As much as I appreciate this opportunity for this audiobook eARC, I just simply couldn't follow along.

Mallory Pearson’s We Ate the Dark is slow, lyrical, meandering, and beautiful. All qualities of my kind of horror. The supernatural elements didn’t quite work in this one for me but that’s largely a matter of taste; the reveals just didn’t match with my preferences and it leant more into fantasy than I like.

While I loved the audio and enjoyed reading along on my kindle, I would love to pick up a physical copy and annotate it as it was so rich and intricately written. The language Pearson uses is perhaps at times overly poetic, but it is undeniably beautiful, and will be fun to investigate as a writer as well as a reader. I do wish the book had been 100 pages shorter and that the author had used a lighter hand in her descriptions as it slowed the pace a little too much. Otherwise absolutely wonderful and creepy and gorgeously queer.

The narration added so much to the experience too, with subtle differences for each character. Would absolutely recommend the audiobook to anyone who wanted to pick this up.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and the author for an advanced listening copy We Ate the Dark is out now ♥️

“there was a thrill in being the subject of a magical girl’s devotion.”

mallory is many things. one of the loveliest souls i have the honour of calling a friend. an absolute talent. so when mallory announced her book deal? i cried. literally shaking my phone screaming that’s my fucking friend.

i've enjoyed mallory’s words for a long time, consuming them in bits & pieces, falling in love with the books she loves. to have over 400 pages of her lyrical prose at my fingertips? a goddamn buffet. when i held her book in my hand, obviously i cried again.

when sofia's remains are found stuffed into the hollow of a tree that grows through an abandoned house, the women who loved her—frankie, cass, poppy, & newcomer marya—flock home to uncover sofia's murderer. as they pry further, sofia’s secrets unravel & the women find themselves followed by something that threatens to eat & eat & eat & eat.

at the core of we ate the dark is a story about friendships: intense, messy, bizarre, & so deep that it’s mixed up with the core of your being. there’s so much queer love & that nebulous space between friendship & something more, where you don’t know where one person ends & the other begins.

the grief & homesickness then, when an intertwined part is lost through death or distance. yet somehow, it remains. sofia’s dead from the very start, but you feel her presence in every page, a witchy girl spinning through the text. through the remaining women you relieve moments with sofia, the yearning, & the empty spaces.

there’s something so transformational about all-consuming friendships like theirs. a secret language confined within a group, a mass of hearts beating as one. if you know me, you know this is the only way i know how to love—throwing yourself in headfirst.

i don’t say this often but from the depths of my soul: i could eat mallory’s words for the rest of eternity & be wholly fulfilled. what an eerily beautiful haunt. how delicious the desire to consume & be consumed is. i could spend forever basking in the way mallory’s words chip away at your soul & leaves you vulnerable, then fills you back up like good wine.

look out world. mallory's coming for you.

3.5/5

Years after Sofia disappeared, she is finally found in the hollows of a tree within an abandoned house. Her sister has always stayed behind hoping to find her, but after news of her death spread, the friends who loved Sofia come back to North Carolina. As suspicions arise that her death may have been a murder, these women start to investigate and discover more than they imagined. Each woman is haunted by something from their past, and now they are haunted and stalked by a shadowy figure that they don’t understand. As they uncover truths about Sofia, they realized she wasn’t who they thought she was, and whoever killed her might be coming after them.

“I want to feel safe, and I want to have a future. I don’t want to be like my mother. I don’t want to depend on my friends to hold me together in place of the real thing and still manage to lose it all in the end.”

The writing is beautiful, and shows how people can find and reconnect with each other after years apart. The premise of the story was fascinating, but while the vibes were great and I enjoyed the book overall, I had a few personal problems. I’m not the biggest fan of multiple POVs so this was a bit hard for me to read, especially considering that I listened to this as an audiobook. While this book shows Mallory Pearson’s potential since I loved the book more and more as I kept reading it, it took me a while to get into the story and care about the characters, especially since we were doing a lot of jumps character to character. The ending left me wanting more, so I’m excited to see how Mallory writes the second book because I believe this is getting a sequel! My personal problem with multiple POVs aside, this is an enjoyable book about female friendships and grief within a horror/fantasy setting.

Thank you Mallory Pearson and NetGalley for the arc!! :)

I received an ELC of this book from the author via NetGalley as we are mutuals on bookstagram❤️

I am delighted to have finally read We Ate The Dark— it feels like forever ago and yesterday that the publication announcement was made! I always have said I’m not a horror person, but that was before I discovered queer horror. Now I think it’s one of my favourite genres.

I loved the setting of the story, and I could feel the muggy North Carolina summer even though it’s the dead of winter in Canada right now. I felt like I could smell the damp earth, hear the cicadas buzzing, it was so immersive. The prose was dynamic and deeply descriptive, positively overflowing with metaphor and emotion. The characters felt real and complicated and super messy.

I feel like if you like the Raven Cycle, but wish it was sapphic, this is the perfect book for you. I think I’m still processing that ending (cause like wtf) and maybe need to read it again because I’m not sure I really got / understood what happened in the last few climactic scenes.

My #1 complaint about the book is that I don’t think I really connected with the audiobook narrator. I’m not sure if it was an accent thing but the word “skull” was always pronounced like “scoll” and it took me out of the story every time!!!

I really enjoyed this book (review being shared on the ebook version), but the audio didn’t grab me. A bit too monosyllabic and it was hard to distinguish between characters. A multi-narrator version might’ve suited better.

“Pink for the bond we share, everlasting. White for a blank and purifying slate. Out with the old, in with the new.”

Four women come together to investigate the haunting murder of their friend, (Sofia). They are trying to find whoever or whatever killed her. Frankie, (Sofia’s twin), Cass, Poppy, and Marya are all connected through the need to find justice for their murdered friend. While they are investigating something is haunting them, a shadow presence that goes beyond anything they could ever imagine. Sofia’s secrets come to light, as well as something that goes thump in the night.

Mallory Pearson stunning debut novel is something any horror fan should pick up. The gorgeous detailing right down to the amazing characters. This book has it all. The ominous scenes like the roots of a tree, leading back to one source. As the book goes on you feel yourself grieving alongside the character in the lost of their friend, as well as their need to understand what truly happened to Sofia.

This book was my introduction to horror and it was one of the best introductions I could have gotten. The stunning words that flow through these pages, the way the characters come to life off the page. The ending of this book leaves you wanting more. This book is added to the list of books I’m going to recommend to everyone.

I really enjoyed hearing the narration on this novel. It was atmospheric, haunting and soothing all at once, like a slow dread inducing bedtime story.

The writing and prose was beautiful and haunting and the characters were believable and relate.

i have recently read the digital arc of this one and i was fortunate enough to receive the audiobook arc, too. i loved alaska jackson as a narrator. i found their voice immersive and a great foil to the content within the book.

here's my original review which, upon reread, i stand by 10000%. mallory is now an autobuy author for me.

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 eat.

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.