Reviews

Everything the Darkness Eats by Eric LaRocca

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cheshiretrick's review against another edition

challenging dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.25

I don’t even know what to say I’m just annoyed! first of all I’ve never read a book by this author and I knew that his work is very love it or hate it/generally contentious and probably not for me but I’ve been interested by his other books before and decided to pick this up (for full price!) at a bookstore because the synopsis was interesting and I love the design of the book. secondly I was really in the mood for some more fantastical horror after being really into books like The Year of the Witching and Slewfoot and I (wrongly) thought that this would be more along those lines or scratch that kind of itch. I went into this with completely wrong expectations but was still mostly interested in the plot and was into it from the beginning but the more this went on the more I just could not take it seriously or enjoy it at ALL. I couldn’t bring myself to care about any of the characters even before any of the horrible shit started happening to them so why would I care about them and what they’re going through once the awful traumatic horror stuff actually did?? also even beyond the mostly bad character work, they all felt like OCs an edgy 16 year old would come up with, I just didn’t like the writing very much at all. it worked for me some of the time but it mostly just came off as poorly edited and obnoxious? how does a 220 page book, literally my ideal length for any novel, feel both massively under-edited but also that it should’ve been significantly longer? the only interesting part of the entire thing was whatever the fuck Crowley was doing in his basement and that took up maybe 1/6 of the book at best. I also really liked one of the early chapters from that homophobic old woman’s pov. genuinely the standout chapter of the book and it worked in hooking me into the plot just for it to go nowhere I cared about! glad that this might’ve helped me get over my slump of actually reading books physically but was it worth the $17 and having a new least favorite book I’ve read outside of school? absolutely not. this will definitely work for some people but I honestly can’t even imagine enjoying the writing enough to love it in the first place, and that’s not even getting into the triggering content of this either. I was completely fine reading all of it but it just felt lazy and poorly handled at best? plus everything with the blind girl was exceptionally weird and frankly ghost’s entire thing was kind of terrible. I understand that he’s meant to be a “look at what guilt and grief can do to a person!” but, again, ghost everling is a My Immortal-ass name and all he gives is edgy 16 year old’s OC, so

becky_efc's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

netsreik's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

butyougotmysoul's review against another edition

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slow-paced

1.0

This was an extremely poorly written narrative that held ableist and homophobic views aloft and kept harping on them at every moment. It’s also extremely disappointing to me that the characterization of Crowley was so disproportionately evil and of course he had AIDS. Malik’s whole storyline was terrible and the aftermath of his traumatic experience and Fleece’s explanation for his homophobia was disgusting. Malik sympathizing with Fleece was uncalled for and it seemed like the story went out of its way to humanize someone that would hurt another person in this way. Disgusting.

Gemma couldn’t accept her daughter’s disability and looked at her as a “monster”

Ghost consistently called himself a monster and a burden.

I don’t know if it’s the content or the tone, but I do not get along with this author’s books. Rather than horror, they’re all just vaguely gory, ableist, and meandering. I don’t think I’ll be trying anymore of their writing.

Content Warnings

ali3nz24's review against another edition

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2.25

Just really boring honesy. Found it really hard to imagine any scene that was being described and didnt care too much about any character except malik and he wasnt very fleshed out anyway. Felt like the story was just a load of nothing until the last part