"Ghost figured that the technician knew nothing about invisibility, knew nothing about the unbearable ordeal of being left behind by others or deserted because grief is somehow infectious"


Story/Plot: 3/5
The prologue gipped me right away, however after about 100 pages, I realized that while enjoyable, the plot did leave me wanting something more. There are two stories being shared side by side. The first is of Ghost, who, having lost his family years before is just trying to survive day to day. The second story surrounds Malik and his husband Brett as they deal with malicious neighbors trying to forcefully remove them from the community, simply because they are gay.

The one thing tying these two together is a string of disappearances in town, being conducted by Heart Crowley, the most interesting character in my opinion. I loved the occult nature of the horror, and wanted even more of Crowley and his ambitions.

Both Ghost and Malik get wrapped up in the odd occurrence created by Crowley, and not in ways you'd ever expect. While Ghosts involvement is apparent by about the halfway point, Malik's is not. As a cop he is trying to find the missing people, but that feels like a footnote to his life, as it unravels. I spent 90% of the book confused as to why we followed Malik's view point at all, as it pertains to the overall plot.


Characters: 4/5
Having read other works from LaRocca before, I know that characters are where he excels. Specifically creating haunted characters with deep complex pasts, traumas, and realistic but strange coping mechanisms. As a character reader I love reading these fascinating portrayals of wounded humans trying to obtain their deepest darkest desires. In this novel however, I almost wanted more time with the characters and I wanted some of them to interact more than they did, to create a bigger impact on the ending.

Of all the characters my two favorites were Ghost and Crowley. Ghost, for the somber way his grief and invisibility is portrayed. And Crowley for the occult aspirations he pursues.


Writing:4/5
Eric LaRoccas writing is beautiful, gripping and haunting. He manages to paint vivid pictures at times, and scenes that remain in your memory for a long time. His prose is not overly complex, and easy to read.


Other:
People not familiar with LaRoccas other works, and who are not familiar with the genre of splatterpunk might not fully understand the horror in this book, which relies mainly on shock factor and gore. This is honestly one of his tamer works, but does lack the atmosphere that some horror books build up, because it is still within the realm of splatterpunk to some extent. This book, in the same vein as Lovecraft, does not explain the intricacies of the horror elements. You are left with many unanswered questions, and for me, it left me wanting more.



Final Verdict: 3.75/5 ( rounded to 4)
I will continue to devour Eric Larocca's novels for years to come. His characters are unlike any other and he does not shy away from the dark ugly truths we sometimes lie to ourselves about until they manifest in ugly ways.
This book was a fascinating ride, but left me wanting more answers and a deeper exploration into the relationships between the characters.


Thank you to Eric LaRocca, CLASH books, and NetGalley for this ARC copy of Everything the Darkness Eats!

I like the idea behind this book: dark magic and disappearances in what appears to be a perfect small town. I enjoyed the mystery behind it, but it was a bit slow and disjointed. The ending wasn’t much of a surprise. I was a bit disappointed with this one.

This novella reminded me of the best of the genre: subtle nods to Stephen King and Clive Barker. Overall, though, I found myself wondering why? I couldn’t seem to comprehend the fundamental reason for the plot or story. Eric LaRocca is a master of horror, but this was my least favorite of his so far.

*CWs at the end

“After all, her world was darkness, and that’s often where the monsters feel most at home.”

Thank you to NetGallery and publishers for providing me with an ARC!

To be honest, I feel like there is not enough time in the world to talk about my thoughts on this book.

I'll begin with the most glaring problem: many people do not and will not like the purple prose. I am not one to shy away from excessive analogies and wordy paragraphs (obviously), but I will agree that, in this instance, the writing was try hard. I counted eight “as if” statements in the span of two pages (pages 31-32, for reference). At some point, I feel that the author is just going for denseness for the sake of denseness. Many of the similes are, well:

“Then cringed as if ashamed of such shamelessness.”
“Gemma followed him without comment like a dutiful servant, or a zombified housemaid secured in invisible bondage.”
“. . . a deep crater where little planets had been collected in the world behind her eyes.”

The pacing was incredibly inconsistent. There are five parts in total to this book. The first two parts were relatively slow, but parts 3-5 took off so fast it felt like I was in the passenger seat of a 16-year-old's first car. I also noticed that parts 3-5 seemed to lack the polishing that the first two parts possessed. As I got further and further into the book, the more errors there were: spelling and grammatical errors, sentences that seemed incomplete, and what appears to be an entire scene missing in Chapter 13. I hope the editor gives it another pass before publishing it, because the quality difference is conspicuous.

We have two main POVs, as the summary suggests, with a scattering of supporting character's POVs throughout. It was pretty easy to keep track of the storylines, as they follow very different plots that only really intertwine in the last chapter. Frankly, I am of the opinion that the two storylines were excessive. It was like I was reading two completely different books most of the time. I think that the author was going for a sort of matryoshka doll effect, a religious parable nestled within a more realistic story, but it fell flat for me.

Our main characters are okay. Ghost is going to be hit-and-miss with people. If you cannot stand annoying, angsty characters, you will not enjoy this book. Now, to be clear: I recognize that a protagonist is not necessarily supposed to be likeable, and that that does not reflect on the author’s character! What I am saying is that if are one of these people that wanted to throw Catcher in the Rye out the nearest window, turn away, because Ghost is infuriatingly whiny at times. Malik was alright, but I feel that he and his husband didn't belong in the narrative. Their story would have been better off told through a separate piece, which I will elaborate on later.

As for the story/plot: it's odd, because this is the second LaRocca book I have read, and just like with the first one, I cannot decide what I'm feeling. At the moment, I know it's confusion. I feel like I'm missing something, and not necessarily due to a lack of context on LaRocca's part. The symbolism could be very heavy-handed at times, probably because if it wasn't, every reader would be uncertain about what the book was even about. I think that there is more to it than I'm seeing and understanding, and I am hoping that somebody with a better education in classic art and history can explain it to me. On a surface level, the story is disjointed and perplexing. Nothing seems to line up, and everything feels senseless. There was no point to Malik's story, besides serving as a Chekhov's gun at the very end. There was one chapter, Chapter 20, that was so utterly pointless that I have to wonder why it was included.

Thematically, this novel deals with grief, love, revenge, homophobia, and religion. Malik and Brett's story in particular gets very heavy, so please look at the content warnings if you are sensitive to certain topics. I know that their part is going to be the most controversial thing about this book by far. Personally, I actually think that their story was (for the most part) well-crafted and very relevant to our current political climate, particularly when it comes to conservative small towns, "justifiable" violence, and the conflation of grooming with the LGBTQ+ community. The scenes of hate crime were extremely harsh and difficult to read, but this is the unfortunate lived experience of many queer people. I know this personally, and I imagine the author, as a gay man, does as well. For many right now in America, our lives are not all hunky-dory happy gay times, and I think LaRocca wanted to talk about that. There is nothing inherently wrong with writing about homophobia, or homophobic violence, or the many terrible things that come with that, especially when it comes down to a gay author in a gay relationship sharing his perspective. That said, the ending completely erased the purpose of their story. I hate to say this, but nothing they went through mattered at the end, and that made the very violent scenes seem pointless. They would have been better off with their own novella, preferably with an ending that didn't conveniently cut the ties for them.

Another 2 stars for LaRocca. I can't believe I'm saying this, but the suggestion of a larger word count was a bad idea. One of these days, I am praying he is going to blow me out of the water with a good book. Fingers crossed on They Were Here Before Us.

CWs:<spoiler>Death of an unborn child, spousal death, car crash, sacrilege, hate crimes, slurs, kidnapping, CSA, rape, gang-rape, AIDs</spoiler>

This book had excellent imagery and some interesting character premises, but the action was too divided amongst various characters to make sense to me. The pacing was also off; there was too much build up and then very little resolution.

This is my third strike for LaRocca's work, and this time I'm truly throwing in the towel. I thought maybe a full-length work might give him time to develop some of the characters and ideas more than in his short fiction but that was not the case. I didn't end up finishing this one because it was just too dull and seemed like it was trying to do something that never manifested.

This was cute and all, but 𝘚𝘶𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘢 did it better.

Upon finishing, I wondered if this was for YA because I felt the language was meant for a teenager. I was surprised to find it's for adults, unless LaRocca writes for adults who still shop at Hot Topic. Or, lord have mercy, Spencer's.

In a scene in which the best horror aspects occur, LaRocca writes:

"He thought of such things as he closed his palm tightly and squished the life out of the tiny black slug until it was smeared along the palm of his hand like toothpaste."

Excuse me, toothpaste? How toothpaste as a tonal simile works within a scene where the Gothic and gore occur astounds me. Either LaRocca needs to leave the immaturity of the overuse of similes much like these that overcrowd this work without any real literary merit or they go back to at least CW200 for prose/stylist classes.

Near the end, LaRocca explores themes of queer identity and religion, but shallowly does so by victimizing the queer body through senseless violence and repetitive rhetorical questions that scrape the surface of the diction meaning of 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘦. The violence then comes off as a cheap thrill that make this subpar, a B-horror read.

Additional star for the fun of the story, though there really isn't much of it in this dull queer Gothic horror.

In 2018, a movie called "Spiral" came out with a very similar premise to "Everything the Darkness Eats:" a gay couple (one of them even named Malik) moves to a small town, and is targeted by their homophobic neighbours, as the supernatural underbelly of their surroundings slowly reveals itself. That movie didn't work for me in much the same way that "Everything The Darkness Eats" didn't: it was in such a rush to get to its conclusion, it neglected the journey. The publisher bills this as the first full-length novel from LaRocca, but honestly, it barely fits that bill: my ARC was 160 pages, and Goodreads tells me that the print copy is 202 pages. That's simply not enough time or space to properly develop the characters or the storylines, especially when the book has two stories running parallel. To get around this, LaRocca spends a lot of time simply telling us what the characters are thinking ("Ghost felt sad," "Malik felt angry,") and then piling some similies on top to garnish it. It's clunky, and it doesn't work. This book feels - to be blunt - like a rush job, and that might be the worst possible outcome in a genre that relies so much on a slow-burn build of tension. Once we hit the past fifty or so pages, the gore and violence starts piling up, but it doesn't really do anything to make up for the previous 3/4ths of the book or inspire a sense of lingering horror. It just feels like a last, desperate attempt to leave an impression.

I went into this book expecting a very different kind of horror than I got out of it...
This is a quick single-sitting type read (around 150-ish pages) but the actual story could have been less than 30 pages if there weren't constant metaphors sprinkled every other line. This will bother many people, but I actually enjoyed the author's tyle of writing with this book. I feel like the drawn out and detailed thoughts were necessary for the character building as they have very immense internal struggles.

On to the actual story....

Starting with characters, there are three main people, all queer men, all with different backgrounds and lives. Malik is an officer who faces a lot of homophobia, including a gang-rape. Many people have issue with this inclusion in the book, I do not. I understand what the author is portraying with the rampant homophobia and hints of religious trauma, the horror here is less about actual supernatural entities and more about the real daily realities for queer folk. I don't have enough space in the world to really go into the depth of that alone, but it is the only actual horror I got from this book.

Crowley is another main character, and aside from selling funeral plots and abducting people with his very obvious car and getting away with it- he has powers that are reminiscent of a demon. This is just about the only drop of creepy horror in the entire book, and it wasn't enough to sustain the story. The character building with Crowley is incredibly minimal compared to our other mains. How on earth does the book not include Malik deeply investigating the missing people? This would have tied the story together better than the strange plot line that occurred instead.

Ghost... I feel like he's the biggest character and had the most potential, but fell SO SO short. Ghost was the driver in the accident that killed his wife and unborn baby. He carries this guilt deeply. He meets a young blind girl named Piper and becomes fixated on her. I wanted to love Ghost but became very annoyed when his lovely thought prose disappeared instantly when he met Piper. The writing I enjoyed at the beginning, I realized only happened when he was in thought. He had no idea how to conversate and carry himself around people, and it just became too unrealistic, too fast.

Anyway, Crowley- not a great guy, steals people, nobody notices him rolling around in his car abducting people apparently. Malik- obviously too focused on his own issues to be a cop when it pertains to other crimes other than homophobia. Ghost, this guy has some serious trauma and it spills out everywhere.

None of these stories intersected in a way that didn't feel forced, the ending was predictable, and there were WAY too many oversights regarding the characters and their behavior,
and the lack of anyone using common sense.
Some of those that come to mind:
A man walks up to my child in a hospital and tries to talk to her a bit too strangely and I'm going to walk away, not force her to talk and give the man my number. Also no child this age goes off alone without their parent, especially when they can't see. It's as if no one that has ever had a child at a hospital, doctor office, or literally anywhere read over this before it went straight to publishing. A child missing in a very obvious way? Check security footage, call police if something seems off about people that climb in your taxi. DON'T GO IN THE BASEMENT OF THE MAN THAT SELLS FUNERAL PLOTS.

It was as if random ideas were very messily thrown together to create this book. I forced myself to keep reading to see it through, but lost the actual desire to early on. I just think this one was a miss, and very unlike the author's other popular titles which feel much different.

The author has so much potential for beautifully horrific stories, the prose and bits of darkness are there. I did really like the not-so-subtle religious and queer trauma. As a queer atheist person myself, I appreciate the subliminal messages conveyed throughout. We need the variance in characters as well, queer villains included. I think the inclusion of disabled characters was a nice change as well, but I think there needs to be quite a bit of work on how to portray these characters more accurately. Piper's blindness almost felt like an afterthought and maybe a bit stereotypical.

Thanks to NetGalley and the author for allowing me to read and review this!

after loving THGWSWLS, i am incredibly disappointed to say that i hated this book…

larocca is an author who is incredibly gifted in writing prose, but i think this book serves as an example that there has to be so much more than for a novel to be successful.

to put it simply i think this book was boring and had nothing to say. none of the things that happened meant anything at all, which makes me wonder why i even read it in the first place. for this being a horror novel, i don’t believe there was nearly any horror elements to actually create intrigue. the events that were included in the end were horribly unnecessary and in my opinion are just not representative of the genre. they were terrible for the sake of being terrible. it really left a bad taste in my mouth the way that these scenes were written. especially because i’ve always praised larocca of writing queer horror that doesn’t use homophobia as it’s vehicle.

outside of my suffering from boredom and the ending chapters of this story, i just didn’t like the way this story was set up. the different povs did very little for the story at all. including more than one pov took away from the most interesting character in the book. i don’t think the author really explored a lot of the potential in ghost. he has experienced so much grief and had such a cool supernatural element in the story that went undeveloped.

i can say with 100% certainty i wouldn’t have made it past part 2 if i didn’t have to review this arc. i wish i wouldn’t have read this book and in my mind (although finishing it) it feels like a dnf.

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to review this ARC copy.

I have never been so excited to be approved for an ARC before! Eric LaRocca quickly became one of my favourite authors last year when I was introduced to "Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes". I nominated that one as my favourite release of the year at my library, so you could say that my expectations for follow up books were high.

AND BOY WERE THEY MET.

Everything The Darkness Eats was everything I wanted and more. Perfectly macabre and yet I loved the ethereal mysticism that was in play as well. I will forever be in awe of the way LaRocca can describe simple everyday things in a manner that leaves you feeling cracked open and raw.

Needless to say, I loved it. I can now cancel my hold request at my library and send it straight to my staff picks instead.

This is my first Eric LaRocca book and I will say, I was so confused at the beginning. It felt like there were random words put together to create a story that I just couldn't follow. The idea of the book was incredible, it's the reason I applied for it. But overall, this book wasn't for me.

eric larocca's "everything the darkness eats" takes you through a horrific tale with interwoven perspectives that all reside in a small connecticut after a series of individuals mysteriously disappear. if you're wanting to get into larocca's works but don't want to start with anything super intense, i would dip my toe into ETDE. the first larocca book i read was "things have gotten worse since we last spoke", which you can imagine was a jarring start to my extreme horror journey lol!! most certainly check trigger warnings before reading–it does tackle some heavy and potentially upsetting content. i will provide a list of ones i caught below.

the only portion of the book i didn't like was ghost very frequently voicing his hatred for God. i understand it is relevant to the theme of the book and his character though. all in all, "everything the darkness eats" is a riveting and entertaining read that will keep you guessing throughout every chapter.

trigger warnings:
- homophobia
- hate crimes revolting homosexuality
- death of a spouse
- suicidal ideation
- blasphemy

I was a fan on the author's previous work which was "things have gotten worse since we last spoke" so I thought I'd enjoy this as well but this was not my cup of tea.
It has a lot of graphic details and needs a lot of trigger warnings before going into it. I don't care to read about people torturing people. It's terrible

Yet another dark and bizarre story by one of my favourite new-ish authors. This horror novella reads like a full length novel, with tones of fantasy and magical realism. While not my favourite by LaRocca, I enjoyed the entwined stories and shocking conclusion and I absolutely love these character builds. There are many layers to this one and in my opinion it would make a fantastic bookclub or group readalong read.

Instagram post link to come

There has been considerable buzz around Eric LaRocca in the horror community over the last couple of years, publishing his own collection and featured in other anthologies, several novellas including the widely discussed Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and the novel You’ve Lost Alot of Blood. LaRocca has also been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award and is a winner of the Splatterpunk Award for Things Have Gotten Worse.

Although I have read a lot about LaRocca Everything the Darkness Eats was my first foray into his fiction and although I had issues with the book was still impressed enough to download You’ve Lost Alot of Blood for further investigation. The action takes place in the rural New England small town of Henley’s Edge where there are three intertwined stories, however, the lack of connection one of the story has to the other two was a particular weakness of the story. Overall, not enough happened and at around 200 pages it either needed to be fleshed out into a longer novel or tightened and shortened into a novella. Ultimately this felt like a novella being stretched out and the shorter option might have been a better fit.

The first plotline concerns Sergeant Nadeem Malik who, with his husband Brett, is relatively new to the town and early in proceedings it becomes clear that they have failed to make friends, barely know their neighbours, and it is probably because they are gay. A hate crime soon follows and events quickly spiral out of control as their loving relationship is ripped apart by a current of unbridled hatred which simmers beneath the guise of the town’s quiet veneer. Although this was an interesting enough plot its connection to the wider story arcs amounted to almost zero and had nothing to do with the wider supernatural direction the plot takes. It also leads to a very graphic and elongated rape scene, which I would question the overall value of featuring. If this plotline contributes next to nothing to the supernatural theme what was the point of it beyond using a sledgehammer approach to show that gay couples are victims or homophobia still exists?

Nadeem Malik might be a policeman but he spends very little time investigating the mysterious crime which acts as the backdrop to Everything the Darkness Eats involving the strange disappearance of random elderly people, one of which is covered in the early stages of the book. It is not exactly a mystery novel and the reader finds out too early what is going on and might expect Sergeant Malik to start sniffing around the case, but that never happens and the mystery or police investigation angle is a surprising dead end.

Heart Crowley introduces the supernatural part of the story and is clearly up to no good as he takes a smitten spinster for a drive in his opening scene. With a strong Stephen King’s Needful Things vibe I found the direction of this story to be catchy but ultimately it lacked explanation and ‘Crowley’ is such a cliched name to give a villain one would expect to find it in Scoobie Doo rather than a modern horror novel. Clowley also lacks the character definition which is given to Malik and one could not help wonder why the locals had not clocked his distinctive car cruising their streets.

The third plotline involves a down-on-his-luck guy called Ghost who is struggling to recover from the tragic loss of a loved and crosses path with Crowley. Early in proceedings Ghost meets Gemma and her blind daughter Piper and after a single meeting seems to develop an infatuation over her. I did not find this particularly believable, there was an especially dumb kidnapping scene, and it came across as a clunky way of bringing together two of the plotlines.

Eric LaRocca is undoubtedly telling us that darkness lurks in small towns and that bigotry and discrimination of queer people still exists. Yes, okay. But to produce a horror novel of substance more is required than three loosely connected plots. Once everything connects together Everything the Darkness Eats did not add up to much and although it was an easy enough read it lacked the edge to really grab me.

Before this review, I want to share the good things about this book!:
- good general premise
- the two characters’ separate povs were well done
- the idea of the wraith was GREAT
———————————————

I read Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke almost a year ago, and I didn’t care for it at all, even though everyone loved it. After recognizing the name on Netgalley, I decided to read this book to try one of LaRocca’s books again. I didn’t enjoy this one either.

This book feels like a rough draft. Every other sentence is a metaphor or a simile. This is not an exaggeration, i counted about five similes on one page. On top of this, there were several points in the story where I was just like… This doesn’t make any sense.

There is a moment where Ghost sees a sad child with her mother at a hospital, and he goes up to the child and asks her for her name, pretending he already knows her and was “looking everywhere” for her. The girl acts scared and doesn’t give him her name. He sounds like a kidnapper! This situation screams kidnapper! But the mother encourages the little girl to give her name, and then gives Ghost her phone number!

A very frustrating part of this book is just how much the police cannot do their job. There’s several disappearances happening under the same circumstances, and they’re like “hmmm… it might be connected”. But there’s no evidence they’re trying that hard to find the killer, who is driving around in a big black car, openly inviting people into the car, and then taking them to the big scary mansion in town. There’s also apparently a group of people you can just hire to kill hanging out at a bar and telling anyone who asks exactly who they are. When Ghost kidnaps Piper using a TAXI, the taxi driver says nothing, the police don’t catch the taxi pulling up to the store after the kidnapping, how is Ghost not caught???

Some more personal qualms:
- the way disability is written about in this book. Piper is blind, there are multiple descriptions of her relating to this that just absolutely rubbed me the wrong way.
- That rape scene was unnecessary. And so was then trying to make one of the rapists seem like a sympathetic character for a split second. There was no reason to give that character any backstory, it just seemed thrown in.
- Back to the repetition, there’s a lot of “as if”, “like”, and “seemed”. Ghost would not shut up about being “invisible”. But there were also way too many mentions of urine and feces, especially mentions of someone urinating. I swear it was mentioned something like five times in the last half of the book for seemingly no reason.
- The homophobia seemed out of place and poorly written. I don’t know how else to describe it, but it felt like it was really trying to make a point, and failing.

Final thoughts:
The writing style needs editing, and the story needs editing. This story and the writing style are trying really hard to be something amazing, but it’s falling flat, and the characters fell flat too.


Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher

I would like to thank CLASH Books for sending me an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Content Warnings: homophobia, graphic violence, rape, hate crimes, coercion, pedophilia, and kidnapping

I have been eagerly awaiting Eric LaRocca's DEBUT NOVEL since it was announced. I have been a huge fan of Eric LaRocca since Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, and my love for their work has only grown with each additional story I've read from them. I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to read We Can Never Leave This Place, They Were Here Before Us, and their contribution to The Book of Queer Saints prior to their releases; I was even more excited to have the opportunity to read Everything the Darkness Eats early as well... especially because the edition of the ARC that I was sent by CLASH Books had the original cover for the novel. Needless to say, I had high expectations for this novel, and it did NOT disappoint.

I want to start by explaining to you how much I love LaRocca's writing. I've said this many times before, but their writing makes me feel like I've never known "reading for pleasure" until reading their works. They, so effortlessly, string together words so that the story becomes a buffet of delicacies for the reader to savor before consuming. I am asked to read every line with intention, and I feel that I've read very few books that request that level of concentration from me, as the reader. Their writing is beautifully hypnotic, and it draws you deeper and deeper into the depths of the darkness after which the novel is titled.

In this novel, we follow the perspectives of three queer men and their experiences in the town of Henley's Edge: Crowley, Ghost, and Malik. Each of these three men are plagued by the darkness at the center of their town; facing their own demons, their paths cross in the most unexpected ways. LaRocca doesn't shy away from the complexities of their characters; the characters within this novel are heavily flawed in their own ways, but we, as the reader, find compassion for most of them. These aren't your stereotypical, cookie-cutter queer men... they are real, and they deal with REAL issues facing the queer community, disabled community, and those with religious trauma.

The conversations, both explicit AND implicit, about religious trauma were mesmerizing, and I was so ecstatic to see it represented in such a manner because it resonated with me so deeply. As someone who grew up in the church with an extremely religious mother, a lot of the conversations presented within this book were ones that I've had internally for decades now, and it was incredible to see it written in such a beautifully horrific way within these pages. This novel made me realize my love for horror stories that center the trauma that many experience at the hands of organized religion.

LaRocca also discusses the everyday fears of being a queer person in a queer relationship. Even within a happy, loving relationship comes the fear of being perceived by the wrong person and feeling like the cause of your partner's pain: "... a common display of affection for some, and yet a vile monstrosity when the hands belonged to two men. They pulled apart, eyes lowering as if embarrassed, as if suddenly remembering they should be ashamed" [pp. 55]. There were so many scenes in this novel that were horrifying and gut-wrenching for me as a queer man because they were rooted in what queer people face for just existing. This was another aspect of the novel that made me feel seen and understood.

There's not much more to say about this novel without getting into spoilers (which I plan to do in the next section of my review); therefore, if you enjoy queer horror, religious themes, graphic violence, flawed characters, and unique speculative elements, then I believe you will enjoy Eric Larocca's debut novel, Everything the Darkness Eats.

Once you read the novel, you should come back to this review to read my spoiler-filled thoughts, and to check out the spreadsheet I created for my annotations. I plan to add to this with every re-read of this book that I do, so I figured that it may be fun to share things that I found important enough to mark throughout the story: the recurring floral motif (19+), the religious themes (16+), the all-too-real queer experiences (10+), my conspiracies while reading (4+), and SO MUCH MORE! Click the following link to see for yourself, but BE WARNED... here there be SPOILERS: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ne2JdUQyIjipBr9TKf-_vXxUsSSFjz6nOLzp7hC2gxo/edit?usp=sharing

SPOILER THOUGHTS:

Okay, now that it's just us squirrel friends... let's talk SPOILERS!

I'm going to refrain from discussing specific plot points here; however, if you want to discuss those with me, feel free to DM me here or on my instagram (@bookishlybrandon) to discuss! I want to spend this time to discuss the overall themes of this novel. To me, it was a commentary on God and humanity. LaRocca seemed to be making the argument that humans hold the true power, and God is merely a conduit for human action or inaction. In this novel, the God present within its pages is only capable of doing what is willed to be done by the humans with which it interacts. For example, Crowley's interaction with this God caused pain and destruction with his ideals that, quite literally, matched up with the rites and ceremonies present within many a Christian sect:

- "Ghost winced, the old man's blood dripping on his forehead. It wasn't long before Ghost's face was spattered with red." (Communion?) [pp. 180]
- "Mr. Crowley flashed a grin at him. Then, with a flick of his wrist, the old man commanded the beads of blood smeared along Ghost's forehead to form the shape of a small cross. When he was finished and satisfied with his work, Mr. Crowley completed the prayer in Latin." (Ash Wednesday or an anointing of oil?) [pp. 182]
- "'You'll have to go under and hold your breath while I recite the prayer,' Mr. Crowley explained. 'It's imperative you stay under until I'm finished.'" (Baptism?) [pp. 194]
- "'If this is going to work, I need you to offer me the very last of your resistance, dear boy,' Mr. Crowley demanded. 'I know you've been hiding it from me.'" (Total submission paired with a confession-- similar to the act of "being saved")[pp. 208]

For Crowley it was: religiosity, priesthood, ceremonies, taking advantage, manipulation, brainwashing, and the want for power. His queerness doesn't relieve him of his villainy... and I'm glad that LaRocca went with that approach to show the full range of the spectrum for queer characters. Crowley sought power, and he was willing to use whatever he could, paired with the conduit (God), to get the power he craved.

Aversely, for Ghost (a queer, disabled man with an albatross of sorts around his neck (which we all know becomes important at the end of the novel)) it was: empathy, love, and the erasure of trauma rather than the feeling of it for the rest of their lives. Ghost has more love for the other queer men in this story than the God that created them because of his wish for the erasure of Malik's memories of his gang-rape and torture. God only does that THROUGH GHOST'S ACTION... without Ghost providing the wish, the God would have kept things the way they were. Not only that, but Ghost didn't even want recognition for his "good deed" toward Malik. God seeks to be praised for all of eternity and literally asks for "all the glory" from his creations, but Ghost sees that it isn't necessary. He can live his life knowing that he helped other people without feeling that THEY needed to know that he helped them.

It wasn't until writing this review, and referencing Ghost's "wraith" as an albatross, that I started to speculate about its potential meaning a bit more. I literally wrote on the last page of the book, "is it representative of intuition?" We saw that Piper, too, had a wraith around her neck; because of this, I was left wondering what the wraith represented. I think it may, like the albatross from Susan Hill's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," represent the burden of guilt and regret.

Ghost carries the burden of the death of Hailey, his partner, and their unborn child: "It was his fault she was there, after all. It was all his fault" [pp.49]. Ghost was driving in a storm, Hailey had asked him to pull over, but he insisted he could keep driving through the storm. One distracted glance at Hailey later, and headlights were pointed right at him. He swerved to miss it and ran into an oak tree that crushed the car and his partner. Because of the guilt that Ghost harbors for the death of his partner, he wants to prevent anyone else from experiencing the pain and heartbreak he's experienced.

This wraith of guilt also destroys Crowley when he comes into contact with it because Crowley doesn't seem to have an ounce of guilt for the pain and destruction he's caused; when confronted with it, it becomes to much for him to bear, and he perishes.

As for Piper, we're never explicitly given a reason for a feeling of guilt she may have around her neck in the form of her wraith; however, I think that it isn't difficult to relay it back to her blindness and the fear she has of burdening her mother, Gemma. We never see Gemma express this sentiment to Piper; however, the fact that Gemma was willing to follow Crowley for the opportunity of Gemma's blindness to be "cured" could be argued that it may have been because of the increased difficulty of raising a blind child. Again, this could have been exacerbated by Piper and Gemma's family members who cared for Piper while Gemma was missing. Expressing their hopes for their daughter being alive through some excuses that may have been reasons why Gemma would've just left Piper without warning. One of those reasons could've been, again, the added stress that Gemma faced as the parent of a blind child. Again, most of this is based around assumptions, but it could be argued nonetheless. I think this understanding of the wraiths makes more sense than any of the others I've thought up so far.

I look forward to rereading this novel someday and picking up on things I may have missed during my first read; however, I know that this book will be one that I think about LONG after finishing it (it's already been several weeks since I finished it, and I'm STILL thinking about it daily). I'd love to hear what you all thought of it as well, so feel free to let me know in the comments!

A short and potent book that is as difficult to explain as it was (at times) to read. I do mean that in a complimentary way. It was unflinching, brutal, and intense, but it discussed elements of the human experience (such as the desire to punch G_d in the face) that I've never seen explored on the page so explicitly. I do wish I had had a content warning for sexual assault and homophobia before reading, but it would not have stopped me from reading this book, so we persevere. It was wonderful to see disability portrayed in a non-horrific light in a horror novel. It was also wonderful to see an explicitly nonbinary side character, and refreshing to see queer people who were portrayed as, well, people - without having to be spokespeople for their entire community. That said, this is not a book I would recommend to just anyone. Only my nearest and dearest sickos.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

I think LaRocca's strength lies in short stories, the narrative struggled in this. A lot of it felt gratuitous, suffering for the sake of suffering. Not my favorite of his but still, an interesting premise that could have been explored further.