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

Baby, an orchid-like plant, has been cared for by Neve in the mall centre where her flower shop is since he was a seedling. He’s so hungry, though. He wants to consume everything and everyone he can to become as strong as possible, but there’s nothing he wants more than Neve. Enter Shell. Lost her job, left her fiancé, and stuck at home with her whole family, she needs something. Anything. She ducks into Neve’s shop, and Baby decides that she’ll do, the perfect tool to help get Neve.

This is a brilliant story about obsession, creepy and unsettling through the eyes of Baby, and drifting and lonely through the story of Shell. I devoured it like Baby probably would have. It was great.

Actual rating 4.5 stars

A darkly imaginative tale that will leave you both enchanted and unsettled.

Shell is seeking a fresh start, as she becomes entangled with Neve, a captivating florist, and Baby, a carnivorous orchid with an insatiable hunger for Neve (yeah, really). Griffin art fully explores themes of obsession, desire, and the twisted nature of love. I'm here for it. It reminded me a lot of Little Shop of Horrors!

I found myself captivated by the quirky characters and the eerie setting of a dying mall. The LGBTQ+ representation and Irish backdrop were an added bonus. While the horror elements were more suspenseful than outright terrifying, the book’s blend of humor and macabre made for a great read. Overall, it’s a must-read for fans of dark fantasy and horror, though some might find it a bit light on intense moments.

If anyone else worked in a mall during their younger years, this book captures the combination of eerie foreboding and camaraderie to be found there.

Shell has lost her job, her fiancé, and moved back in with her parents during a painfully short time frame. When she sees a 'help needed' sign in a mall florist window, combined with the compellingly attractive shop owner, Neve, Shell thinks she has found a place to rest and recharge her weary heart. What she doesn't know yet is that Neve has some dark and dangerous secrets, including a sentient orchid she calls 'Baby' who has some secrets and hunger of his own.

This was such an enjoyable read: the sexual tension between Shell and Neve, the dark and hungry voice of Baby, the concerned and mildly unhinged correspondence of Neve's ex Jen with another mall employee. I found myself liking the side character Jen so much, wishing she had her own story! The ending was a bit explosive and shocking, but I very much liked how things wrapped up after that.

Thank you so much to Tor Publishing and Netgalley for this ARC!

3.25 Stars

This was a fun, weird, nostalgic little adventure around a crumbling mall in Ireland. I instantly related to Shell and her conflicting feelings of feeling a bit lost and adrift in your 30s. I loved the writing, vibes, atmosphere, and found family vibes of the mall crew. Botanical horror is one of my absolute favorites, and I really loved the characterization of Baby and enjoyed his POVs the most.

I did get a bit confused with the alternating POVs, where one second we are following Shell and then the next sentence we are seeing Shell through Baby’s eyes. I also felt a bit bored a few times while reading, wishing for a little bit more horror or dread. This definitely leans more toward cozy horror/fantasy than what I was expecting, which I was pleasantly surprised to really enjoy, I just wanted a bit more and found myself wanting to skim through some parts. I think this would have worked really really well as a novella.

Overall this was a fun and engaging read, and lovers of botanical/plant horror and fantasy should definitely check it out. I will definitely keep an eye out for other books by this author.

Infinite thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for an early copy!

I just could not get into this book. Overall, the writing was just not for me. The premise was enticing, but could not hold my attention.

In Eat the Ones You Love, Sarah Maria Griffin creates a captivating fusion of existential dread, romance, and gothic horror. The book centers on Shell Pine, a lady at a crossroads who accepts a job in a floral business and becomes attracted to Neve, the mysterious manager. Beneath the shop's fragile flowers, however, is a sentient orchid with its own agenda and a dark appetite.

Griffin creates a story that examines the attraction of desire, the price of belonging, and the uncanny force of nature through luscious, poetic prose and a setting brimming with both beauty and ruin. Eat the Ones You Love is a darkly poetic masterwork that you will continue thinking about long after you put it down.

This book wasn't for me. I wholeheartedly believe I will be in the minority though because I think a lot of people are going to love the 'weird' factor. I also already see a lot of 5 stars for people so that's a good sign!

Cons: I was a bit bored because I found the pacing to be a bit slow. I also had a hard time distinguishing the narration. It was narrated by the plant itself but a lot of the time it didn't feel that way. To me the plant being the narrator was always sort of an after thought. It read like a normal well written book and all of a sudden this creepy plant reminds us that he is the narrator and to me, it didn't click. Perhaps that was the point and I was just not smart enough to appreciate that?

Pros: Loved the atmosphere of the mall and appreciated the depiction of what it is like to work in retail. I am also a sucker for found family and the characters in the book had that sort of feel. Also this cover is magnificent.