In Eat the Ones You Love by Sara Maria Griffin, the tone is horrifying and absorbing, embracing a Little Shop of Horrors vibe but redefining the narrative to something much darker and much more toxic. From the very start, it is the voice of the characters that wraps around you and envelops you into the story, carrying you along as Shell discovers Neve’s secrets.
This is a story of desire and love but also about toxic relationships, the kind we know we should walk away from but still fling ourselves into because they feel so good at the time. The horror creeps up on you like an ex stalking you and never letting go. And just when you think the characters escape the manipulations of the plant, there are unexpected turns in the story. Add to that an unsettling ending and you will find yourself unable to tear yourself away from this story, especially the voices of the characters.
If you like creepy horror wrapped with desire and dreams, this one will drag you into it’s embrace. I loved the tone of the story and the way the plant plays a part in the narrative. The author also uses an interesting technique with emails to bring in a third protagonist which adds to the weight of the story. The narrative is dark, rich and intriguing and well worth the read.

True rating is more like a 3.5--this was really unique I felt! I liked the narrative choices and appreciated that it was on the shorter end of things, but I felt it got a little muddled towards the end of the story.

The characters and their motivations were interesting and I felt that the dying mall setting added a nice touch to the eeriness of the story.

This was cool!

This is certainly a case where my expectations of what this book would be were one thing, and the book itself was something completely different. This may be on me, but I feel like the synopsis made this sound like it was going to be much more horror than what I read. Don’t get me wrong - there is a fun story about a hungry plant and the florist he has a hold over in there. But I kind of expected some grisly scenes of the plant devouring people and didn’t really get that beyond passing mentions of missing people. So this disconnect in my expectations is why this book is getting the three star rating.

But I think there is still a lot to enjoy in this one. The characters are really quirky and interesting, and not just the two main characters of Neve and Shell, but the supporting cast is great and distinct as well. I really love what the author did here in creating a group of friends that support each other through their retail jobs in a dying mall where a lot of really weird stuff has occurred. While I wish we could have seen more of the weirdness firsthand, I appreciated the backstory. It was really wonderful to see Shell grow through her new job and new relationships as she is trying to figure out who she is and what she wants out of life in a stagnant economy that seems to have little job opportunities for young professionals (something I am sure many of us can relate to). Add in a dash of queer romance, and this one is a lot of fun on the character front.

I also really appreciated what the author was trying to convey in terms of relationships and the idea of possessing another person in order to totally control them. I think having the plant do this really shed a lot of light on controlling relationships which are also present in this novel and trying to create your partner into someone that may not be or want to be. The parts of this story that read like a possession story were my favorites, and I would have really loved more of that.

This was an odd book. Botany and horror are one of my favorite combinations, so I was surprised by how much I bounced off the prose in Eat the Ones You Love. At first, this hooked me, especially as we become acquainted with our protagonist, Shell, who is out of both a job and a fiance when she applies to work at a quaint flower shop. However, the first-person narration of what I can only assume is the sentient orchid that followed was awkward and felt like a very juvenile interpretation of malevolence. I found the ensuing chapters awkward, and maybe it's a testament to the author, in that the orchid's point of view made Shell sound so vapid and selfish, that I didn't really want to read any more about her.

This was a DNF at 24%. Maybe this is for someone who gets more joy out of reading about text messages, emojis and a down-on-her-luck girl desperate to re-invent herself with a new job. As it was, this just wasn't for me.

Queer, gothic Little Shop of Horrors set in Ireland. After breaking up with her fiancé and looses her job, Shell must move home and start over. While running errands, she discovers the most beautiful flower shop run by Neve, who just happens to be hiring. As Shell throws herself into reinvention and her new passion for flowers, her feelings for Neve grow, but Neve is already committed to Baby - a flesh-eating plant - that feeds on her. Mostly in third person omniscient from the POV of Baby with interludes from Neve's ex who knows something's a miss and is trying to intervene from across the country.

*note, I was lucky to get an ALC and switched to audio to finish this one*
Honestly, experiencing this on audiobook really improved my experience. The narrators are wonderful and I loved the accents. However...it still couldn't save how slow and meandering this plot was. While I can enjoy slow-paced books, the writing didn't earn that in my opinion. The themes were still compelling though, and I think the ideas were super intriguing!

Love love love the writing. The mall setting was so nostalgic and I loved the group of friends we were following. It was so interesting to read about friendships in this book because the characters are mostly in their 30s and they are so many relatable moments of comparing your life to others, feeling judge but also finding joy in the simplicity in some friendships. It's something we forget about in adulthood.

And of course, there's baby. A plant that is narrating the story who is very very hungry. I did enjoy how unique this horror element was and the gruesome scenes and the dark fauna imagery was fascinating.
However, I do wish this element was pushed a little further. The story felt a little slow in the middle and I think adding more horrific scenes would help with the flow of the story. I felt a tiny bit dissatisfied at the end.

First, this cover is 10/10 and I literally had no idea what this was about before reading it but I was getting it no matter what because of the cover.

That said, this was good. I was intrigued. It was fine. It was weird. But I expected it to be a lot weirder than it was.

I didn’t dislike it but I didn’t like it as much as much as I expected I would, and I love weird books (the weirder the better).

I loved the somewhat defunct mall setting and wish we got a little bit more of that but I still enjoyed that part of it.

I don’t even know how to describe what I didn’t love though. Something about Shell didn’t quite do it for me, I thought all of the characters were like that, not necessarily bad but just fine.

And I was left with questions (below).

VAGUE SPOILER BELOW BUT WONT RUIN THE STORY

what the heck was with the ring? Whose hair is that? Where did this ring come from? Why does it have power? And what about the orchid? Where did he come from? How did he get like this? How did neve become his.. caregiver? I don’t know!

Thank you, NetGalley! This gives off "Little Shop of Horrors" vibes, but not how I wanted? I don't think this story of genre was for me!

To call this a "sapphic Little Shop of Horrors" is a bit reductive, but it gets the main premise across. I love disaster queers and the two protagonists certainly fit that bill, bumbling through the plot and making consistently chaotic and poor choices. Shell's passive numbness throughout her long-term relationship and all aspects of that life that was chosen for her were painfully accurate and possibly the most horrifying part of the novel. I was a bit confused on what the author wanted our takeaway to be -- at a certain point, one of the protagonists seems to shift from anti-hero to villain and I'm not quite sure what changed to make that occur. Was Shell truly just unable to make a single decision for herself to the bitter end?

A Sapphic horror story set in a flower shop? Yes please and after seeing the stunning cover I couldn't resist picking this one up. Sadly though it was a little too out there for me and I couldn't make it to the end. Perhaps just not the book for the mood I was in at the time? I do hope to try to pick it up again at a later date though. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital and audio copy in exchange for my honest review!

Eat the Ones You Love
Author: Sarah Maria Griffin
🌶️ Rating: 🫑
You might need to pick this one up if you like plant/ eco horror, small town settings, creature feature vibes, dark comedic edginess, obsession and a very different POV

I’ll admit, I don’t know if it’s that I forgot, or I didn’t realize but I was pleasantly surprised to find that Eat the Ones You Love was actually from the POV of the plant and not from the surrounding characters. This unique POV gave it such a different feel than any other book I’ve read and I was intrigued by the concept. It’s a strange feeling to find oneself reading from the perspective of a plant and not a person, the same connection isn’t there that I would normally be able to get when reading a typical POV, but instead I found myself feeling more of a creepy sensation overwhelming me. The fact that this was a sentient plant, that was fully describing everything and essentially living it’s best life over here, made me feel a lot more like all the plants in my house might be watching me and suddenly the 32 plants surrounding me felt just a liiiiiiittle less safe. Someone check on me in a few days to make sure they haven’t taken over - thanks.

Michelle "Shell" has moved back to her parents' in the Dublin suburbs, having left her fiance and lost her job in the pandemic. Wandering the mostly abandoned mall of her childhood, she spies a sign that says "Help Needed" in a floral shop, where she meets Neve, the captivating woman who runs it. Neve hires Shell (whose background in graphic design isn't related, but at this point, even minimum wage is ok....) and invites her into the orbit of her life. What Shell doesn't know, and what Neve is barely controlling, is that the orchid that lives in the back of the shop is sentient: his name is Baby, and he has an insatiable hunger for everyone around him, Neve most especially.

I rarely pick up horror, but this weird sort of Little Shop of Horrors adaptation about love and identity and possession sounded super interesting. Baby is the primary narrator, and he knows and sees all, because his tendrils are everywhere. I found his POV clever and creepy, and kind of loved him, even as he infiltrates the minds of Neve's friends. Neve has to forbid him from eating her friends, and he only reluctantly agrees. The story verges on the absurd, in a speculative fiction sort of way; it never strays to the intense or scary, which I appreciated.

This book would be great for readers who enjoy a slow build and a unique narrator. It was an interesting concept.

This book is like if you combined little shop of horrors and Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval and the outcome is somthing I am absolutely obsessed with! The perspective switching and the slow prgression of the plot that builds up to a nail biting ending make this book a must read in my opinion.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for the eARC! This book was released in the US on April 22, 2025.

There’s something immediately intriguing about the idea of a haunted mall, a cursed orchid, and a queer florist at the center of it all—but Eat the Ones You Love didn’t bloom the way I hoped it would.

We meet Shell at her breaking point—jobless, newly single, and back in her childhood bedroom. She’s adrift in a recession-shadowed town, her once-clear life plan unraveled. Enter Neve, cryptic and alluring, offering Shell both a job and a slow-burning invitation into a much stranger world. The novel roots itself in a decaying mall and an otherworldly plant with sharp teeth beneath soft petals. I wanted to love this story about monstrous love, eco-horror, and emotional possession, but it never came together for me.

The horror here—an orchid that wants to devour what it cannot control—should have been devastating. And conceptually, it is. The orchid’s hunger for Neve and later Shell is a brilliant metaphor for the way femininity is so often shaped by being wanted, used, or held in place. But that thematic core gets tangled in too many underdeveloped plotlines. Shell’s former life, the younger coworker, and Jen’s late-stage POV all felt like detours rather than layers. And the writing never quite earned the slower pacing it leaned on. I didn’t like the characters, and worse, I didn’t understand them. The emotional stakes felt smudged rather than sharpened.

That said, I was compelled to finish the book. There’s something raw and unnerving about the way the novel speaks to loneliness and grief—the way monstrous love can sometimes feel safer than no love at all. The orchid is the most vivid character, full of cruelty and ache. It becomes a metaphor for all the ways we justify the things that consume us. I just wish the story had trusted its terror more, and trimmed the excess to let it thrive.

Content / Trigger Warnings: Blood (minor), Gore (minor), Murder (minor), Child Death (minor), Sexual Content (minor), Alcohol (minor).

Looooved this funky weird horror book! Horror involving plants or other nature is one of my soft spots, and j especially enjoyed that much of the story was told from the POV of Baby, a plant.

Unfortunately, I had to DNF Eat the Ones You Love at around the 25% mark—not because the concept wasn’t compelling, but because I personally struggled to connect with the writing style.

This twisted tale of workplace love affairs and carnivorous plants definitely stands out for originality. My main challenge was distinguishing between the third-person narration and Baby’s perspective. The shifts in tone and point of view often felt jarring, and I found myself re-reading passages to figure out who or what was speaking. That disrupted the immersion for me and made it difficult to settle into the story, which is why I ultimately put it down.

That said, I think this is more of a “me” issue than a critique of the book as a whole. Readers who enjoy experimental narratives, horror with a touch of romance, and offbeat storytelling might find this a haunting and wholly original read.

Eat the Ones You Love is wholly unique. Narrated by a sentient orchid that has taken root in the crumbling confines of a nearly decrepit strip mall on the brink of closure, it has been tended and loved by Neve, who happens to own a flower shop there. It pushes and pulls at relationships, making itself known only when and to whom it wants, orchestrating relationships as Shell, lonely and lost after losing her long-term boyfriend and job, becomes intrigued by aloof Neve.

At its surface, this is a strange tale about workplace romance, but if you dust it off it is so much more than that. Obsession and love, the lengths we go to to be truly seen by another, how much it means to belong, are just among a few of the overarching themes. I loved this wicked tale!

I love it when a book has an unconventional narrator and I was here for the omniscient evil plant (named Baby) here. The build up was a bit slow but after the halfway point the creepiness really picked up in this one. It’s a unique take on obsession, with some dark humor and some drama sprinkled in. I also enjoyed the dying mall setting and commentary along with the LGBTQ rep.