Eat The Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin

I would like to thank Titan Books for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher - Titan

Published - Out Now

Price - £9.99 paperback £7.99 ebook

During a visit to her local shopping mall, Shell Pine sees a 'HELP NEEDED' sign in a flower shop window. She's just left her fiancé, lost her job, and moved home to her parents' house. She has to bring some good into her life, so she takes a chance. And flowers are just the good thing she's been looking for, as is Neve, the beautiful florist. The thing is, Neve needs help more than Shell could possibly imagine.

An orchid growing in the heart of the mall is watching them closely. The beautiful florist belongs to him, and he'll do just about anything to make sure he can keep growing big and strong. Nothing he eats— nobody he eats—can satisfy him, except the thing he most desires. Neve. He will stop at nothing to eat the one he loves.

Infused with wit, heart and horror, this is a story about possession, monstrosity and working in retail. It is about hunger and desire, and other terrible things that grow.

Say it with flowers….but what are we really saying as we provide artfully arranged dead plant matter to people? Flowers can be symbols of grief, joy or desire. We assign meanings to them and they mark important milestones in life. In Sarah Maria Griffin’s unsettling novel Eat The Ones You Love we have behind an unusual tale of desire, new lives and a very different kind of all seeing narrator.

Shell is at her lowest ebb. She’s broken up with her long time boyfriend Gav; lost her office Marketing job and just for good measure is living back home with her parents and younger sisters. A chance advert in the window of a florist brings her into the world of Neve whose life orbits around her shop which sits in a condemned shopping centre. The two women bond but Shell is unaware that someone else is watching and making plans for her.

There is a huge amount I loved in this novel that keeps us guessing. At first just reading the scenes of Shell’s very unhappy life and this chance advert then immediately bonding with Neve we appear to be in a very wholesome domestic love story but then we realise our third person narration is actually an unseen character and they reveal they have not so kind intentions towards Shell.

This story is often about what is being hidden. To the outside world this shopping centre is on its way out as so many are becoming a sea of empty units and ever growing vape shops but inside Neve’s shop does great work and we find a small but close knit of workers who have illicit drinks and parties in the night. Griffin makes all her charged feel human and watching Shell get accepted and feel part of the world is a really lovely bit of character growth but at the same time we are increasingly aware something malignant is going on.

Floristry works as on one level it’s beauty and art and on another it’s performed in biting cold conditions, often using chemicals and tricks to make the dead things stay alive. Neve and Shell bind and are finding there is an attraction to each other but as our narrator starts to reveal themselves (yes a mysterious plant! Trust me it works) but it’s not alway clear if this is not down to their own mysterious influence. Neve has a secret hidden in her life, one that has destroyed her last serious relationship and it also hides in the rotting shopping centre, aptly as the story grows we feel this presence growing in power and planning for its next step in growth. It tells us of its past crimes and the people it’s killed. It’s not a moustache twirling monster but something that very much sees its own survival more important than the humans it is around. It’s ruthless, merciless and doesn’t like to be told what to do. How this plan now features Shell is a growing theme and tension in the book. Is Shell another feeding opportunity or something else?

Neve is a fascinating character and we rarely get into her thoughts. She seems a workaholic, we get to see her last break up and the growing attraction with Shell is starting to let her open up. But our narrator also reveals Neve’s if not outright involvement in deaths but at least a knowledge of them and ensuring no one else knows about them. We are kept guessing all to the end where Neve really fits into these events and it adds a lot of danger to this what could have been a simple romance.

It’s the ending where I think things get a little too frenetic. After so much build up I was expecting characters to start realising what the others were all up to and indeed that our unseen narrator really lets rip. Initially this seems the case but then we get some very quick wrapping up of storylines and even a softer ending that undercuts what we know has been going on. It’s perhaps a little too tidy and for needed the characters to at least start sharing their secrets a lot more - perhaps they would still accept them or been repelled but without that I felt slightly cheated of the drama explosion I was hoping for.

Despite that the wonderful strange mix of of horror and the domestic make this an engaging story and Griffin ensures with our unusual narrator we have what could be a very normal tale told in a very different manner. The character work is beautiful and watching this hidden world unfurl its wonders and terrors made for a really interesting read. Definitely worth a look!