Content Warnings: Homophobia, Racism, Possession, Physical Assault (Blood, Broken Bones), Dog Attack (+ Wound Description), Animal Death

For the sex averse, there are multiple, explicit sex scenes. All are well telegraphed and mostly skippable, though one has some minor plot importance.

Clements and Datta have produced a fantastic queer horror novel. I'll admit, I found the opening, which centered around a family get together, a little slow - but immediately after that? Hooked with an intriguing local urban legend and with a fantastic first appearance of The Monster that clashes with main character Angelina throughout the book. Angelina is a mixed-race member of the Sicco family, who are well known and influential in their rural town of Cadenze. Angelina is no exception and has tried to shape her space to fit her needs, including making it more of a tourist destination for queer folx (especially lesbians).

In addition to The Monster, Angelina struggles throughout the book with her (initially buried) attraction and obsession with Jagvi, her brother's ex and the first lesbian she ever knew. As Angelina's encounter with The Monster increase, Jagvi becomes the only thing capable of keeping it from controlling Angelina. Their relationship's evolution throughout the novel is as key to the narrative as The Monster, and just as intense - visceral, and never saccharine.

The book uses flashbacks of Angelina and Jagvi's shared past, as well as their present, to explore their shifting relationship over time, as well as the horrors that can come from racism, homophobia, and how small communities and family histories can suffocate burgeoning dreams. These horrors are as clear as the external force of The Monster, and all are explored in satisfying ways.

I would definitely recommend this novel to anyone who likes queer horror, romantic horror, or any combination thereof.

This is an atmospheric, dark, queer horror story outside of my usual read. The horror was a little too much for this non-horror reader, but it was still well-written, and I think it will work for many who read horror normally.

Feast While You Can has all the right ingredients—queer yearning, small-town grit, and a creepy, all-consuming monster—but it didn’t quite deliver the feast I was hoping for. Angelina’s sharp edges and Jagvi’s brooding charm had potential, but the chemistry between them felt more simmer than sizzle. The horror elements were unsettling but not enough to keep me awake at night, and the pacing sometimes dragged, leaving the monster’s threat feeling more metaphorical than terrifying. Still, the writing was lush, and the moments of queer joy and messy humanity shone through. It’s worth a read, but I wouldn’t rush to recommend it.

Would recommend for fans of Nightbitch and Monstrilio!

It honestly took me a little while to get into this one. But it was worth it. I think part of it was that I could never pin Angelina down? But once you get to the end you realize just how much it was all a narrative device and it really pays off.

Enjoyed much more than I thought I would!

In the small town of cadenze lives Angelina. Angelina wants to be content in her life, walking her dog, attending her brothers concerts, and baiting hot women to come back home with her. Everything shifts when her brothers ex comes into town, jagvi. Jagvi is handsome and enigmatic and immediately catches the attention of Angelina. Everything is quaint in there little town except the legend of what is lurking in the cave. One night they get bold enough to enter the cave and Angelina comes out changed. A super sexy sapphic horror novel I gobbled it right up!

I’m agree that this is great for Nightbitch fans— one of my favorite books ever and this can have a stop of my top 2024 reads as well. It took me awhile to get into it but the payoff was there in the end. I struggled to understand the main character, even such that I couldn’t figure out if she was a teen or an adult. I think I started to like her when it became obvious that she didn’t understand herself either. Lots of fun. Long live the creature from the pit!

Just in time for dark, chilly winter nights, Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta’s Feast While You Can (Grand Central Publishing 2024) is one of my top reads of 2024 and has quickly become one of my most-recommended queer horror novels!

Marketed as perfect for fans of novels like Nightbitch, Feast While You Can is a novel of queer love and a haunting in a small town. In Cadenze, which sits in a valley isolated by three mountains, Angelina Sicco spends her days working at the local bar and watching for queer tourists passing through town. From a long line of family members born and raised in Cadenze, Angelina loves her hometown, despite its lack of queer residents and its sleepy seasons when the tourists are gone.

On the night of a family party, Angelina’s brother Patrick brings his ex back into town. Jagvi has always fascinated Angelina, with her aloof judgement of everything about Cadenze—Angelina included. But the night Jagvi arrives, Angelina awakens something ancient in the caves near Cadenze, and suddenly nothing about Angelina, the town, or its secrets can stay contained for long. As the thing possessing Angelina comes closer and closer to the surface—walking with her body, talking through her dog, eating her memories—the stakes get higher. Somehow, only Jagvi’s touch repels the creature, and the two women grow closer, giving into the tension that has been broiling under the surface for years. But the monster feeds on joy, passion, and heartbreak, and Angelina’s desire for Jagvi is a feast of emotions, forcing Angelina to make a choice about how far she will go to save herself.

I read this book on a recommendation from a friend immediately after it came out—with almost no idea what it was really about other than that it was queer horror (a favourite genre!). I was more than pleasantly surprised at how sharp, clever, and well-written the novel was, with excellent suspense, pacing, and drama. The horror elements, just as much as the romance, were thrilling. Angelina and Jagvi’s desire for one another was sexy and believable, and the horror plot—which also reminded me a lot of Stephen King’s It—was disturbing enough to keep me compulsively reading.

I finished Feast While You Can in a day because the plot was truly propulsive. My favourite horror novels are also the books that prioritize poetic writing. The language in this novel is immersive and paints a clear picture of a town that is just as much a character as Angelina, Jagvi, and Patrick are. The structure kept me guessing until the very end. This was an essentially flawless horror novel brimming with multiple aspects of queerness.

With genre fiction like Feast While You Can, I can’t emphasize enough what a fun, exciting novel this was. Absolutely a book in my top ten of 2024!

I highly recommend Feast While You Can as the perfect queer horror read for this winter!

Please add Feast While You Can to your TBR on Goodreads and follow Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta on Instagram.

This book was creepy and unsettling. Small town horror will always be a favorite and throw in sapphic romance and social commentary? 5 stars!

It's a weird book, but I kinda vibed with it. The characters I could honestly care less for, I think I was here for the urban legend aspect and the monster manifesting actually for the main character as a reflection to Angelina's desires and all that jazz. I could not stand Jagvi for the life of me, but the story kept me intrigued to the end and I'm still a bit shocked, but it was an interesting book overall

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get through this novel. I found it to be a bit boring and I didn't quite care for the characters. I think this is particularly because I felt like I couldn't identify with them. Therefore, I believe this book could work for others. I don't think I am the target audience for the novel. It reminded me as well of Model Home, where it became at times more about identity nuances than actual horror.

Messy and sapphic with the perfect amount of horror. I really enjoyed this one! Perfect for fans of Nightbitch or Someone You Can Build a Nest In. All about embracing the monster within instead of quashing it.

I read this in 2 days.
It’s horror and passion.
It’s messy and emotional.
I. Could. Not. Stop. Reading.

I love a good small town story, bonus points if it’s sapphic. I genuinely felt creeped out by this book, which is what I look for in a spooky season read. I really enjoyed the way this story played out. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

An utterly creepy queer small town horror story filled with a diverse cast of characters, Sapphic love, demon possession and more that was completely different from the author duo's debut but I really enjoyed it. Different but great on audio with excellent narration, this is perfect for fans of Rachel Harrison and Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review.

In full disclosure, I ended up DNF'ing this book around 45% of the way through when it became clear it just wasn't a good match for me. However, this does not mean it wasn't a good book.

In Feast While You Can, Angelina, a long-time resident of small town Cadenze, becomes literally haunted by the evil darkness at the bottom of a cave. In the meantime, her brother's ex-girlfriend returns to town, reigniting feelings between her and Angelina.

Here are some aspects I enjoyed: first, the atmosphere. The writing definitely had me on edge and tense as any good horror book should. Cadenze and its denizens felt eerie and on the edge of unsettling. I also enjoyed the queer romance aspects of this - it felt like a true queering of the horror novel, rather than just a horror novel with some queer characters thrown in for fun.

Ultimately, the major problem is that I don't like horror novels... and that's on me, not on the authors. I also think I wasn't really in the headspace to read something complicated. However, I could see several people in my queer book club enjoying this, and it would definitely spark conversation - I'd consider picking it back up again to read it with a group to help me dissect it! (And maybe to talk me through the scary parts.)

<b>Legit horror with layers of societal meaning</b>

The story is a bit slow to begin with, but after the 50% mark, things get weird fast and don't let up. The horror situations are legit scary and will mess with you. The fear of not having control or being followed or being attacked by a trusted friend ... it's all too much!

My one bit of criticism is that I had no idea which country or what time period this book was set in. I had to do some research online to find the answer: Italy in the 1990s. With that info, stuff makes more sense.

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

Story: 4 stars
Character Development: 4 stars
Writing: 3 stars

i had no idea what was going to happen next (or honestly some of what was happening then) while i was reading it, and that was great. 4.5 stars, rounded up. tysm for the arc.

Feast While You Can is such a unique novel and is difficult to classify. It has folk horror elements integrated with an enemies-to-lovers / forbidden love LGBTQIA+ romance. Set in a remote mountain town called Cadenze in what is vaguely reminiscent of Italy (no specific country is ever stated), it’s about a young woman named Angelina and the ancient evil that attaches itself to her. The only thing that can repel the entity is proximity to Jagvi, her brother’s ex-girlfriend. But Jagvi’s touch is the one thing Angelina can never, ever have.

At turns unsettling, sexy, and poignant, Feast While You Can kept me on the edge of my seat from the first page to the last. Not at a single point did I have a solid idea of where the plot was going. Most straightforward horror novels (and romance novels) follow some basic rules, narratively speaking. But this book seemed to have no rules, its unpredictability surprising me at every turn. The monster here feels completely fresh; I don’t think I’ve read about anything quite like it before, and I loved the uncertainty of never knowing when or how it would appear.

There’s lots of interesting commentary about race, sexuality, identity, family, generational trauma, and desire. I loved the setting of Cadenze – a shabby town that, outside of peak tourist season, lies dormant in the shadow of three mountains. It’s a place that relishes a slower and simpler way of life, refusing to acknowledge the myths and legends about a monster lurking at its borders. And I loved Angelina’s love for this place that hasn’t always loved her back, but has gradually come to accept her. Angelina and Jagvi are complicated and relatable characters, and their chemistry emanates from the page. Their sexual tension kept me engaged just as much as the monster did; Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta struck a perfect balance here between horror and hotness.

Feast While You Can really is like nothing I’ve read before. It’s a fascinating blend of horror and romance that tackles heavy topics in resonant and unique ways, and I think it’s going to stick with me for a long time. Thank you to Grand Central Publishing for the complimentary reading opportunity.

i fear i'm going to have an unpopular opinion on this one.

first off: MAJOR WARNINGS FOR ANIMAL TORTURE/DEATH. there's also body horror and outing, possession, and a bunch of other lesser triggers. had i known that this book had a dog in it, i wouldn't have picked it up. if i know that by reading about a dog in a horror book to automatically expect animal torture/violence/death then perhaps it's time to retire the bad cliche.

this book is about angelina, also known as the sicco girl in small town cadenze. her entire family resides there, including her brother who she desperately wants to be close to and her mom, who is more interested in being parented by her children than parenting her children.

where there's a small town and a fixture of a family, there's history and there's tall tales. the sicco family specifically carries one about something lurking in the sicco family caves. something dark, something evil. so naturally, after one night hanging out in the caves with her family plus jagvi, her brother's ex-girlfriend that angelina outed when she was in high school, something evil follows angelina out of the cave.

i can't fault this book entirely. this book was a great dissection of how alienated you can feel as a queer person in a small town - the bullying, the hate, the neglect. angelina is relatively accepted because for one, she's fairly closeted, but she's also enshrined in the protection of her family's notoriety in town as well as her lighter skin. jagvi, with her darker skin, and having been outed as a lesbian that had the audacity to cheat on a guy beloved to the town, foils angelina's experience exactly by showing just how abusive people can be, by wanting to love where you come from while also wanting to escape it so that you're able to live a life.

i was fine with the overall story, but the gratuitous animal violence/death was massively unnecessary to me. there were similar other things that gave me the ick - angelina doesn't like to be called "angel" which is a taunting moniker that jagvi dubbed her in high school. so naturally, jagvi called her angel the whole. freaking. book. despite angelina requesting that she not. another thing that was weird - there were approximately five references to jagvi's pointy tits. what does this even mean? this was weird and excessive.

despite those things, i think that most people will enjoy this one. the body horror of being followed by an unknowable entity, being controlled by it, by your family disbelieving you, etc. was very well done. despite jagvi's antagonistic "angel"s every 13 seconds, i did like the way the relationship flourished between jagvi and angelina, but due to the rest i'm not able to rate this book higher.

Fantastic! I loved this story! It was engaging and entertaining. Downloaded on review from Katee Robert and was not disappointed!