson has written her heart into 'We Ate the Dark,' and it pays off in the end as we witness a narrative persevering in the face of grief and trauma. The care with with Pearson has crafted this story of love and family and queerness as something that takes precedence over the horrors experienced by the main characters is seamless and breathtaking. By the end, each character feels tangible and completely and utterly real. Frankie's grief haunts her chapters and colors all of her reactions, thoughts, and interactions; Marya's shame is intrinsic to understanding her character and by the end we, as readers, learn to live with it alongside her; Poppy and Cass' love for each other, their friends, and Sofia reaches through their chapters and grabs the reader by the throat, forcing us to reckon with each of their grief responses in turn as Poppy turns from rage to anger to exhaustion and Cass allows her loving nature to transform into desperation; Sofia's haunting follows both the main cast of characters but the reader as well, her presence is felt physically dripping off of the page forcing the reader to never forget her. Pearson has achieved an impressive feat with this novel, refocusing what could have easily been a novel on queer trauma and the violences enacted upon queer women from young ages and placing the emphasis on community, magic, and the intrinsic adoration woven into queer female friendships. This novel will stay with me for a long time.

I really wanted to like this book, because I think I would love it for the description. I think the book was to described in a sense what made really difficult to follow up the story. The lenguaje was something I didn’t enjoy because was like to many metaphors. It just wasn’t well balanced what made I stop enjoying read it. Said this it may be not my cuppa of tea but someone may like it. The atmosphere and ambiance of the book was really good, the characters where good too and the importance in female friendship and female relations was on point in the book. So if you like satire horrors that are very descriptive and with a lenguaje a little bit elaborated and over the top with a creepy atmosphere this is your book and give it a chance.

DNF @ 30% I wanted to like it & based on the description I really thought that I would, but after only a few pages I was apprehensive about the writing and by 100 pages in I was ready to quit. I pushed on a little more but got to the point that I just couldn’t/didn’t want to keep going. I’m sure there’s an audience for this book but I am not it. It is far, far too wordy and descriptive and the characters lack any depth at all.
It’s a story about life and love and death and found family and witches.
I think there’s a possibility that with a good editing to get to the meat of the story and get rid of the fluff it could be some, but as it stands, I felt like someone kept moving my book,ark back because I wasn’t going anywhere.
Thanks to 47North and NetGalley for this eArc in exchange for my review

This book's central theme is that family can come in many shapes and forms. The book was very wordy and the author did contradict herself at times. For example, one sentence the body was boneless, then the next the body had bones. It was difficult to discern what was even happening with the inconsistencies.

Unfortunately I didn't love this book. The language was quite flowery which made it difficult to read and distracting. I did find this spooky and think other readers might enjoy, and I love an Appalachia setting, but the purple prose was a bit difficult to swallow.

I just could not finish this. The purple prose and metaphors were too much to slog through. I'm sure there was an interesting story hidden in there somewhere, but pretentious writing is always a problem for me.

Four women investigating the haunting murder of their friend discover more than they ever imagined in a terrifying novel about good and evil, love and death, and the spaces between.

I really thought I’d love this book, and it truly saddens me that not only did I not like it, I actually ended up Dnf’ing. There are a lot of things that just didn’t work for me with this one.

The character’s felt way too similar, and there were so many of them with switching POV’s that I just had no way of remembering who was who. In addition, I was really struggling with the slow progression of plot, as well as the language of the story. The sentences were long and cumbersome, that sometimes seemed to drag on forever.

There certainly is a perfect reader for this story somewhere out there, but unfortunately that was not me, but I truly hope that it’s you! If you like slowly, unsettling horror stories with thorough descriptions of the world, than you should without a doubt give this a shot!

Big thanks to Netgalley, North 47, and the author Mallory Pearson for allowing me to read an E-Arc of this novel.

I snagged this as part of Amazon First Reads in January and when I saw it on NG I thought it looked familiar and figured I’d just seen it on here before. The premise sounds so intriguing and I was curious about what secrets Sofia was hiding because that’s always a good hook for a synopsis. I got introduced to all the characters in some capacity by 7% but I don’t think I’ll be continuing because the writing isn’t really clicking for me. It’s very evocative and descriptive, but that makes it harder to keep a hold on what’s happening in the story. I think this has a lot of potential, but I’m not the right audience for this style of writing.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
Wow. I loved this book. The detailed descriptions. The slightly odd characters. Female friendships, family and witches.
The atmosphere is creepy and just perfect. I love the descriptiveness of literally everything.
This is such a good book. And it has some mystery, horror, parallel universe and so much more in it.
This is definitely one of my new favorites.

Thanks so much to netgalley and the publisher for the arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately, this book I could not finish. The writing was way too over descriptive and it was driving me crazy. I couldn’t get into the story or connect with the characters because of the writing style. It also felt very slow and it was hard to get through.

I hope others enjoy this book.

Please note: I selected 'no' because this title is published by an Amazon publisher, which will likely not be stocked by my independent bookstore.

That being said, I LOVED this book and will be sharing my praises online!!!

this was such a ride, you can tell the author put all her love into this story and its characters. the writing is so descriptive and cinematic, it doesn’t just put you into the story itself but gets you into the minds of each character. especially when it came down to scenes that had me getting goosebumps and waiting for something to jump out at me, it felt like I was there experiencing it. my favorite part of this story was that this entire story felt like a love letter to friendships and all the different ways you can care about someone with a bit of horror and i so so enjoyed it!

Thank you to the author for sending me an early copy to review. I will not be tagging them in any of my reviews because despite my anticipation of this novel, I was unable to really attach to the story.

I found that the writing style, which started off promisingly, became a bit overwhelming for my taste. I love me some purple prose but something about this rubbed me the wrong way. I believe there's a rich talent behind the words, and it might resonate more with other readers!

Please try for yourself and don't let my review deter you!

We Ate the Dark is a masterclass in atmosphere. This book covers a lot of thematic ground — female friendships, the dark side of magic/witchery/power, growing up and away from the people you love, death and loss, jealousy and guilty, etc — and does so through meticulous setting and character work. The town of Loring sparkled with description, and I felt like I could practically taste each winding road and bend in the river and sticky vinyl seat at a diner.

Perhaps my favorite thing about this book was the ways it navigated the idea that you can often find yourself disliking someone you love. Many of us do have this seemingly unbreakable bond with people we met when we were young, and the ways that bond can be tested teach us a lot about what it's like to love and be in relationship to another person. The lines between lover and friend and family member blur into a really beautiful tapestry dedicated to telling us about love! How cool is that.

This book is marketed as sapphic literary horror, and delivers on all counts. I'm a weenie so the horror felt like the perfect amount for me: unsettling and creepy and a little gorey but very much within what I felt like I could handle. The lyrical language and descriptions also offered a bit of distance from the grotesque, which I appreciated. The messy sapphic relationships also slapped, and I think every character felt deeply deeply grounded in what it's like to be a queer woman in the world. I felt really seen as a lesbian in this story! That always means a lot to me as a reader and it's no surprise that Pearson nailed the execution.

My other favorite thing (and I think an important note for potential readers!) is about the ending. I'm not going into any specific details so don't worry about plot spoilers, but skip the following if you want to go in totally blind. The ending, both in terms of plot and in terms of relationships, was left really open, and I think that was such a smart choice. We get some closure around Sofia and the Fissure but not much, and Pearson really trusts the reader to figure it out and close the loop on their own. I am a "too easy closed ending" hater so this was ideal for me. I also LOVED that Marya and Frankie didn't end up putting labels on anything or sharing a Hollywood kiss. The messy in between works perfectly for them as characters and the way their relationship blossomed over the course of the story.

I could say so much more but I think I am going to leave it here for now and share more gushing on my booktok account. For now just know that I loved this story and cannot wait for it to come out and find its readership!

sofia's dead and that information goes from a speculation to a certainty when her remains are found in the hollowed out tree growing through an old, abandoned house. the mystery surrounding her disappearance comes flooding back to friends frankie (sofia's sister), poppy, and cass; they immediately point their cars home to the north carolina mountains where they grew up together, loved each other, and ultimately chose to depart from each other after sofia's disappearance.

together, the three girls plus frankie's pottery shop employee marya, who's hiding secrets of her own, decide to uncover the secrets of sofia's murder together and avenge her death, too. sounds easy, right? sofia's recalcitrant boyfriend isn't talking, the own sheriff is making things hell on the girls, and the more they learn, the more they realize that sofia might have been mixed up in things they didn't understand. what's more, something's following them, something that promises to eat and eat and eat and <i>eat</i>.

fave, fave, fave. this writing is so visceral and atmospheric you can feel the sun on your face, the stickiness of sweat, the chill of a gentle breeze, and smell the honeysuckle, too. i'm north carolina-born and bred and appalachia adjacent and have read writing about where i'm from by people who imagine poverty and piggly wigglys, but mallory writes about the south like she knows what's up; i appreciate any writer that can adequately encapsulate how my home feels.

a LARGE chunk of this book is about queer love, the nebulous spaces between friends, the narrowness beyond friendship and somewhere near being in love. there are scenes in this book which are so tender and soft and sapphic that they made me want to hug myself.

obviously a huge chunk of this book is about grief and about fear. about friendship and when friends become family, about what it feels to lose someone you find yourself that entertwined with, either through death or distance. it really reminds you of how cruel the world can be, of the histories we create with people and how sometimes they go on to create new histories with other people.

this? this is the book of my heart, i think.

BOOK OF THE YEAR!! For real, this was amazing. It tugged at my heartstrings while making me feel surrounded with fear and dread. I absolutely loved it. Thank you so much to Mallory for the ARC!!

This book absolutely blew me away. It is atmospheric, creepy, and emotional. It is an ode to queerness, womanhood, family, love, and grief. For starters, I loved the main characters. They all felt so raw, with so much emotion. I also loved their relationships with each other, with so much complex history and a fantastic mix of anger, pain, love, and longing. I could not get enough enough of them. I especially loved Marya, with her mystery and secrets and the way she slowly becomes part of the family with the others. As for the setting, it was equally amazing. I loved Loring with is small town darkness. It lent itself perfectly to the atmosphere of the book. Finally, in regards to the plot, this was only part of the book I found a bit lacking. I loved the mystery aspect and the horror woven into it. And I was deeply invested in finding out what happened to Sofia. However, I found the pacing slow, with the climax of the story rushed and confusing in contrast, and the ending far too open even for my tastes. But overall, I enjoyed this book and I highly recommend it.