(Rounded from 3.5)

What an unexpected, dark exploration of desire, identity, and family. Where is the line between desire and the need to devour? This unapologetically queer story wrestles with a lot of heavy questions but doesn’t feel compelled to give any easy, fairy-tale answers.

The world-building and atmosphere are really quite incredible. This small, mountain town that is almost proud of being not-quite-backwards but close, the way generational relationships loom over every interaction, the way it is suffocating and offers a type of completion… it really does serve almost as an additional character in this drama. Everything is measured against the world, the environment, and the legacies and lore that will forever haunt the mountains and the people who live there. Then you add to that a really complicated and heartfelt main character and it feels like the story is constantly playing with fire near a powder keg. Our main character is so full of contradictions, there is such internal struggle, and the way the town, the community, exists around her and her force of will, it is just really compelling to read. The sexual and racial politics, and the way they collide with other social privileges and unspoken pockets of generational power, is like a wonderfully complicated feast, with new flavors emerging with every bite. In additional to a really well-crafted and arresting main character, all of the ancillary characters feel equally genuine and complicated, and I just wanted to spend more time with them. The character work and the world-building, which really go hand-in-hand, serve as a really strong foundation for the story.

Building on that, the story itself is great. The way a monster from myth and superstition forces us to see ourselves in critical and unvarnished ways is really smart. Plus, the idea of a monster feeding on your potential futures is a very conceptual kind of beast, and when you tie that to generational trauma it just seems to be commenting on so many things at once. I will say that I had some reservations in the early parts of the story. When we first meet the monster, or the monstrous presence, and it is still weak, it reminded me very much of the way Venom is portrayed in the contemporary Venom movies, and it just seemed a little goofy and I wasn’t sure where it was going to go. But that was a really effective smokescreen, because it totally lowers your (and the characters’) guards, and so as it gains strength and starts taking over more of the story in more violent and direct ways you are not prepared for it. In addition to that it isn’t exactly fast paced. It isn’t monotonous or slow, there is always some sort of character growth or plot device being explored or maneuvered, but it is going at its own pace, that of a small mountain town during the off-season. I could have done with a little more muscle to the narrative velocity, especially at the beginning, but I never felt bored or weighed down. The writing was always this wonderful mix of sincere, playful, and a little sensual, or coy. It is direct and feels unadorned, but in a good way. Again, it works really well for the story and the setting.

There are so many ideas that come up, it is hard to keep up, a little. There are clear issues of discrimination, both in terms of race and sexual identity, but that is complicated by how certain other markers of privilege can obscure or mediate that discrimination, for some. There are constant questions of power, and who holds it, and what it looks like. Sometimes power is in owning your outsider-ness, but sometimes power is found in letting yourself be absorbed into something bigger than you, a family unit, for instance, sacrificing individuality for the power of the group. What does it mean to have ownership of your self, not just of your emotional states and decisions but also of your potential? When does obsessive longing become destruction, masquerading as affectionate attention? There is an actual supernatural entity at play in this story, it isn’t just an extended metaphor that is playing out in our character’s mind… but also, it kind of is. What kind of monstrous appetites do we all contain? How are they formed and shaped by our family and social ties, or expectations? What is gained and what is lost when we indulge them?

This story has some genuinely frightening moments. The suspense and horror don’t come from scenes of gore or literary jump scares, but from a dark psychological uncertainty. Although I would have appreciated a little bit brisker pacing I thought the characters and world-building were top notch, and the many themes and ideas worked for the story without ever feeling like it was trying to preach. This is especially true because what answers you find at the end are messy, and maybe not be entirely satisfying to everyone, because it is more concerned with getting to know your monstrosity instead of banishing it. It doesn’t give spooky vibes but there is something wildly predatory about it, a dis-ease that is always right under the surface. I had a lot of fun with it once I fell into its rhythm, and I finished it impressed at the choices it made and with a lot to think about.

I want to thank the author, the publisher Grand Central Publishing, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

While I'm sure this will be the perfect book for a lot of readers, it's not working for me at all.

I don't like Angelina, our MC, and I'm finding it painful to spend so much time in her head.

The content is a whole lot of drama within a family that is a hot mess. I'm not finding the vibe "sexy" at all.

Pacing is slow, and the writing isn't holding my attention.

DNF

This book was a bit of a slow burn but whew did it deliver! Possession? Check! Amazing sapphic chemistry? Check! Suspense? Check! It grapples with the prejudice of small insular towns, and familial enmeshment, through multiple lenses in a really interesting way.

Based on the description, reviews, and blurbs, I was so sure I would love this, but I actually found it kind of a slog and DNFed at 21%.

Reasons I didn’t like this:

-The folktale/fairytale-like setting combined with the modernness of the characters didn’t really gel for me—it felt like it should either be a fairytale or set in the modern real world, but not some of both. It’s not the *concept* of a modern fairytale that I object to (I think HERE IN AVALON by Tara Isabella Burton does it well, for example). But this one just didn’t quite work for me.
-It’s set in the 90s but doesn’t actually *feel* recognizably 90s. I just have to take the book’s word for it that it’s set in the 90s.
-I didn’t find this monster scary enough, even though I’m pretty easily scared.
-There’s something about the prose that slightly rubs me the wrong way. It’s not obviously bad—it’s fine—but somehow it feels a bit stilted. It’s not about lush vs. spare—I’ve read and loved both lush and spare prose. It’s more a quality of, like, seeing the puppet strings. And I don’t mean “good writing shouldn’t call attention to itself.” I mean it doesn’t feel real or organic, it feels like I’m watching the author play with dolls, just picking up a character and setting them down over there. It feels like eating dry cake. I'm sure lots of readers will have no problem with it; I'm just picky about prose.

i was excited for the coming of spooky season so i decided to pick this novel up.

this was sold to me as a horror novel with queer characters and a passionate romance between lesbians. but what i got was ...eight to twelve hours of sleep. yes, sleep is great, never miss out on it! no, this novel isn't interesting enough to stay awake just a little bit longer for.

ok i know it's early into the book but i do judge whether im gonna get hooked on a book or not by its first chapter. my golden rule is never judge a book by its cover, judge it by its first chapter--it's important and it sets the tone for the rest of the novel.
explain to me why in the first chapter are we explaining the characters' family trees when we could very well be dropped right into the action .....i feel like im reading what's supposed to be a first draft's first chapter.

where's the odd prickling sensation that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand, where's the buildup of that tension before we get introduced to this "monstrous force" spoken about in the novel's description? where's the hint of horny from our main character that will propel us to sink our teeth into this alleged "passionate romance" later on?

why are we listing the characters and their family members and the weird tangled mess they seem to be? are we supposed to be reading a literary coming of age novel about a lesbian coming to terms with the fraught relationships she's gonna continue to live with for the rest of her life because of the fluid nature of her sexuality that her close-minded family just couldn't accept, or a horror story with monsters and passions and high stakes romance??

i even skimmed chapter one to see if in the later chapters it'll get interesting (chapters 2 to 4) enough to raise intrigue and drive me back to finishing the first chapter.

but chapter 2 had the same vibe as chapter 1. now we are in wattpad territory, as in indulging the pressing urge to describe your original character as someone so interesting. the hair color, eye color, family history, etc. wouldnt be surprised if blood types were thrown in there too.

we get it, you love your OCs. i don't, not yet. give me the tension, hold me in suspense. don't throw your characters' slambooks at me within the first few chapters and call it a day.

maybe i'll pick this back up give it another chance. i need compelling arguments from readers who've finished it tho, guess i'll see those once this gets published.

Thank you NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the eARC.

his story delivered everything I hoped for, combining compelling horror with psychological depth. The concept was spot-on, and the strong character development added to my enjoyment.

I devoured this book, and if it could devour me back I would let it in a heartbeat. I genuinely cannot remember the last time I obsessed over a book like this; I thought about it during every quiet moment, sacrificed sleep over reading another chapter, and when I finally reached the end I felt so delightfully satiated. The temptation to pick it up and start the story over again is lingering even as I write my review.

Feast While You Can is unsettling and gritty and terrifying at times, while presenting the reader with characters I want so badly to be friends with (or perhaps just be), who made me laugh at their dumb jokes and cry over their heartbreak, while the threat of the Plot hung over all of us.

I love monsters and lesbians and this book was a love letter to both. This book is superbly written by talented authors with a twist that I think every reader of horrors or thrillers can enjoy, but most of all this book is for lesbians, and I am so so thankful it exists.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

I really wanted to sink into this story, as I found the premise very interesting, but the style of writing jumped around too much for me.

This was truly spectacular! The possession story was terrifying and intense, fully capturing the terror of losing control over one's body and mind. However, it was also supplemented by some of the hottest sex scenes I've ever read? The chemistry between the main characters was as electric as the best of romance novels. Really knocks both genres out of the park.

I really enjoyed Feast While You Can, it’s not the kind of thing I usually pick up, but I thought it was really well done. I’m a bit squeamish about horror, but I didn’t find this too intense, it was all fairly tame with one or two moments that were a bit harder to stomach (lol). I liked the depiction of small-town living, and what it’s like being queer or otherwise different in this type of space. I also loved seeing the relationship develop between Angelina and Jagvi, and Patrick as well. The setting didn’t really work for me, I would have preferred it to be set in a real place. I kept getting distracted by the details we were given about Cadenze and trying to figure out where it was set. It seemed very North American to me, but kept referencing ‘the war’ and the Romans? The time frame was also confusing, it felt very contemporary but then mentioned the turn of the millenia at the end? But overall that’s very minor and didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the story overall.

3.5 stars

I'm not sure how well this worked as a "horror" story to me, but as a romance it was great! I think the horror elements complement the romance and add stakes, but I don't know how invested I was in those horror elements themselves. The writing is great though, and I loved the characters and the slowburn between them. I also really enjoyed how the characters' relationships and pasts were slowly revealed to us throughout the story.

Ohh, this book is one to sink your teeth into! It’s a delightful horror with fucked up family and relationship dynamics and a lot of genuinely terrifying moments. I started reading this at night and the general atmosphere of it made me have to put it down and read it in the light of day— only really something that happens to me when I’m playing video games. The writing is literary and punch-y, interesting and engaging. It’s compulsively readable in the best way. I don’t think I’ll be able to recommend this one enough.

Compulsively readable and bone-chilling, Clements and Datta solidify their writing partnership as one for the history books. A romantic, monstrous horror novel that will make you wish you could turn on more lights.

Holy fuck, this book is horror romance at its best. God-tier character work. A SAPPHIC ROMANCE. THE TENSION. And the monster was fucking scary in a multi-layered kind of way. This is one of my fav reads of the year, if not my top read. Just DAMN. Going to be thinking about this one for a long time.

I was not a fan of this book. There wasn’t a clear line of who or what I was reading….cant even tell you what the point of the book or storyline was to give a proper review.

Meaty and satieting.

Angelina is the defacto princess of the small mountain town of Cadenze. Mixed-race and queer, she uses her charisma and deep familial roots to charm her town to accept her. Where some might find her role suffocating, she revels in it, loving her town with her whole self.

On the day that her handsome childhood crush reluctantly returns to Cadenze, Angelina awakens a hungry monster.

Full of rich allegory and beautiful prose, Feast While You Can stradles that fantastic line between being literary and being eminently readable.

With so many moving parts, it would be easy to lose sight of one in favor of the other. Slow-burn horror, queer romance, dynastic family drama. But they are interwoven expertly.

In a year full of fantastic books, this one is easily a top contender for my book of the year. Absolutely delicious.

ARC provided by NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing.

Thank you for sending this to me! I loved the setting of the book so much. Once it picked up I really enjoyed it. I loved how the monster in the story!

I picked this up because I loved this author duo's romance book, The View Was Exhausting, but I couldn't get into Feast While You Can. The "monster metaphor" was a little heavy handed for me. I'm sure people who are interested in the plot will like this and I hope they do! It just wasn't for me.

This book was entirely unexpected, from the irreverent tone to the deeply wrought characters. I loved its blend of horror and literary fiction, and the small-town Italian setting was richly developed too. It also had some incisive commentary on race, though I do with it had taken that element further. And unfortunately, for those like me who care deeply, the dog does not survive in the end. Be forewarned!! It's still an amazing book (and it has to be all that much more amazing because animal harm usually makes me DNF/rate lower) and very much worth a read if you like weird, twisted sapphic stories.

A lesbian queering of a familiar horror trope. Angelina lives in an isolated rural Italian town. She is gay and has always felt like an outsider in this conservative village, and yet despite this, she has no desire to leave and she resents those who have moved away for bigger cities. Her brother's ex, Jagvi, came out as gay and moved to a larger neighbouring city but Angelina feels existentially chained to her hometown, enamored with Jagvi but still refusing to see her home as provincial backwater. She doubly embodies the idea of "queer failure"—neither living up to the heteronormative expectations of her family nor conforming to the hipster urbanism of the other queer people in her life. One day, at a family gathering, where her brother and cousins trade local folklore about a monster lurking in a nearby cave, Angelina inadvertently provokes the very same enigmatic creature, a primordial being which periodically feeds off the lives, futures and loved ones of those in the town. The creature (often just described as "the thing") follows her to her home, attacks her and demonically inhabits her thoughts. In order to fend off the monster, Angelina and Jagvi must confront their unrequited feelings for one another and embrace all their desires to defeat it.

Simply described as "the thing", the monster in this tale obviously alludes to the scifi classic The Thing From Another Planet but, in its wild descriptions of insatiable appetite and wolfish feeding, the novel gestures more to the 1983 classic, The Hunger, about a seductive Sapphic vampire who woos and traps men and women alike, subsisting off human blood to maintain her ageless immortality. One might also think of Stephen King's It, a similar horror novel in which an unnameable creature returns every generation to feed off the unfulfilled lives of children. This novel adds queer messiness to this veritable tradition of genre fiction, with rollicking drama and sex.

Absolutely loved this book. It's probably going to be one of my top reads of the year. It seamlessly blends steamy romance and horror with the beautiful character development and prose that made me fall in love with this writing team's previous book, The View Was Exhausting. I enjoy horror, but prefer a more literary take, so this was perfect. Thank you for the advanced copy.