Woven together with foliage and flowers, Honeyeater is a delicious botanical fever dream.

Everyone around Charlie disappears. His sister eclipses him, his relationships fizzle out, and even the police don’t consider him interesting enough to suspect. He wants to wash his hands of Bellworth for good, but first, he has to deal with the house his dead caretaker left behind. Of course, Bellworth isn’t the kind of town that lets you leave easily.

As Charlie lingers, nature begins to reclaim what’s hers in this eerie little town and it finds him in the form of Grace, a young woman with flowers splitting through her skin and a mind that may be rotting… or blooming.

This book is soaked in atmosphere. Gothic to its roots (literally), it drips with strange beauty and unsettling decay. Think fairy tale (but Grimm-coded, not Disney) dark woods, creeping rot, and a love story made of dirt and delusion.

The prose is rich and haunting. Honestly, it reads like poetry at times. One of my favorite techniques was the way some paragraphs would end on a dramatic or terrifying cliffhanger only for the next paragraph to deliver a calm, sometimes absurdly mundane answer. It’s disorienting and brilliant, and it gave the book a unique rhythm that I loved.

Charlie is pitiful. Dense, fumbling and grief-stricken but it works. He’s incapable of understanding what’s happening around him, but desperate to hold onto Grace as she slowly unravels. Her descent is equal parts beautiful and gruesome, and Charlie’s need to save her feels hopeless, and maybe even selfish.

If you enjoy:
• Nature horror / botanical horror
• Gothic prose and fairy tales
• Rot as metaphor and magic
• Books where the setting feels alive

…then Honeyeater will crawl under your skin in the best possible way.

And yes, I’m also completely obsessed with the cover.

Thank you to Tor Books and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This was a book that is very flowly, very expressive in how everything is written. I struggled to connect with anyt6hing going on in the book because it felt like everything was sacrificing some worth for the sake of the prose, the characters, the story, the setting, all of it struggled to keep up with the lyrical way the story was written. Just not for me.

3.5 ⭐️ rounding to 4

“Run if you will, hide if you can, You will never know silence again.”

If you’re looking for a quick, gothic-horror fantasy read with beautiful descriptive writing then you will love Honeyeater by Kathleen Jennings.

Kathleen’s gorgeous descriptive writing will have you feeling like you just entered into a lush, floral dark gothic land. It’s enchanting and captures your attention immediately.
And the best is that while you’re captivated by the scenery she created for us, she was also able to give this world a sense of thrill and foreboding. Like something…or someone were lurking and following you in every step.
It gave me goosebumps and had me looking over my shoulder a few times.

The character(s) were okay. Charlie & Grace wasn’t rememberable.

The ending was predictable but it didn’t take away from me enjoying this story. I would definitely recommend.

I think I’m in love with botanical horror now.

The eerie vibes, the lyrical writing, the setting. it was all beautiful and haunting. The characters were not my favorite and fell kind of flat for me, but everything else was superb. I love the idea of nature taking back what belongs to her. It may just be my new favorite trope. The world building and the imagery really blew me away. Everything is vivid and feral.

This was the first I’ve read by this author, and I will gladly read more.

Thank you so much net galley!

Review to come in Locus in a couple of months.

Don't get Locus? I adored this novel enormously. Australians - especially those who recognise a subtropical suburban environment - will particularly enjoy it, but I think non-Aussies will also enjoy it. The characters are... well. Amazing.

"A richly imagined dark fantasy that pulses with the beautiful destruction of a town reclaimed by the natural world.

Sub-tropical Bellworth is founded on floodplains and root-bound secrets. And Charlie, remarkable only for vanished friends and a successful sister, plans to leave for good, just as soon as he deals with his dead aunt's house. Then Grace arrives, desperate, with roses pressing up through her skin, and drags Charlie into the ghost-choked mysteries of Bellworth, uncovering the impossible consequences of loss and desire - and a choice Charlie made when he was a boy.

But peeling back the rumors and lies that cocoon the suburb disturbs more than complacent neighbors and lost souls. And Charlie and Grace are forced to a decision that threatens not only their lives, but all they believed those lives could be."

A suburban Annihilation.

A visceral, botanical ghost story set in a small town, sub-tropical floodplain. I adored the way the story was framed by & intersected with neighbours gathering to tell local legends & unexplained experiences. The strong undercurrent of dread & sense of unreality that ran throughout, when coupled with intense & vivid imagery, made for a hallucinogenic fever dream of a novel. The one area this fell down for me was the characters, but purely in that I wanted to get to know them much better than we did. The vagueness of the prose, though beautiful, left me at times a little disconnected from the characters which meant I wasn’t as invested as I otherwise could have been.

I wanted to love this. It has all the elements of a story I would like - ethereal, spooky settings, a weird town with a lot of murder, and characters navigating what to do after loss. The writing here is stunning, and I wished I was smart enough to understand what was going on at all times but I kept getting lost. I LOVED the little stories in between the chapters. They were haunting and sad and gave me so many emotions in very few words. Overall, I think if you like lyrical, literary horror stories you will like this. This was a bit out of my comfort zone and wheelhouse but I did enjoy it. Thank you Kathleen Jennings, Tor Books, & NetGalley for the ARC.

DNF'd at 17%. I wasn't connecting with it at all.

I wasn't going to rate it because I didn't read enough of it but Netgalley requires a rating. It's strangely written. Totally off putting.

As a lover of gothic, nature-based horror, I knew this book would be my cup of tea - and I was right! Honeyeater is stunningly atmospheric and full of tension and mystery. I loved the little ghost stories strewn throughout between chapters - they added to the haunting feeling of the book. My only complaint was that at times the scenes felt messy; characters would seemingly appear from nowhere or change position, time slid away in ways that didn't feel purposeful, and what was actually supposed to be happening on the page was confusing. I love a weird book with nonsensical elements, but I longed for the weirdness to be offset by crisper writing. Overall, however, I had a wonderful time reading, and I would highly recommend this book for people who love weird, spooky, watery, mossy fiction.

Thank you to Tor Books and NetGalley for the e-ARC. This is my honest review.

The cover pulled me in the synopsis made me curious. Honeyeater is a dark fantasy that pushes into horror. I really was kind of confused at first but as I went along it started to come together more and more. . The setting of this book is unique and I think that is really what stands out here and not so much the characters in the story as I was more interested in it then them.
I found how the book laid out was interesting as well. It is set up in days and in between each chapters there are Alt chapters. The alt chapters were fascinating to me. They were other mini stories within the story itself. Like little ghost stories. While the numbered chapters we get our main characters itself, which is told more in the third person.
All in all this was a very interesting story and probably the most unique and different one I will read this year.
Thank you to Tor for the complimentary copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

(Actual: 3.5⭐) As soon as I saw the cover, I knew I had to request it (even if does fall under the Horror genre 😆)! HONEYEATER is a quick read and solid horror novella, mixing elements of bizarre surrealism, dark fantasy, and some good ol' classic body horror. While I found the characters themselves to be a bit flat, what kept me reading was Jennings' style of prose— her writing was wonderfully gothic, chilling and atmospheric, and I particularly like how nature was "used" within the context of the story, since I do feel like it plays a far more important and pivotal role than the actual people-characters haha. Great read and would definitely recommend out to others!

This was a great eerie haunting book. It’s strange and bizarre but in a beautiful way. The setting was the best aspect of the book for me; a botanical horror!

this one’s a little tricky for me to rate. i was immediately pulled in by the premise, and that cover is absolutely stunning omg. i went in with high hopes, and while there were things i really enjoyed, there were also things that didn’t quite work for me.

i’m a very character driven reader, and unfortunately, the characters in this book just didn’t click for me. they felt a bit flat, and i struggled to connect with any of them emotionally. so from that angle, it was a bit of a letdown.

that said, what a unique and eerie little read. the writing was lush and lyrical, and the atmosphere was so unsettling. this book is definitely a ghost story, but more folkloric instead of jump scare horror. and my favorite part? the short ghost stories and town legends sprinkled between chapters. those little snippets were honestly the stars of the show for me.

overall, Honeyeaters was a beautifully written and atmospheric read, even if the characters didn’t quite land for me. if you’re into ghostly folklore, small town legends, and lyrical prose, this is still one worth checking out. 👻🥀🪦🌊

thank you to netgalley, the publishers, and the author for providing this ARC 🤍

I did not finish this book at 15 percent. The writing was very clunky and I could not get into the story.

Just dabbling in horror, and the only horrifying thing about this book is that I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON AT ALL. I get the whole parts of personification but I definitely do not understand this story. I felt dumber but also know there's a market for this reader out there!

Body horror & a dark fantasy? I ate this book up and the setting of this book was PERFECT.
The characters fell a little flat for me but I was so intrigued as to what was happening to them!!!

Truly a botanical fever dream! It had a slow start, but once it picked up I could not put it down. I was obsessed with Grace’s character and wanted to know more about Charlie. The floral immagery was extremely well crafted and unique. With the rise in botanical novels lately, this one certainly stands out above the rest!

What a year for waterlogged, moss-covered ghost stories!
This is stunning. The setting is its own special character, it’s simultaneously slow-building and wickedly twisty, and I loved every minute of it.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC!
***
"A richly imagined dark fantasy that pulses with the beautiful destruction of a town reclaimed by the natural world." In a town full of dark secrets, vengeful ghosts, and botanical horrors, we follow Charlie as he starts to unravel his own { and the towns } secrets.
***
If you enjoy very poetic, lyrical writing, then this is for you! While I do typically enjoy this writing style, the plot was too slow for my taste. I found it very hard to follow the story line because the characters had no depth or connection to one another or to me as the reader. I felt as though the whole time I was reading the book, I was missing a major piece of the puzzle.

Review posted to GoodReads & Tiktok.