I struggled to describe this book to a friend and struggled even more to answer their question whether I liked it. In short, I didn't enjoy reading this book. It's sad and unsettling and contains some harm to animals that breaks my vegetarian heart. I'm not sure what it says about me that I didn't have the same issue with all of the cannibalism. Even though I didn't enjoy the experience, I find myself thinking about it a lot even days after finishing it.

I requested this for consideration for Book Riot's All the Books podcast for its release date. After sampling several books out this week, I decided to go with a different book for my review.

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the arc! even with short chapters unfortunately this book was hard for me to get through. i cant even really place my finger on why, perhaps it just isn't for me personally. i don't have any negative comments, just didnt work for me

This novel left me raw and devastated, yet the writing was so beautiful and I will recommend it to anyone who can stomach it.

Oh where do I begin to talk about my most recent read, The Lamb. First, let me say that I was a little leary of reading this one. Not much bothers me, but cannibalism is one of the few things that does. And this is a book that is filled with it, yet I loved it. I devoured it.

Margot and her mother live alone in a cabin on the edge of the forest. Margot’s life consists of going to school and helping to lure strays, Margot’s word for the strangers she helps lure back to the cabin, for her mother to eat. And then one day, a beautiful stranger appears and for once Mama’s need for human flesh is taken over by desire. The stranger stays and so begins a tale of manipulation, obsession and toxic love.

I loved this book. Even though it is set in the modern day, it has a timelessness to it. It reads much like a demented modern fairy tale and the brilliance of this approach is what makes the gruesome subject matter palatable. Even though the book consists mainly of only an accounting of Margot’s daily life, it has a sense of claustrophobia and propulsion and encroaching dread that made it impossible to put down. Its seemingly languid quality is a thinly veiled facade of the runaway train and dangerous track that the trajectory of Margot’s life has taken.

Rose’s writing is beautiful and ethereal while also being visceral. Instead of turning the reader away from the horrific subject matter, she lures them in with beautiful prose and then ensnares them in her compelling tale. Both fairy tale and horror story, this book both enchants and terrifies and devastates and I believe I will forever be in it’s thrall. This book is an achievement and I can’t wait to see what Rose writes next.

Thank you to @netgalley and @harper for an arc of this novel.

It seems wrong to say, but this was FUN!! It is a delicious blend of macabre, feminist, and body horror, and it's giving me a taste for more.
If you are a fan of Woman, Eating, or The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir, you will most likely devour this book in one sitting, as I did.
TW: cannibalism
Thanks for the arc, @netgalley

Although maybe a little overly long, the prose in this book and its sweeping conclusion make it a must=read for fans of horror.

This is the best horror novel of the year so far! Utterly devastating and horrific! Will recommend to everybody!

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishing Company for this Advanced Readers Copy of The Lamb by Lucy Rose!

Hello dark atmospheric gothic gay little book of metaphors and symbolism! This was great and dark and fun and messed up all at once.

Thank you NetGalley for a free digital ARC in exchange for my unbiased review.
My review is my true and honest thoughts and opinions with no outside influence.

This book was a slow burn roller coaster. I could not put it down (it took me longer to read it because I kept getting distracted by other books lol). This was a very out of my comfort zone book but I loved it. From the first line I was absolutely hooked. I was disgusted, interested, curious, and disgusted some more. I took some emotional damage from the ending, but it was so well done. The language shift in the last sentence (I don’t wanna spoil so I won’t give more detail) spoke VOLUMES. It was a one word shift but it was loud and clear and intentional.

Again thank you to NetGalley for the free digital ARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

Wow, what a debut book! The Lamb by Lucy Rose is brutal and vicious to the core and I loved every minute of it. This is the story of Margot, Ruth and Eden living in their creepy, rural cabin and bringing in “strays” to satiate their neverending hunger. The book doesn’t shy away from its darkest tendencies. I found it impossible to put down and an exceptionally original. Not for the faint of heart but an excellent read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper for the opportunity to read the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I'm not going to beat around the bush with this one. There is only one word readers need to know about this book:

Cannibalism

That's all most people will need to hear to run in the other direction but for those of you sticking around here's a little bit more I can share with you....

Margot lives with her mother, Ruth, in a secluded cabin in the woods. Margot does go to school but with strict rules to never seek attention, never raise your hand, and if you're called on always reply "I don't know". Ruth doesn't want anyone to come knocking on their door.

Ruth often likes to scatter little trinkets on the near by roads like nails, screws, shards of glass - anything - that might puncture a travelers tire leaving them to seek help. And who better to help them than the nice lady with her little girl by her side offering drinks, food, safety, and warmth. The strays (as they like to call them) should be thankful.

Like a lamb led to slaughter.....

For these unfortunate souls may be welcomed into their home but they will never ever leave.

Until one day when a beautiful stranger named Eden arrives and the dynamics of this little family will be forever changed.

Very well written and especially impressive seeing as this is Rose's debut novel. She took a revolting subject matter and managed to weave in glimpses of beauty and love which is a tough feat to accomplish. I felt so sorry for Margot and her upbringing but this is the only life she has ever known so for her this all seems normal. She is intuitive enough to know that her and her mother are different from other people. Mostly do to their filth and tattered clothes. She's aware enough to never take her one and only friend home from school for fear she will be the nights feast. She wishes only to be loved by her mother and so she plays the part that her mother has written for her.

This won't be for everyone or even most readers. It is gruesome and gory and while there may not be splatter splashed across every page there is enough descriptors given to make your tummy grumble - and not in the good way. 🤢

The ending was absolutely haunting. 4 stars!

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper for my complimentary copy.

Engaging and entertaining. A recommended purchase for collections where horror and dark coming of age is popular.

Omg! This was such a great book to read/listen to. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and had an immense sense of dread the whole time because of the relationship with Margot and her mom. I was rooting for Margot, and I so so wanted the best for her. It was so good, that I know I'm going to cry about it and think about it for a long time. This was true literary horror, i was hooked, and the book was so enthralling. I felt the shift changing in the middle when Abby and Margot become friends, and after that I was scared the whole time. This was so good. I read this book and also listened to it, so i got the best of both worlds.

Putting how this book affected me into words is difficult. Margot’s story is one of great tragedy and sorrow, but it also, in an odd way, evokes a powerful feeling of hope. Lucy Rose’s prose reads like a fairytale, adding a sense of wonder to every step Margot takes. But in that fairytale is a deep sense of darkness. The book is not for the faint of heart; descriptions of dead bodies and preparing them for consumption abound. Not to mention the child abuse, both physical and emotional. If you can endure that, though, you become privy to Margot’s world. She is a little girl who wants so badly to be loved and accepted, but when she realizes the one person she should be receiving unconditional love from does not care for her, she finds a resilience in her that I could not help but find beautiful in its tragedy. This will be one of my favorite novels of the year, I can already tell.

Margot and her mother, Ruth, live in a little house tucked away in a bit of wood, a small distance from the nearest road. Every now and again, people find their way to the cabin looking for help — hikers lost in the woods, a traveler whose car blew a tire, campers, and lost souls. Margot’s mother calls them strays. She smiles at them, seduces them, gives them hemlock, and then kills, butchers, and eats them. This is Margo’s life, the only life she has ever known.

Margot’s mother is a capricious woman with mood swings and an insatiable hunger. But Margo loves her mother when she pinches her, or hits her, when she tells her stories, or holds her in her arms. They only have each other… until Eden. Eden, who came begging for help at the door one night, who allowed herself to be seduced by mother … but somehow, for some reason, Eden is special. Eden stays. Eden watches. And Eden eats.

Now, it’s the three of them alone in the cottage, and Margot feels her mother slipping away, wrapped tighter and tighter in Eden’s own hungry love.

Let me first say that I did not think I would find a book about a mother and daughter pair indulging in cannibalism to be quite so boring. But the two biggest problems I had with this book are its predictability, and what feels like its lack of purpose. It’s as if the author had an image in mind, but in trying to convey that image, they spent over 300 pages stuck in place and ended up spinning their wheels.

Margo is a child on the edge of puberty for much of the book. She is incurious, placid, passive, and struggles with subtlety or complex thoughts. Her mother has taught her to keep her head down and her mouth shut, especially at school, and so Margo drifts along. She’s bullied by students, mocked by her teacher for not understanding math, and she has no reaction to any of it. For a book that takes place entirely in Margot’s head, she has so little personality and so little character. It’s not just that Margot’s a child of nature, an innocent being … she’s apathetic and dull, even when her mother betrays her, giving Eden more attention and begins to shut Margot out. She is the same blank-minded child at 11 as she was at 4, playing with severed fingers. She watches, because it’s through her eyes that the story is told. But even when thinking about how lovely her mother is, it’s a flat, monotone voice. It’s almost 200 pages of this placid, lackluster narration with no growth.

Margot’s mother is supposed to be a force of nature, a woman who seduces all of her strays into loving her and trusting her. But on page, she’s a petulant child, sulky and manic. She’s indifferent to her daughter, and even the moments that are supposed to be poignant and impactful, there’s the same lifeless disinterest from both characters.

Eden, the interloper, came to find Ruth and Margot, following a trail of disappearing women. Yet when she sees Ruth kill an ex-lover and prepare him for dinner, it’s met with a shrug. Eden seems to delight in control, with controlling Ruth being her single hobby. When Margot begins to take too much of Ruth’s attention, by acting out in school (fighting back against bullies),

Spoiler title
To her credit, Margot does come up with a plan and follows through with it. And it’s clever! I feel like this moment, Margot’s plan
Spoiler title
was the point of the book, the one scene the author built the story around and it’s the best part of it. But it’s one chapter out of 81. (The chapters are, for the most part, very short.)
While reading, I found myself with questions like how does Ruth pay for the house? Utilities? Is she robbing the strays she kills? While Margot makes a point to comment on how all of their items are buried in the back yard — from nail polish to clothing — I doubt her mother is leaving any money behind. And why make Margot go to school? Before Eden arrived, Ruth didn’t seem to want to live with a lack of attention, so why send Margo, her one source of entertainment and validation, away for hours a day where she could be exposed to other people?

There’s no point to my questions because the story isn’t about the details. What it is about, I don’t know. But if you decide to give this a try, know that the ending had a decent moment. Honestly, though, this book is a solid pass for me and I do not recommend it.

Wow, what a deeply upsetting read! I really should have taken breaks while reading it, given how much it wrecked my brain for days afterward, but I just couldn't put it down. Child POVs are rarely well done and often just come off as infantile, but Rose NAILED the tone while also giving Margot a voice of her own. The ending made me feel hollow and numb in the way only a great novel can.

Rating this book is a serious challenge, because it is truly unlike anything I have ever read in my life. Lamb is tragic, absurd, horrifying, and so much more. Those words don't even do it justice. I often rate books that I find challenging based on how often I think I will reflect on them, which is how I ultimately ended up with 4 stars. Though it is relatively short and darker than words can say, due in large part to Rose's vivid descriptions. I listened to this audiobook at work and was infinitely grateful that I packed a salad for lunch that day. Thank you Harper for my eARC in exchange for my honest review.

From the very first sentence, the author sets the tone for this graphic and visceral coming of age horror story, perfect for fans of gory horror and dark fairy tales.