This was highly disappointing. Unfortunately, being disappointed is becoming a trend for me when reading LaRocca's work. I was blown away by We Can Never Leave This Place, but nothing I've read since has lived up to it. This particular work was really tedious, with no major plot points occurring until around halfway through, and even then, nothing happened that made me want to continue reading. I truly only finished this because it was short and because I had this advanced copy. This book features two parallel stories, but the connection between them isn't solidified until the very end, and even then, it's pretty flimsy and seems unnecessary. These could've been two separate novellas within the same universe, and the stories would've fared better. The ending was extremely forced and very frustrating in terms of character development. The dialogue was also extremely clunky and unrealistic, which makes for a difficult read.

This one was hard for me to get through. It didn’t feel like horror should - cathartic. It just made me feel bad and gross, like brought me into a lowest of low mood. The violence didn’t seem to have a point and was just there to be there. Overall, not something I would recommend.

Larocca is great at shocking and gory and this book is definitely that. However, it had no real redeeming qualities and that eye-rolling ending.

"Everything the Darkness Eats" by Eric LaRocca is a highly anticipated and buzzed-about horror novel that delves into the existential terror of small-town life. Set in a rural New England village, the story unfolds as occult forces are summoned and unchecked bigotry threatens to consume the community.

Unfortunately, while this book started so we'll I didn't actually enjoy it. While I'm all for writers churning out books quickly or changing their writing style and branching into other genres, honestly this showed very little of the LaRocca style and energy I'm used to. Pretty much an auto read, and 5 star review, I'm not exactly sure what this book was about. Was it about missing old women? Was it about a supernatural old man? Was it about hate crimes? Who the hell knows? Probably the worst LaRocca so far

Stunningly beautiful cosmic and existential horror wrapped up in a heart-wrenching examination of shame and grief. This got under my skin and stayed there for a long time.

I had high hopes for this one. I was intrigued when I read a novella by the author, I thought a novel would be better. Unfortunately, I think I like his stories at novella length. The story felt a little too long for me, which in turn made it hard to get through. If you like weird fiction, horror, and small towns check this one out for sure.

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for an advanced copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.

I've read from LaRocca before, and their writing is beautifully grotesque. I sometimes read over the phrases several times, impressed by the prose. They manage to write about gore in a way that makes me want to highlight it and obsess over the word choice and yet feel guilty about loving a passage about blood and guts. I was excited for them to have a full length novel, and feel it had potential. With regret, I didn't love the read. The writing was still awe inspiring. The premise was impressive. But I think that the novella or short story is really where LaRocca shines. This novel didn't feel like it had enough "meat" to carry us through. It was confusing and had so much subtext, which are both things I love about a short story, but that create chaos in a novel. I'll eagerly await more from this author, but this one wasn't a hit for me.

It feels like two separate stories shoehorned together but they are also great stories. One evokes a lot of awesome Stephen King vibes while the other will truly horrify with its level of violence.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Everything The Darkness Eats
Eric LaRocca @hystericteeth
Horror
202 Pages
OUT TODAY (Happy PUB Day)

GR BLURB:
An insidious darkness threatens to devastate a rural New England village when occult forces are conjured and when bigotry is left unrestrained.

Proud new member of the Eric LaRocca fan club right here.

This is my first LaRocca and Holy👏 Shit👏 I was not disappointed.

This just had everything I wanted. Small Town, occult, supernatural, kinda cosmic horror at its best. I just can't get over this dang book. It's defenitly going to resonate with me for a while.

Creepy. Check. Unsettling. Check. Atmospheric. Check. Unexpected. Check. Dark AF. Check. Unexplainable. Check. Dual storylines.Check. How many times I said WTF. Too many times to count.

⚠️Content Warnings
Homophobia
Hate Crimes
Kidnapping
Murder
Animal Death

Thanks to NetGalley and Clash Books for an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.

*huffs and blows out air* Where do I start? Okay, the premise of this book is that the protagonist Ghost, a man with disabilities, encounters a strange, older gentleman who requests his help in order to complete a ritual. What Ghost doesn't know is that this kindly old man has been kidnapping people to help with said ritual.

Okay, so that being said, there are a LOT of problems with this novella (it's extremely short to be a novel, imo) that honestly should have been caught by a sensitivity reader or even the editor in the first go-round. Now, I am an honest horror fan. I love it. There's not too much that can be done in horror that can make me physically ill these days, especially body horror or bodily harm. However, there's horror/splatterpunk and whatever this is that LaRocca wrote. I wasn't a big fan of the gratuitous violence or the in-depth reporting of the rape, nor did I like the idea that the man that was assaulted found his assailant handsome, despite having just been beaten and stabbed by him as well. Also, the constant beating of gay men was not a good point for me.

I also saw a lot of ableism with the disabled girl and the promotion of the idea that her life would be better if she wasn't disabled. As someone who is physically disabled, I don't like the promotion of these types of ideas because it leads to some dark places. We are what we are, you know and we make do with what we have. I honestly think that could have been written a different way, sans ableism.

The writing could have also been much better, along with the pacing of the book. It feels like this book could have been fleshed out much further than it was, in addition to having it workshopped by other readers. I honestly can't recommend this book and would have preferred to not have read it myself. Shame, especially because LaRocca has been recommended to me by several book lovers.

This book was a little all over the place for me. It has lots of LaRocca’s classic themes, such as commentary on religion and LGBTQ+ rights. It had their usual gruelling elements. However, while I’ve been really invested in their short fiction, this one fell slightly flat for me as I didn’t feel connected to the characters. Instead of them being connected or the story being cyclical, this felt more like short stories or snippets of the characters’ loved being shoved between chapters, rather than interwoven. This made the book hard to get into, giving the chapters a bit more of a jagged feel. Overall, it was definitely classic LaRocca, just not their best!

Thank you to NetGalley and Clash books for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review. This one was just not for me and I wanted to like it so badly. I was anticipating this to be so good! This is my second go around with LaRocca's writing and I am sad to say this, but I am thoroughly unimpressed so far. I will be giving this author another shot as I still have not read THGWSWLS which is the one no one can stop talking about and I do have it on my shelf.
So why didn't I like this one? Well, the writing was very clunky in my opinion. This is an extremely short novel (could be considered a novella in my opinion) and the pacing was rocket speed. I think that did this book a disservice. I never got time to connect with the characters and truly care about their feelings or what they were going through. The entire book was written in a telling manner instead of showing emotions or expressing them via actions. I thought Ghost could've been a really cool character! But I never got the chance to truly know who he was or why he was exactly in his certain predicament regarding a fantastical character (trying to be vague to avoid spoilers).
I am okay with violence in books and I expected there to be violence in this book. I was not thrown off by the gratuitous violence in this book. I was thrown off by the complete lack of care or meaning behind it by the time I got to the end of the book. One part towards the end made my stomach completely turn to the point where I almost stopped reading. However, I thought surely the message of the book would come from this violence. But then something else happens that almost backtracks any message there could have been from it.
I was left feeling confused by the point of this book and not scared in any way possible. It grossed me out at one point which I know this author is known for, but other than that I was left with nothing to take away from the experience of reading this book. I wanted more spooks and more time to get to know and care for the characters. At the end of my reviews, I try and recommend the book to an audience but I am not even sure who I would recommend this book to.

LaRocca is a modern master genius of the horror form. Everything feels off, every word drips with something, and the terror lasts...if not forever than a time longer than I've been able to shake it off.

Horror as I’ve mentioned before is a genre seeking our emotional response to the tale being told. Horror is often thought as filled with monsters and all sorts of supernatural creatures. In some ways these can be comforting. The other disquieting type of horror can be what human beings are capable of. In some ways more terrifying as we will cross paths with other people as our lives continue. In Eric La Rocca’s disturbing and ambitious novella Everything The Darkness Eats we have a dual narrative trying to blend the two together and while I found this a tale hard to put down there are aspects I am not too sure quite gel together.

Ghost is a man in pain. A terrible accident three years has hurt his body and the aftermath left many mental scars too. He lives apart; hiding from debtors and tormented by a strange spirit only he sees. Each day is a struggle. Elsewhere in the small town of Henley’s Edge is being rocked a by number of strange disappearances and a mysterious seller of burial plots named Heart Crowley is wandering looking for new customers.

Elsewhere in the town Sergeant Nadeem Malik is concerned that his neighbourhood is not welcoming of their first married gay couple in the area. There is a growing escalation of abusive messages to him and his husband Brett that hints further danger is arising but even his employer thinks its his gestures of affection in public that are at fault. Much greater danger connects these characters and Ghost, Crowley and Malik will cross paths in unexpected ways.

Noe this is a novella with two sides of horror being linked by the idea that terrible things can just happen to people out of the blue through no real fault of their own. We have those who tread into Crowley’s supernatural games and malik falling victim to a neighbourhood’s dangerous homophobia. Both sides of the horror that I referred to and individually each strand is told very well and kept me involved but the ultimate fusion of the two tales unusually I think lessened their impact. This felt overall one time I needed a little more from both plots to really make the story work and for a change the novella form seemed not to aid the story.

La Rocca is a captivating writer capable of exploring the darker side of life and making us feel exposed in ways few horror writers can manage. In Ghost’s part of the story everything is strange and there is a feeling of suspense. Crowley is a classic adversary knows a lot of the supernatural and as we see with some of his earliest victims, he knows how to press a person’s buttons to get what he wants. Temptation is his game, and the question is how Ghost will be involved in things. This plotline impressively surprised me where it went and links the two plotlines. It’s a smart idea but does create a perhaps convenient way of wrapping things up very quickly. A satisfying supernatural adventure.

Malik’s side of the tale is the more complex. We feel his horror at finding his ideal home slowly plagued by acts of homophobia and this escalates and escalates. He is being penalised purely for being gay and even his boss thinks he is at fault – one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the story and highlighting the power of intolerance. We watch him lose control and things then go into a very dark place. We have very dark scenes of violence and rape that I think readers need to be aware of. We watch Malik being almost broken and seeing his eventual torturer almost as someone he must obey. These are dramatic and powerful scenes that very much sucked me into the tale but ultimately especially in how the tale ends I’m not sure they needed to be in the tale. Malik is ultimately just a convenient interruption to Crowley’s world that allows the finale to progress and for me the more I felt after reading my impression was that I’d read two very good horror tales but they actually when blended together lessened each other’s impact. Indeed, the rape scenes feel more there for taking the reader to a dark place more than enlighten the story. A bit more to malik’s life and perhaps a bit more for malik to do in the finale may have justified this character’s horrible nightmare journey into intolerance. The overall effect I think is lessened too much to make it fully work in a shorter fiction form and a bit more time developing this plotline before and after the graphic scenes may have worked better.

Is this a good horror story- definitely. It creates that feeling of dread and the story has plenty of surprises and neat character work but I think it slightly misses its target to wrap everything up effectively and make its points. Le Rocca is still though an author I’m intrigued by what they will do next. Worth a look.

There's something about small town horror that packs a punch, and Eric LaRocca's newest story will knock your lights out. Everything the Darkness Eats leans more towards mainstream horror than LaRocca's previous works, but with the same beautiful prose fans know and love. I felt like the plot and the characters were more thought out than his previous, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. The characters are compelling, and it is easy to get attached to them and care what happens to them. I loved that Eric put a magical spin on his usual examination of the darkness within humanity. I cannot wait for more full-length novels from LaRocca. This book is dark, just like the title suggests, so search up trigger warnings.

Thank you Netgalley, CLASH Books, and Eric LaRocca for the eARC.

Everything the Darkness Eats is out now.

Everything the Darkness Eats is an excellent book with loads of potential. This is the first LaRocca I've read and I can confidently say it won't be my last!

I struggled a bit with the length of the book - I was hoping for a bit more development and meat to the story, but I typically prefer longer novels so this is merely personal preference.

Supernatural elements, mysterious disappearances, small town struggles… the perfect components of a great horror novel. I just wanted more! In the best way possible. I loved the characters and wanted to know more about them, I loved the town and wish we'd gotten to know the residents more thoroughly. As someone who grew up in a small town, I appreciated the variance within these characters and the fact that LaRocca did not shy away from writing it all, the good, the bad and the ugly.

All in all, a good book and can't wait to experience more like it.

Thank you Netgalley and Clash books for a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

I had to stop reading after the gang rape, where the victim stops to think about how attractive one of the rapists is, gets stabbed and then somehow he survives and is made to forget everything. I’m not here for poorly handled rape plots thanks.

This was my first Eric LaRocca book. Unfortunately it did not leave a lasting impression. I am looking forward to reading other books by the author, I just think this book just wasn’t for me.

**Thank you to Netgalley and CLASH for allowing me to read this book. All thoughts are my honest opinions.**


I was so excited to read Eric LaRocca's debut novel after previously enjoying his short stories, and Everything the Darkness Eats exceeded my expectations! As with his short stories, Eric manages to say so much about the dark side of humanity, and religion, without overtly spelling it out. Everything the Darkness Eats follows two POVs, with them combining in a way I simply did not see coming. The trigger warnings are not to be taken lightly with Everything the Darkness Eats: Homophobia, Rape, Violence, Sexual Violence, Child death, Death, Excrement