I don't really know where to start...I've loved some of Hailey Piper's previous works, most notably, The Worm and his Kings. This just felt off and so different from what I've come to expect from Piper's work, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but this didn't work for me at all.

The prose was far too flowery for my taste and I found it dragged on and on and on. I found myself wanting the chapters to end. It's a rather large read at around 450 pages but it could've had about 250 knocked off it and I think that the pacing would have been far better.

For me the book was just all over the place. A real disappointing read!

A prize for gothic horror readers!
Hailey Piper shows yet again that she is masterful in the art of horror writing.
While I, like many readers, were burnt out on vampires years ago, their time has come again for they cannot remain dead. Its not their nature. The same goes for Cabrina Brite. I think the cosmically occult flavor Piper gives this narrative is what makes it really work rather than feel like a rehash of Camilla.
A mix of occult, mystery, and vampires - whats not to love.

Special Thanks to Titan Books and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

I wanted to really like this book but it was lost on me, the storyline. Great characters though. Idk if I'd recommend a book based on liking the characters, the plot HAS to be good as well.

I really loved the whole queer vampire cat shit going on. In typical Hailey Piper fashion it was weird, gross, and all encompassing. It did run a bit long in some parts but all is forgiven because of the great character development!

This is a tough one to review because there was so much I liked about this one, but I also really struggled to get through it because I didn’t understand so much of it (my never ending struggle with cosmic horror). This was a really unique take on the vampire story which I certainly applaud and had a lot of really interesting things to say about trans identity and how important relationships can be to those who are struggling. This book just felt long, particularly the parts from Ivory’s perspective. These were the sections that really dragged for me. I was super invested in the mystery of what happened to Cabrina and loved following her friends, Xi and Rex, as they try to figure it out and honor her memory (particularly in spite of Cabrina’s horrific politician mother who couldn’t accept Cabrina’s trans identity). These sections were almost too engaging that it made Ivory’s chapters feel really slow. Hailey Piper has such an original voice and a beautiful, lyrical writing style that I can’t completely write this one off despite how long it took me to get through.

A huge thanks to Titan Books and NetGalley for the eARC!

All the Hearts You Eat is a unique novel, one that blends deeply atmospheric themes of unease with visceral, sometimes violent character dynamics. From the very beginning, the central question of, "What happened to Cabrina Brite?" anchors the rocking ship sailing tumultuous seas. In the small town of Cape Morning, Cabrina's body is discovered, and with it, a slew of questions. But, Cabrina begins to appear to friends and strangers alike, setting into a motion an array of events with unfathomable consequences.

Hailey Piper implements a very distinct style to her writing with the tone of All the Hearts You Eat feeling bleak, isolated, and dark. Perfect for the gothic setup, right? Things are downright eerie thanks to this overarching set piece that affects every character within this story. While I thought I had some idea as to where events were moving, Piper takes us down a cosmically wicked path paved in blood. It's intense, it's violent, and it's full of terror.

Thank you so much to Titan Books for the ARC of All the Hearts You Eat & Libro.FM for the ALC!

I strongly believe there’s a Hailey Piper book for everyone. She’s taken on demons, Halloween slashers, vagina monsters, vampires & more in her works! & I’m always impressed by her writing.

I absolutely adored the characters in All of the Hearts You Eat but the story itself isn’t one that worked for me. With there being a Hailey Piper book for everyone, I also feel that maybe a reader wouldn’t necessarily love every book by her, depending on tropes, subgenre, etc. — & that’s a good thing because it shows Piper got range in her writing & books. We love to see it.

If you’re into vampires or coastal settings, then definitely give this one a try!

This isn’t your typical vampire novel – Piper brings new lore and a fresh take to the undead and I’m here for it. It’s visceral and raw as it explores the theme of identity. Cape Morning is a small island with not many residents. Tourists flock the island during the summer months, but in the winter the island is less populated. Ivory is a trans woman who lives by the sea, and one morning after swimming sees the body of Cabrina Brite. She soon finds herself enthralled by the mystery of what exactly happened to Cabrina and what caused her to die. The mystery is well done and what kept my interest throughout the novel. I really liked the chapters from Cabrina’s diary. Ivory pushes herself to the brink, endangering herself at times in order to seek out the truth. Then there’s Cabrina’s friends, who, grief-stricken will do anything to find out the mystery that surrounds her death too, even if it means tinkering with the occult.

There’s brutal violence, but told in a way that almost comes across as poetic. I loved how the vampires in this novel were linked to cats and the island Ghost Cat Island. This is a new vibrant take on the vampire lore, and if you love Gothic literature, the gothic vibes are at an all time high in this one. The pages are filled with a brimming rage – but will also break your heart in unexpected ways. A must-read if you love well-rounded characters, diverse horror, atmospheric horror, and can’t get enough of vampires.

*Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review. 4.25 rounding down to 4 for GoodReads. This was my first full-length Hailey Piper read after reading a variety of her short fiction in various collections. She has been on my radar for so long and I was absolutely thrilled to begin my journey into her longer works. All the Hearts You Eat is a very interesting one to start with. I went into this one thinking it was a ghost story mystery and on some level it is, but it quickly gets so much more cosmic and much more unique. I am not the standard audience for cosmic horror as I typically struggle to connect with horror at that large of a scale. But this book may have convinced me otherwise. I was having an okay time with this one but felt the pacing was a bit slow until about the 60% mark when things turned up a notch. When the cosmic pieces started to come together I wanted to start shouting from the rooftops about this book. The last forty percent were absolutely brilliant!! I have never read anything quite like the horror in this book and Piper manages to take different horror tropes/classics and combine them in such a distinctive way in this one. I struggled before I had all the pieces of the puzzle but once I had them I was floored. I feel like I don't even have to mention the LGBTQIA+ representation in this one but in case you didn't know, yes this book has representation, yes it is important to the story, and yes these characters are masterfully crafted. They are not there to be representation markers or boxes to be checked off, they are there because that is who they are as characters. I cannot wait to read more of Piper's backlist novels while anticipating her new ones.

Sigh - I really wanted to like this one but got about 35% in and had to call it. While I was somewhat interested in the mystery here, there seemed to be so much filler and it felt like it was droning on. I don't know if it is just the headspace I am in or what. I might give this one another go in the future but it just didn't work for me this first go-around.

Thank you to the author, @netgalley and the publisher for this e-ARC.

Emotionally gripping and full of gore, this is a tenderly-written take on the vampire mythos that cleverly utilizes the symbolism and imagery of common vampire stories to draw parallels to the trans and queer experience.

Piper writes authentic, multifaceted characters which are thoroughly enjoyable to read. All the Hearts You Eat was eerie and deliciously weird, turning the sub genre of vampiric fantasy on its head.
At points I found the story slightly disjointed, and couldn't follow the motives of the characters particularly well. Once I'd settled into the fact that this novel was much weirder than I had expected it was somewhat easier to follow, You've really got to ignore the desire to over analyse or relate to some of the decisions and reactions of the characters in the book.

DNF at 54 percent.

Thank you to Titan and NetGalley for my digital review copy.

I found that I couldn't get into this book. I know it's marketed as gothic horror and gothic horror tends to be slow, but I found that it wasn't gelling with me.

I also found some paragraphs to be worded horrifically (in a good way, but a way that wasn't for me)

I have had this sat in between reading stints that maybe the time in-between readings factored into the fact I DNF'd it this time.

I will try reading it again.

Not for me. I requested this to read in October, as I always like to stock up on "spooky stories" to get me in the Halloween mood. This wasn't quite what I expected, and not my favorite.

Ι feel so bad for giving this 3 stars. I DNFed at 75% but it was a struggle to get there. I enjoyed Ivory as a character and all tge body exploration linked with her identity, her sexuality etc was a fascinating exploration but the rest of the book couldn't grasp my interest no matter how much I kept reading, I really enjoyed the themes of this book but the mystery plot just didn't work for me I am afraid.

The writing really seemed to be great in this book, but I honestly don't think that this book was for me. It wasn't really what I expected from the summary going in, and I found it really difficult to get invested in any of the chapters that centered Ivory, one of the main characters, while I found the chapters about Xi and Rex to be much more engaging. It felt very difficult to follow the plot in some places, while some events felt as though they were included purely for shock value rather than advancing the plot. I came into it wanting to like it more than I did, but I just didn't enjoy reading it very much.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book.

What a unique, heartbreaking, and beautifully written vampire story. I hadn't read Hailey Piper before now but she had been on my list, and I really enjoyed this first foray into her horror works. I loved how she created this new kind of vampire that feels feral and more to the heart of the old school vampire mythology, and how she draws the parallels of transformation, isolation, and loneliness experienced by vampires and her trans characters. This book also has a MIDNIGHT MASS feel to it in terms of eerie build up of a small town with secrets, horrors, and the supernatural bobbing beneath the surface. It was a great introduction to Piper and I will definitely seek more of her books out.

** spoiler alert ** I will start by saying that I consider myself a huge Hailey Piper fan. I love her gruesome flavor of horror, I love the quirky sentimentality that she can instill into horrific body horror, I love her word use. But I will readily admit that when I saw the latest was a 450-page doorstopper that appeared to be a murder mystery, I was less than enthused.

Piper, my dear, how could I have ever doubted your talents?

So, indeed, "All the Hearts You Eat" is a door-stopper of a murder mystery, with a creepy gothic feeling of a small beach town that contains the brightness of Cape Morning, with its noisy tourists and party-friendly beach locals, and the shadowy Cape Shadow with Ghost Cat Island and the mysterious thing that followed Cabrina back from her swim.

The discovery of Cabrina's dead body on the beach by another trans woman, Ivory Sloan, sets the story in motion, particularly when Ivory also discovers a portion of Cabrina's 'suicide poem.' Ivory's search for answers sets in motion a series of actions that ultimately culminate in an orgy of death and dismemberment, as the denizens of Ghost Cat Island are finally able to emerge into the human world. Blood flows freely and viscera is flung about like so much meat in a slaughterhouse as Ivory and her inhuman lover unleash their strange vampiric horde onto the town.

All of this is well and good, but there's still a human story beneath it all, which is the story of two trans women, one undead and one alive, and the demons that they face with their families, their friends, and their communities. I think it is this message, underneath it all, that is the more powerful one.

I have to say that I loved the ending with Ivory and Honey, the two lovers, finally alone, curling up around one another. The gothic romantic in me forgave them for all their sins, in the face of their love. Sigh.

if you had told me there were vampires in this, i wouldn't have believed you. i still read the reviews that said there were vampires in this... and i still couldn't believe it. i think this is one of those things where the book wasn't meant for me and that's ok! there honestly wasn't anything inherently "bad" about the writing and i thought piper did really well building up her story but!! i just didn't connect with anything. not the characters, the plot, the vampires (not your typical vampires btw). there wasn't ever a point in the story where i HAD to keep reading; idk, this really wasn't it for me.

ty to netgalley and titan books for the arc ~

Hailey Piper's "ALL THE HEARTS YOU EAT" is one of the most unique, darkly beautiful, and unique vampire novels of the last twenty years. Of course, the vampires are hardly recognizable to faithful followers of traditional lore. I count this as an absolute strength. The visuals of these creatures, the shifting of old tropes into new and mesmerizing horrors, is both artistic and brilliant.

The story is told from the perspectives of several characters. It begins when Ivory, a trans woman, finds a snippet of poetry on the beach after coming across the body of a young girl, Cabrina Brite. All of our narrators are trans, and all are as different as snowflakes, their lives, their families, their dreams. Cabrina, through her diary, ties the group together, Rex and Xi - her best friends and sometimes lovers - are trying to find a way, occult, whatever, to save their friend. Ivory, who found the poem, becomes obsessed with Cabrina's story.

Without offering spoilers it is impossible to explain the depths of this novel, but somehow, within the folds of the story, there is a universe of pain and love, loss and anger that offers not only a dark horror story, but insight into our world through the eyes, voice and experience of characters beyond the realm of most readers. There are hints of Poppy Z. Brite (Billy Martin) in the characters, and there is a bit of the structure of Piper's earlier novel, "No Gods for Drowning," in the structure, but this book, in my opinion, absolutely cements Hailey Piper as an author who will help to shape horror fiction for many years to come. Highly recommended.