Very enjoyable! An interesting twist on possession with strong shades of Little Shop of Horrors. A definite recommend for anyone intrigued by the idea of a plant driven horror story!

Shell is 32 and freshly derailed from her bland, planned life—broken engagement, lost job, and now living back in her childhood bedroom in her hometown, despite being surrounded by family, feeling increasingly untethered. When she lands a job at a flower shop in the Woodbine Crown Mall, it feels like a last-ditch attempt to reclaim some sense of direction. Neve, the shop's owner, offers her a chance to restart, but something else is watching—Baby, a sentient orchid with intentions that go way beyond photosynthesis. Sarah Maria Griffin's novel moves with a quiet empathy, tracking the strange ecosystem of a dying mall and the workers finding unexpected connections. The growing tension between Shell and Neve provides a tender undercurrent to the story, even as Baby's hungry consciousness threatens to consume everything around it. Despite the horror threading through its pages, the novel finds something deeply human in its exploration of survival and desire. A wolf in orchid's clothing, indeed.

Welcome, you twisted bastards, to the latest slab of literary meat on the horror chopping block: Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin. This isn’t your grandma’s cozy gardening manual—it’s a sapphic, Irish-tinged retelling of Little Shop of Horrors (basically) with a sentient, flesh-craving orchid named Baby who’s got more issues than a tabloid rack. This book is a slow-burn descent into botanical madness that’ll have you side-eyeing your houseplants for weeks. Buckle up, because I’m diving balls-deep into this weird-ass tale, dissecting its guts, glory, and a few gripes, all while trying not to sound like a pretentious prick. Let’s get to it.

Sarah Maria Griffin isn’t some newbie scribbler who stumbled into this gig. She’s an Irish writer with a knack for blending the mundane with the macabre, a literary alchemist who’s been churning out bangers for years. Her previous works—like Spare and Found Parts and Other Words for Smoke—showcase her love for the offbeat, the emotional, and the downright eerie. Griffin’s got a background in zine-making and poetry, which bleeds into her prose with a raw, punk-rock energy. She’s not afraid to get messy, and Eat the Ones You Love is her adult debut, a middle finger to conventional storytelling that proves she’s here to fuck with your head and heart. Hailing from Dublin, she infuses this novel with Irish vibes—crumbling malls, millennial despair, and a dash of slang that’ll make you Google “culchie” mid-chapter. Griffin’s a force, and this book is her latest love letter to the freaks and weirdos who dig the dark shit.

Michelle “Shell” Pine is a hot mess. Freshly dumped, jobless, and crashing with her parents in a nowhere Irish town, she’s the poster child for millennial burnout. One day, while moping through a dying mall with flickering fluorescents and the ghost of 90s consumerism, she spots a “Help Needed” sign at a flower shop. Enter Neve, the enigmatic florist with a smile that could melt steel and secrets darker than a peat bog. Shell lands the gig, sparks fly, and suddenly she’s got a new crew, a budding crush, and a front-row seat to some seriously weird shit.

The star of this fucked-up show? Baby, a carnivorous orchid with a hard-on for Neve. This isn’t some passive potted plant—Baby’s sentient, sprawling its roots through the mall like a green cancer, and obsessed with consuming the woman who tends it. Shell’s caught in the crossfire, navigating a love triangle, workplace drama, and the creeping dread of a plant that wants to eat its way to happily-ever-after. It’s a slow simmer of tension that explodes into a finale of gore and chaos, leaving you wondering if anyone’s getting out alive—or if you even want them to.

Eat the Ones You Love is a goddamn buffet of themes. At its core, it’s about hunger—not just Baby’s literal craving for flesh, but the emotional starvation that gnaws at Shell, Neve, and the whole damn mall crew. Shell’s desperate for purpose after her life implodes; Neve’s feeding a monster she can’t escape; and Baby’s lust for Neve is a twisted mirror of human obsession. It’s love as consumption, a theme Griffin hammers home with every slimy tendril and devoured mallrat.

Symbolism? Oh, it’s dripping like sap from a slashed stem. The decaying mall is a big, fat metaphor for late-stage capitalism—once a shiny temple of excess, now a rotting husk overtaken by nature’s revenge. Baby’s the ultimate fuck-you to suburbia, a primal force reclaiming what humanity built and abandoned. The flowers Shell arranges? Beauty masking rot, just like the relationships in this story. And don’t get me started on the Irish setting—it’s a nod to a nation wrestling with its own identity, caught between tradition and a globalized shitshow. Griffin’s not subtle, but she doesn’t need to be; the imagery hits like a sledgehammer wrapped in petals.

If there’s a message here, it’s that love can be a real bastard. Griffin doesn’t preach—she’s too smart for that—but she’s definitely poking at the underbelly of attachment. Baby’s fixation on Neve is a grotesque parody of codependency, a reminder that wanting someone too much can turn you into a monster. Shell’s journey, meanwhile, flirts with redemption: she’s clawing her way out of despair, but the book never promises a neat bow. It’s more like, “Hey, life’s a mess, and sometimes the things that save you also try to eat you alive.” There’s no moralizing, just a raw, unflinching look at how we fuck ourselves up chasing connection. It’s bleak, it’s funny, and it’s damn near perfect for a horror blog crowd that thrives on the messy stuff.

Griffin’s prose is a trip—lush, jagged, and occasionally a pain in the ass. She writes like she’s possessed, weaving sentences that pulse with hunger and heartache. It’s poetic as hell, full of vivid imagery that’ll make you smell the damp mall air and feel Baby’s roots slithering under your skin. But here’s the kicker: she loves to fuck with perspective. One minute you’re in Shell’s third-person headspace, the next you’re jolted into Baby’s first-person rant, no warning, no hand-holding. It’s disorienting, and that’s the point—Baby’s influence seeps into the narrative like a virus, screwing with your sense of who’s talking. I fucking love it!

I can imagine some readers bitching about this, but I find it innovative. Once you lock into the rhythm, it’s a mind-bending ride and really ramps up the tension. The lack of clear POV breaks mirrors the characters’ unraveling, and Griffin’s bold enough to let it feel chaotic. Add in some Irish slang and a knack for dark humor, and you’ve got a style that’s equal parts gorgeous and unhinged. It’s not for everyone, but if you’re here for the weird shit, it’s a treat.

This book’s got balls, and its strengths are what make it a standout. The atmosphere is a fucking knockout—the mall’s a character in its own right, all faded glory and creeping dread. You can practically hear the escalators groan and taste the stale pretzels. The cast is another win: Shell’s a relatable wreck, Neve’s a magnetic enigma, and Baby’s the most deranged narrator since Patrick Bateman. Side characters like Jen, Neve’s ex, add spice—her emails are a highlight. And that ending? Holy shit, it’s full of chaos and ambiguity that sticks with you. No tidy resolutions here, just a lingering unease that’s horror gold.

Alright, let’s not suck its dick too hard—there’s room to bitch. The pacing’s a slog at times, especially in the middle. You’re stuck in mall-worker banter and Shell’s moping while Baby twiddles his tendrils, and it drags like a hungover Sunday. It’s a slow burn, sure, but it could’ve used a tighter trim—maybe lop off some of that “found family” fluff and get to the good stuff. And speaking of good stuff: where’s the goddamn horror? For a book about a man-eating plant, it’s light on the carnage. The last 25% delivers, but I wanted more bodies hitting the floor earlier. It’s creepy, not scary, and that’s a letdown for gorehounds like me.

Eat the Ones You Love is ultimately a hell of a ride. Griffin’s crafted a horror gem that’s equal parts tender and terrifying, a love story wrapped in thorns. It’s got atmosphere to spare, characters you’ll root for (or want to feed to Baby), and a style that’s ballsy as fuck. Sure, it stumbles with pacing and skimps on the blood, but the payoff’s worth it. If you’re into botanical nightmares, sapphic tension, or just some weird-ass fiction to spice up your shelf, grab this. Just don’t blame me if you start talking to your ferns—they might talk back.

I picked this book because of its interesting title, cover design and the genre descriptions. Beginning this book it was unlike anything I’d read before and I was drawn in by the main character. This was such a unique book and I really enjoyed all the details even though the beginning felt a bit slow I felt everything was necessary to the plot. I feel like I will be thinking of this book for a long time to come and I’m thankful I’m not a plant person because I’d be weary of them from now on!

Thank you Tor for the advanced copy! This publishes 4.22.25.

Looking for a weird book where a sentient plant is obsessed with a florist? Pick this up when it publishes. Shell is freshly single, unemployed. and living with her parents. Taking a stroll in one of the seemingly last remaining malls in Ireland, she sees a help needed sign at a flower shop. Inside, she meets Neve who gives her a job. Getting this job completely changes Shell's life: she makes new friends, gets tangled in a little love triangle, and all along she's surrounded by a carnivorous hungry plant named 'Baby'.

Overall, I generally enjoyed this. It took a minute to get used to the writing style: it switches POVs without warning, a lot of times within the same paragraph. One sentence will be in 3rd person then it will switch to first person, then back to 3rd person the next paragraph. I often times found myself confused who's POV I was reading from. Maybe this was intentionally disorienting? Once you get used to it, it's okay, but I really wish POVs would have been separated by chapters or something.

I really wanted more horror - it took until about 75% for the stakes to ramp up and the horror to start. Up until then a lot of the book surrounded this small group of friends working at this crumbling, dying mall, talking about how they were going to live without working there. The pacing wasn't great - the middle section really dragged and the characters are kept at arms length so I wasn't super invested in any of them. Once I got to the last 25%, I had more fun and the plant horror was fantastic! If the entire book was like the end, I would've rated this 5 stars easy.

This is a short, weird, slow burn of a story - if you're a fan of sentient beings in books, relationship exploration, and social commentary with a little bit of horror elements, I recommend picking it up!

Eat the Ones You Love follows Shell, a girl who is honestly going through it at the moment. She’s reeling from losing her job, breaking up with her fiance, and moving back into her childhood home with her parents and siblings. If that isn’t enough, she’s seemed to lose all motivation, and frankly, most of us couldn’t blame her.

Things start to change when she goes into the mall and is immediately enraptured by a floral shop and its beautiful and intriguing manager, Neve. Once Shell is hired, the shop and hanging out with Neve become a part of her. Things only get more intense as we find out what secrets Neve is hiding and the things playing out behind the scenes.

There was truly so much drama going on in this book, and you never knew what was going to happen next. Neve has friends who work in the mall, and we meet them along with her ex-girlfriend, who plays a significant role in the story. There were dashes of romance sprinkled in and some downright unsettling moments that had me questioning what I was reading.

By the end, there were so many questions and so many thoughts swimming in my head. Most notably, what would I do if I were in Shell’s position? Either way, Eat the Ones You Love was a book outside of my typical wheelhouse, and in a way, it didn’t end up being a favorite because of that. However, I can see how horror lovers or those who adore Little Shop of Horrors would enjoy it more than I did.

thank you to netgalley for the opportunity to read this book!

eat the ones you love was a wild ride.

the best character, essentially, in this whole book, was the american jen. as an american, i admire her can-do spirit.

i also really loved all the characters in this book. they all were different, and i could see them each in my head very clearly.

the story itself was well written. i loved getting lost in the prose and then realizing oh, that's the point of view of a plant. crazy!

imagine a giant Venus fly trap/orchid who's in love with you.
that's Baby, and he's the star of this novel. I know it's supposed to be more about the two ladies and the queerness and dead mall and everything, but the killer plant is the most interesting character in this book and I loved him!

deranged, unhinged, wild? yup. also kinda mundane and slow? sometimes. a fun time though

✨️🍴🥀Girl dinner🥀🍴✨️

This was oddly nostalgic, deranged, and surreal, like a nightmare sequence between Junji Ito's Gyo getting a crossover with Little Shop of Horrors And such a fun ride!

Michelle "Shell" is freshly single, unemployed and to make matters worse, she moved back in home with her parents, and on a journey of self loathing and isolation, and even though she wants nothing to do with anyone or anything, she has to look for a job, a new place, asap... a girl gotta eat. Therefore, a girl gotta work. While running errands, she comes about a help NEEDED sign at a Flower Shop inside the dying mall. This is where she meets Neve and finds herself a new job and a new "friend" named Baby. Baby is hungry. Baby needs food. 🍴♥️🍴

I loved the relationships in this book, as well as how Shell's emotional rollercoaster is displayed as well how it affects relationships between herself, others, and the development of the story.

Between the horror, the writing style and the complexity of relationships, and a 10/10 ending, I recommend you add this book to your TBR.

I would love to thank NetGalley,  Tor Publishing, and Sarah Maria Griffin for allowing me to read this e-book ARC in exchange for an honest  review

Shell is looking for a fresh start: she’s broken up with her fiancé, quit her job, and moved back home with her parents. This fresh start comes unexpectedly; while out on an errand for her mother Shell discovers a florist’s shop with a “help needed” sign inside.

Shell immediately kicks it off with the owner Neve, and is hired. Learning the trade and discovering she has a green thumb is exciting to Shell, more exciting is the mutual attraction between the two women. Neve has a secret though, and this secret is hungry…..

This is a creeping botanical story, eco horror with a dash of body horror, exploring the decay of suburbia. I loved the setting of the half-abandoned mall, what was once a bustling center of a community slowly being overtaken by nature. I do wish this would have leaned more into the horror elements, there were some scenes hinting at some body horror and for a story about a man-eating plant, I wish we could have gotten more about that aspect. This definitely is an accessible horror for those looking to get into the genre, and this has crossover appeal to people who like "weird girl" literary fiction and are looking for something with a bit more bite (pun intended!) but don't want a horror that's too bloody or out there. Definitely for fans of Little Shop of Horrors and Delilah S. Dawson's Bloom!

After DNF-ing the first time around, I gave this book another shot. I'm so glad I did. It was hard for me to get into at first — I like a slow-build, but the perspective tripped me up quite a bit. And while I'm usually okay with purple prose, the sentences seemed to go on forever. Too many commas made it hard to follow for me personally. Once I got past those initial issues, though, I had a pretty good time. Wish we could have seen more of Neve and Shell together. Jen took me by surprise! 3.5/5

The nostalgia I got from the mall plants that I didn’t even know I had. Definitely a very unique book, I haven’t read anything even similar to this book. I thought the plot was really good and there was a lot to the book. I definitely recommend!

Dark, immersive and saturated in raw, unflinching emotion and our relationships with others. The multiple POVs were creative and flowed so well with the style of the book. Also for anyone that grew up under the blinding lights of retail and created a weird little ecosystem that was oddly comforting and find yourself nostalgic for.

This was a strange, but interesting read that managed to balance a haunting, creeping dread with tender moments of love, friendship, and quiet desperation. At its core, the novel is a sort of retelling of "Little Shop of Horrors", but with a fresh, Sapphic twist and a setting that's equal parts nostalgic and nightmarish: a dying shopping mall. Think Audrey II meets the Upside Down from "Stranger Things", but with a distinctly queer, feminist bent.
 
The story follows Shell Pine, a woman who is going through a lot of (maybe too much) change - she's left her fiancé, lost her job, and is back home with her parents. Shell used to have a purpose and direction in life, and now she's kind of floundering. During a trip to a shopping center, she sees a "HELP NEEDED" sign in the window of a flower shop and decides to enter the shop to see what sort of help the owner needs. Shell has never worked with flowers before, but she's desperate for connection and open to learning something new. There, she meets Neve, the enigmatic florist who quickly becomes something more than a boss or a coworker. Their connection is immediate and electric - but there's a catch. The shop isn't just a quaint place to sell daisies and daffodils. Hidden in the shadows of the mall, there's an orchid named Baby. He's sentient. He's ravenous. And he's in love with Neve - so much so that he wants to eat her and make her part of him.

Griffin's writing is lyrical, surreal, and sometimes dizzying in its intensity. The prose pulses with hunger and yearning, and while it takes a few chapters to adjust to the frequent shifts in perspective (especially with no clear signposting), it eventually becomes clear that this disorientation is intentional. Baby's influence seeps through everything, and the lack of traditional structure mirrors how he infects and distorts the lives of those around him.

The book is filled with atmosphere, and the setting is one of the book's standout features. The mall itself feels like a character: decaying, haunted by memories of a consumerist past, and slowly being consumed by something older and far more dangerous. There's a creeping dread throughout the novel, as if something is rotting beneath the surface, and I loved it.

Despite the horror elements, there's a strong emotional core to the story. The relationships - especially between Shell and Neve - are complex and deeply human. There's a permeating feeling of need throughout the book that I found very effective. I also found the ending to be deeply satisfying. It doesn't offer neat resolutions, but it does leave you with a lingering unease and a sense that things - while different - aren't necessarily going to be okay.

That said, the pacing does falter at times. The middle section drags a bit, focusing on the day-to-day dynamics of the mall workers in a way that, while interesting, occasionally feels like filler. The friendships and relationships are lovely, but the novel might have benefited from a bit more pruning - especially when it comes to building the stakes. With a monstrous plant on the loose, one almost wishes a few of these characters had met a grisly end to heighten the tension and drama of the overall book. It also would have added to the sense of dread and elevated the horror element.
 
In short, I found this to be a gorgeously written novel about hunger, love, and monstrosity - and how, sometimes, the things that feed us are also the things that devour us. I would definitely recommend this to fans of queer horror. While I felt it dragged a bit in places, I still enjoyed it. It's different and not particularly scary, but it is beautifully written and worth checking out.

This is a fascinating, super atmospheric, sapphic retelling of 'Little Shop of Horrors.' I went into it with high expectations, hoping I'd adore it, and while it didn't fully work for me, I can't stop thinking about it. In some key ways, it's very faithful to the source film/musical/original ending of the '80s film, and I adored the seedy, aging mall in the midst of an intense economic recession vibes. The character building was amazing, too--I wanted to know pretty much all of these people. I didn't adore the ending, but I respect the choices Griffin made.

I read this over my trip to Ireland, and it set the scene perfectly.

Eat the Ones We Love is a dark, weird-girl lit-fic horror novel about a woman trapped in the obsession of a sentient plant, and honestly, I had a good time with it. Shell Pine is newly single and unemployed when she takes a job at a struggling flower shop. She’s immediately drawn to Neve, the florist who hires her. But Neve isn’t just running a flower shop—she’s entangled in a strange, all-consuming relationship with Baby, a sentient plant that loves to devour.

A queer retelling of Little Shop of Horrors, this story weaves in millennial anxieties and social themes while unraveling a slow descent into obsession. While I was excited to receive an ARC and thought the concept was strong, a few things brought this one down for me. The pacing dragged, only for the climax to feel a bit anti-climactic. I also would have loved a stronger horror element. The narrative voice—while a bold creative choice—felt a little unclear at times, and the perspective shifts between Shell and Neve were jarring rather than seamless.

Overall, this is a short, intriguing read for fans of eerie, offbeat horror, but it didn’t completely blow me away.

I went into this hopeful, expecting a bit of Little Shop of Horrors, and was delighted by how much we get from “ Baby” the massive, almost overpowered and very sentient orchid plant of unknown origins. He feeds into the story of our two main characters, Shell and Neve, by being an outside but far from far from being unbiased. His perspective is both a little unnerving and entertaining because he is a plant and thus has no morals crumples about whom he devours or absorbs into himself. The rest of the story if mostly character build up of Shell, who is just out of a bad break up and losing her job, taking one as a florist assistant in Neves shop, and Jen, Neve’s ex who suspects Neve may be in over her head with something very unnatural. For the most part, the plot is clever and interesting enough but it drags because the focus stays on Shell coming in as a newbie to the mall, making friends, dodging text from her old friends, moving back in with her parents, and her crush on Neve. Neve with her connection to Baby and her oddly blank way of disposing of bodies for Baby, is more interesting, but gets less focus. All the romantic drama culminated quickly then ended abruptly and the climax of the plot was rather disappointing. Baby goes to all this work to kill off certain individuals, some which he fails at, to spread himself everywhere and the mall collapses and thwarts him rather quickly. No massacre of flesh eating plant madness and I was totally hoping for that after all the build up. I figured all the characters were doomed. That seemed like it would fit better instead of how abruptly it all fell apart.

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got a copy of this on ebook from NetGalley.

Thoughts: DNF, I got about 40% of the way through this one and then set it aside. My biggest issue was the constant changing of POV without any indicator you were changing POV. There were no lines or spaces between paragraphs, page breaks, or anything to let you know the point of view was switching. You would just switch POV in the next paragraph in the middle of a page. This was all over the place. Sometimes we were reading from the main character's point of view, sometimes the plant's, sometimes the flower shop's owner (Neve), sometimes Neve's former girlfriend. I had no idea who we were hearing from most of the time, and it was very confusing. Maybe there were formatting issues with the review copy, and that's why this was so confusing? Giving it 3* with that assumption.

The story follows Shell, who has both been laid off from her job and ended her long term relationship with her boyfriend in a very short space of time. She finds herself living with her parents again and drifting as she tries to find a new job and some sort of purpose. Her wandering leads her to a florist shop that is looking for help.

As mentioned above, the biggest issue for me here was how confusing and difficult this was to read, but there were other issues for me as well. The pacing on this is very slow. You know there is a sentient plant pretty quickly, but not a lot actually happens. The characters are hard to engage with and seem to keep you at a distance. This is more of a slow burn horror, I guess? Not sure because I just got so bored with it I couldn't stick with the story.

I did like the old run down shopping mall setting; there is some nostalgia there for me. I think the idea here could be a good one if executed properly; this gives serious Little Shop of Horror vibes. However, I was just dreading sitting down to read this because it was so uneven and confusing, so I decided to stop.

My Summary (3/5): Overall while I appreciated the nostalgic run down mall setting and the premise, I found this confusing to read and slow and ended up putting it down 40% of the way in. I could never tell when the POV was shifting, and it left me re-reading portions of the book over and over again trying to figure out who was talking. That coupled with all the additional viewpoints that get added as the story continued made this feel slow, messy, and confusing. I never got creepy horror vibes from it. I don't plan on checking out any more books by this author.

I quite enjoyed this book! I got pretty much exactly what I anticipated based on the description and my own expectations. The writing in this book is delicious, I really loved the writing style and I was OBSESSED with the narration choice. This book is all about dark, obsessive, hungry desire and love and I think it really nailed all of those themes and conveyed the complexity of them very well. My only drawback about this book is this is very much horror by association and not as much by content. I was waiting the whole book for the moment we would really ramp up on the suspense and horror and that moment never came. This didn’t impede my enjoyment too much, but more made me feel like I was missing something. Will definitely keep an eye on more from this author in the future!

An incredibly weird and twisted read about two women who work in a flower shop and the plant that's got its eye on them.
Shell begins working at a local flower shop where she meets and is instantly intrigued by the woman who owns it, Neve. Meanwhile there's an orchid type of plant that's taken root at the centre of the mall where the flower shop is located.
This story was a quick read that crept up under my skin in the most unsettling way! A unique idea, executed well!

For a more indepth review you can check out my spoiler free youtube review here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZHB2XbsynY&t=8s