DNF Review – Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin (3/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Horror
Length: 288 pages
Publisher:‎ Tor Books
Release Date: April 22, 2025
ASIN:B0CQHLWD4W
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: eGalley from NetGalley
Rating: 3/5 stars

“After losing her job and her fiancé and moving back from the city to live with her parents, Shell Pine needs some help. And according to the sign in the window, the florist shop in the mall does too. Shell gets the gig, and the flowers she works with there are just the thing she needs to cheer up. Or maybe it’s Neve, the beautiful shop manager, who is making her days so rosy?

But you have to get your hands dirty if you want your garden to grow—and Neve’s secrets are as dark and dangerous as they come. In the back room of the flower shop, a young sentient orchid actually runs the show, and he is hungry . . . and he has a plan for them all.

When the choices are to either bury yourself in the warmth of someone else’s fertile soil, or face the cold and disappointing world outside—which would you choose? And what if putting down roots came at a cost far higher than just your freedom?”

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got a copy of this on ebook from NetGalley.

Thoughts: DNF, I got about 40% of the way through this one and then set it aside. My biggest issue was the constant changing of POV without any indicator you were changing POV. There were no lines or spaces between paragraphs, page breaks, or anything to let you know the point of view was switching. You would just switch POV in the next paragraph in the middle of a page. This was all over the place. Sometimes we were reading from the main character’s point of view, sometimes the plant’s, sometimes the flower shop’s owner (Neve), sometimes Neve’s former girlfriend. I had no idea who we were hearing from most of the time, and it was very confusing. Maybe there were formatting issues with the review copy, and that’s why this was so confusing? Giving it 3* with that assumption.

The story follows Shell, who has both been laid off from her job and ended her long term relationship with her boyfriend in a very short space of time. She finds herself living with her parents again and drifting as she tries to find a new job and some sort of purpose. Her wandering leads her to a florist shop that is looking for help.

As mentioned above, the biggest issue for me here was how confusing and difficult this was to read, but there were other issues for me as well. The pacing on this is very slow. You know there is a sentient plant pretty quickly, but not a lot actually happens. The characters are hard to engage with and seem to keep you at a distance. This is more of a slow burn horror, I guess? Not sure because I just got so bored with it I couldn’t stick with the story.

I did like the old run down shopping mall setting; there is some nostalgia there for me. I think the idea here could be a good one if executed properly; this gives serious Little Shop of Horror vibes. However, I was just dreading sitting down to read this because it was so uneven and confusing, so I decided to stop.

My Summary (3/5): Overall while I appreciated the nostalgic run down mall setting and the premise, I found this confusing to read and slow and ended up putting it down 40% of the way in. I could never tell when the POV was shifting, and it left me re-reading portions of the book over and over again trying to figure out who was talking. That coupled with all the additional viewpoints that get added as the story continued made this feel slow, messy, and confusing. I never got creepy horror vibes from it. I don’t plan on checking out any more books by this author.