If you liked Wilder Girls or What Moves the Dead you might enjoy this twisted tale.

The town and murky unsettling water is the main character. The setting is alive and manipulating our characters. Naturalistic body horror. A town with lots of backstory.

The setting is the star of the book. The characters were a little flat for me. The circumstances around the characters peaked my interest

Bellworth is an unchanging place--wet, muddy, sunken, and grey--except for the floods and the creek, which bring unknown truths and unsolved mysteries. This book starts as a cacophony of stories, sounds, adjectives, phrases that describe everything and nothing all at once. Just like walking through a muddy creek, you sink into this book immediately and quickly, however whether that is because of the curious writing style or the curious characters, that is subjective.

The plot of this book runs thin at first but picks up around the halfway mark as it hits full speed and maintains pace to the end, while our main character Charlie flounders in his pacing here and there--only kept afloat by others who really do more than their share of work to keep this story going. The imagery evoked by the author through their unique writing style is often beautiful even in it's own grotesque way. The body horror images that are evoked through vivid (well sometimes muddy) phrasing really brings to life the characters.

Reading this was an experience for certain, as surely enough I felt as if I was putting together a big puzzle, but someone was standing at the table holding all the pieces back, only giving me one random piece at a time to put where I could best guess it went. By the end, I would hope to have enough pieces to put everything where it goes, however it felt like there were never enough pieces to begin with, and while the big picture could be seen with all the gaps, the gaps felt like large chunks of missing information that would have really brought everything together.

I think, depending on the age of a reading group/book club (likely teens to 40ish group--a large variety of ages for sure), this would be a wonderful pick for a sweaty summer/early fall (before the cool comes) choice where a group could really pick apart every single piece of this book bit-by-bit. The discussion surrounding this book would be just wonderful for a book club to tear into and I am positive opinions would very so greatly that everyone would have something different to say or focus on.

Honeyeater is a beautifully bizarre plunge into a world both haunting and lush, where nature quietly—and sometimes violently—reclaims what once was hers. Though technically set in a dystopian version of Australia, the mood and setting evoked something closer to Appalachia for me: misty, overgrown, humming with ghost stories whispered between the trees.

If you were drawn to the eerie lyricism of Motheater or the dark mythic pulse of The Knight and the Butcherbird, this novel will feel like coming home—to a place that’s half-forgotten, half-feral, and entirely alive. Jennings masters the gothic and the ghostly, wrapping readers in a tale thick with root-bound secrets, aching loss, and the strange, wild beauty of decay.

I’ve been loving the recent wave of botanical horror—stories where the natural world isn't just a backdrop but a living, reclaiming force—and Honeyeater delivers on that theme in spades. And that cover? Absolutely stunning.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group | Tor Books for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest thoughts. This one will stick with me like the scent of rain on soil.

If you're someone who thrives on the eerie beauty of dark fairytales and spine-tingling, mesmerizing horror, this book is an absolute treat. From the very first page, the author draws you into a world that feels both hauntingly familiar and entirely new—an uncanny dreamscape where magic hides behind every shadow and danger breathes just beneath the surface.

The world-building is nothing short of immaculate. Every scene feels like it was painted in vivid, surreal brushstrokes. The imagery alone is worth the read; it lingers in your mind long after you’ve put the book down.

I’d wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone in love with fiction—especially those who seek stories that are as beautiful as they are unsettling.

Unfortunately I had to DNF at 18% because nothing about the book was captivating me enough to continue.