A beautifully poetic set of stories that were both delicious and gruesome, with all the best sapphic characters included.

I never thought Sapphic Horror would be a genre I’d be interested in, until I read this. Really hoping to read more of Moïra Fowley’s work in the future!

This is the perfect book to keep on the side for when you need a short story, it’s full of weird and unexpected tales.

It’s definitely going to be high on my list of recommended titles, it’s so difficult to find a good collection.

I loved this book it was just what I needed at the end of a busy day, some beautifully written horror stories with a sense of humour and a gothic twist and LGBTQIA+ love and romance.
I have heard some people say that they don't enjoy short stories but I quite enjoy them especially when I want to read before bed, although at times this book let to me getting very little sleep as I found it hard to put down but then again I suppose that that is also a good thing

An interesting collection. As somewhat of a beginner to both short story collections and this contemporary, body-focused form of horror, it felt quite unique. Moïra Fowley's writing is very evocative.

Eyes guts throat bones is a collection of speculative lesbian short stories within the literary horror subgenera, that are sure enough going to have to hooked from the very first one. From non-urgent apocalyptic romances to coming of age stories, this book discusses what it's like being queer regardless of your surroundings and illustrating social and emotional obstacles queer people face. This book was wonderfully written with each short story standing on their own merit whilst being fully immersive in so few words. I would recommend this short story collection to fans of Eric LaRocca, Jeff Vandermeer and Sayaka Murata. It is safe to say that Moira Fowley has quickly become a new favourite author and I look forward to reading more of their works.

Moïra Fowley wrote (as Moïra Fowley-Doyle) what I consider to be one of the best YA novels of the last decade - ‘The Accident Season’ - and so the second I saw that she had an adult horror short story collection coming out and it has THAT COVER, I didn’t hesitate. I hit pre-order and ran to NetGalley to see if I could get my hands on it any quicker.

The NetGalley gods (and W&N, thank you, I love you) were shining on me that day and I got approved.

Then I started devouring this incredible collection.

What will the end of the world look like?

Will it be an old man slowly turned to gold, flowers raining from the sky, or a hole cut through the wire fencing that keeps the monsters out?
Is it someone you love wearing your face, or a good old fashioned inter-dimensional summoning?
Does it sound like a howl outside the window, or does it look like coming home?

This startling and irresistibly witty collection from the phenomenally talented Moïra Fowley is an exploration of all our darkest impulses and deepest fears.

I loved this collection so much that I don’t even really know where to start…

I guess we start at the end? The end of the world is central to each story in this collection. Sometimes it’s a catastrophic event, sometimes it’s a seemingly magic strangeness that slowly ends society, sometimes it’s a dystopic version of what comes after. But it’s all stark and beautiful and lyrical, because that’s exactly what Fowley’s writing excels at. The way she works horror into that style and environment is effortless. The stories feature a lot of body horror, particularly decay and transformation with a hint of the Grotesque. She weaves a spell around these events and these characters and I couldn’t look away.

This collection is also a celebration of sapphic love and the stories that sit in-between the lines. The stories of the girls and women may exist around the end of the world, but they’re about love and lust and the pains and joys that they cause. We have women having babies, falling in love, falling out of love, consumed with lust, discovering their sexuality, hiding it, and embracing it too. It was joyful, and also smoking in places!

I don’t think I’ve ever read a short story collection where I’ve liked every single story, but ‘Eyes Guts Throat Bones’ is the first. I didn’t love them all, but I did love most of them, and I liked all of them.

‘Eyes Guts Throat Bones’ is a triumph. Lesbian end of the world horror in all it’s traumatic, gory beauty.

A fascinating, riveting, lyrical, witty and well written anthology of short stories. There's horror, there's great representations of LGBTQA characters, and an excellent storytelling.
Loved it.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

Came for the horror, stayed for the humour. These stories are spooky and mysterious and captivating but a few of them are also very funny? I felt like I had whiplash (complimentary) moving from one chapter to the next!

I usually enjoy a creepy freaky short story collection so I did anticipate I would like this but I ended up really loving it? There's a touch of Julia Armfield and Mariana Enriquez here but it's also just so wholly its own thing, which is a marvel. Each time things started to feel like a fever dream the relationships at the heart of the story pulled me back to reality. This book is an absolute must for fans of queer, especially sapphic, horror.

My favourites were Rath and Only Corpses Stay, two stories that I know will stay with me for quite some time.

This is one of the strongest short story collections that I have read in along time. I became completely enthralled to it. It is beautifully dark and twisted, filled with Fowley's to make something that seems mundane become something that is absolutely not. While the books is a collection of horror based shorts, the writing style lends itself to prose, it feels like a very intimate read, like you are witnessing things unbeknownst to the players.

As someone who is part of the LGBTQTIA community, it did my heart good to read such strong representation, particularly in older groups. I've struggled to find stories that are representative to such a level in the past, so for this to satisfy that craving is an absolute pleasure. The queer elements hit perfectly, never feeling forced or tokenistic. Fowley beautifully captures the nature of queer love.

Loved the smattering of what is potentially niche Irish humour...the ghost of Stephen Gately for example. More to the point as someone who absolutely hated boyzone growing up, Fowley managed to make it so that I didn't actually mind reading about the ghost of Stephen Gately and his penchant for appearing in somewhat unusual places.

This collection represent an excellent first adult collection from Fowley. Very much looking forward to seeing what follows.

This has truly blown me away, I’ve never been so enthralled by a short story collection. There is not a single miss here, every story is unique, creative and horrifying in different ways.

I also love that every story is explicitly sapphic.

Some of my favourites were: What would you give for a treat like me, Nature Morte, The Summoning, Rath, Playing House

I absolutely loved the first story in this collection - the writing was brilliant and the atmosphere was creepy. But unfortunately I lost interest after that - I felt like there was potential, and perhaps reading it in hard-copy as opposed to e-book would help as the formatting was off-putting on my e-reader. I would recommend it to fans of Lucie McKnight Hardy and even to those who enjoy Lauren Groff's short stories, but it's not a glowing review - I can see the merit in the writing (and the cover/title are excellent!) and I will try the author's later adult books,

Eyes Guts Throat Bones is a deliciously dark collection of sapphic horror short stories. I found it absolutely phenomenal and totally unforgettable.

This is one of the strongest short story collections I have read for a while. The writing felt lyrical, poetical and beautiful but also unrelenting dark and intense.

Surprisingly, I found moments of black humour in it all and surprising flourishes of hope. The way Fowley balances this with some gory, bleak and unrelenting awful moments is incredible. You are taken from the darkest pits of hellish landscapes to a crystallised moment of grief, suspended in time and reality. Horror is a weapon in the right hands and Fowley has a deadly blade in hers. I have always adored how horror can be used to explore our darkest fears in a way that is cathartic and far enough removed from our reality to challenge readers without them noticing. Fowley integrates some social commentary here, particularly on the place of women and queerness. It is not always overt, rather I found it often in the normalisation of representation. This is very much a collection that supports women’s wrongs and boy do we go dark in exploring those wrongs.

Fowley’s writing has that boggy, earthy darkness to it and that sense of mysticism that is both beautiful and deeply frightening. It feels like an archaic call into the wilderness, but with the distinct sense that something might answer. Every time she manages to utterly bewitch me. The way she blends fantasy and reality, blurring the lines until there is nothing left, is endlessly intriguing. Every story fully immerses you in its own world. It creates a bubble around you with such complex characters and themes.

Eyes Guts Throat Bones is a standout horror collection that everyone should add to their shelves. Just make sure you screw your courage to the sticking place before you begin.

When I heard about Eyes, Guts, Throat, Bones, it was a complete no brainer to read as soon as I could. I loved Moïra Fowley’s spooky, angry, feminist YA novels and this seemed like a natural step (or even side step) into full on darker stories for adults, where she could explore a little further into horror, into sex and relationships, and play with a lot of different ideas in sometimes subtle and sometimes in your face ways (like A Summoning, which is a much needed comic interlude). Even the story of her writing this in a forest during the pandemic when she should have been writing a novel struck me, and I can really see how these stories must have taken root.

This was really interesting to read alongside a friend as we would have sometimes similar and sometimes conflicting opinions on the story we would read each day, and I was able to see some in a different light through her. My favourites (at least on first impressions) were Such a Pretty Face (woman steals and wears her exes faces after sex, don’t worry about it), Nature Morte (an artist in Paris is haunted by grief, very literally) and Only Corpses Stay, which is a jewel in the collection that I think will be many readers’ favourites (troops of girls and women patrolling after some sort of apocalyptic event, and the friendships and complicated relationships that spring out of them. Think The Last of Us in setting but also in overwhelming feelings).

Several themes recur again and again: romantic and sexual relationships between women are centre stage in all but one story, the supernatural or magical realism is present in many, and a post apocalyptic world is the centre for many more. Several are quite scary (do not speak to me about dolls ever again, between this book and Little Lives by Deirdre Sullivan), more are unsettling, and some are just very sad. Grief, trauma, shame, anger, desire and loneliness echo through the stories but in often subtle or tangential ways, and give so much food for thought. There is so much in this relatively short collection, and a lot to take away and think about over time.

A solid short story collection from Moïra Fowley, her first forray into writing for adults.

Starting off with an evocative banger, Fowley sets the scene for a recurring theme in her short stories: not being listened to by the narrators' lovers and what that leads to. Her narrators are willing to give anything for love; they are needy, greedy creatures who subsist on the smallest scraps of attention and are content to see the world burn if that is what it takes to make their lovers happy. I found that a lot of her narrators are so in touch with what their lovers want and need that it feels like they take on those wants/needs as their own, whether that's actually something they would want. It reminds me of being young and insecure and thinking that the only way to keep your lover interested is to become a mirror for them - then again, that probably says more about me than Fowley's writing 😅 If men appear in her stories, they're usually on the periphery or an obstacle to be overcome on the way to the end.

Stories which stood out for me from this collection:

"Such a pretty face" surprised me in the end with how much I adored Mina and her acceptance - her greed? - for what Louie was.

"The summoning" was an absolute delight - I laughed and cheered, after all, who wouldn't want to bang a hot demon? It's hands down my favourite story from the collection. It's so great to see something hilarious included in a collection of horror; don't get me wrong, there was plenty of horror there but I also rejoiced in the description of the shy, awed puppy love Katie very quickly developed for her hot demon girlfriend.

"The Rath" shows that the blend of magic and realism is where Fowley's talent truly shines. Love that in the wee snatches we can see so much of the characters' history. And bonus points for queer women in their 40s! Yes!

"Big round ball of light and the water" once again showscases that Fowley is the queen of magical realism. What a soulful, satisfying story. Extra kudos and brownie points for trans representation!

"Two truths and a lie" was an absollute banger of a sexy queer horror story. My god. Absolute masterpiece.

“This is a space for wildness. Madness. Secrets.”


Ok., this collection doesn’t hold back. If you liked Julia Armfield’s Salt Slow, or Deirdre Sullivan’s I Want To Know That I Will Be Okay, you will adore Moira Fowley’s new collection of horror-laced, explicitly queer stories. Structured around the places where we feel horror - the eyes, guts, throat and bones - these are overtly bodily stories, and it is clear that Fowley has thrown her whole heart and soul into the collection. It plays with form - one story is written as a script, another as a stream-of-consciousness by a college-aged young woman - and challenges the reader in both style and substance.

It starts off with a bang - the opening tale is one of the creepiest things I’ve ever read. It’s disorientating and horrifying, and it hooked me right in. It’s a body-horror masterpiece, part Annihilation and part nightmarish fairy tale. I would have cheerfully read a whole novel version of this story even though it kept me awake for a significant time after I read it.

Things get darker from there - if such a thing is possible - the collection is a fever-dream of the body and the bloody. Fowley does take the brakes off a few times - there are a number of gorgeous love stories in this collection, all featuring women. The depictions of queer love are numerous, varied and nuanced, and unapologetic too, which I was impressed by, though I will say that I found myself more drawn to the more traditional horror stories in the collection.
And what horror stories they are - I noticed going back over the collection that 3 of my favourite stories are a) 3 of the creepiest in the collection and b) contained in the “guts” section of the book - where fear lives. What that says about me, I don’t know, but it highlights Fowley’s gift for writing truly unsettling horror stories.

I read this slowly over several days and this was a great way of taking in each and every sumptuous word written by Fowley. Already an accomplished YA author, she’s a fantastic writer - the prose here is rich, dark and effortless and lingers long in the mind. I had multiple highlighted sections in every story and annotated with a number of exclamation marks at particularly beautiful lines.

Short story collections are rarely all bangers but Fowley’s collection comes close - there were only 2 or 3 in this collection that I didn’t enjoy, most notably the snoozeworthy interval story. But overall it’s a fantastic collection of blood-soaked love stories that, if there’s any fairness in the world, will catapult the author into mainstream consciousness - this collection deserves it.

A brilliantly powerful collection of stories! Horror is woven throughout, from the very short and impactful story about a young girl’s bunny to the devastating impact of one post-apocalyptic tale where a group walks through a forest, slowly losing members to the trees and creatures. I also enjoyed the stories about love and relationships, pushed and twisted by the circumstances, sometimes creating something beautiful.

EYES GUTS THROAT BONES is a multi-course meal of horrifying delight, with stories that will linger long after you’re done reading.

At its core, its about girls in love at the end of the world. Girls running from monsters. Girls looking for them. Girls who fear becoming monsters and girls who are monsters but are loved regardless. It’s a celebration of queerness – a celebration of all the beautiful parts and the ugly parts and the parts that eat us alive, each and every page of it a mouthful of something nourishing, something healing, something solid, something good. There is fear and there is love and there is acceptance and there is desire and, amidst it all, a sweet relatability to the characters. This is a celebration forged from various horrors, and I loved it.

Until reading this collection, I didn’t realise there was such a gap in the market for sapphic, poetic, gothic, horror tinged stories and I’m so glad this book exists to fill it!!

While I didn’t love every story, the way the author explores themes of grief, girlhood, queerness, bodies, nature and life in general is extremely beautiful and I know this is going to be a favourite for SO many people!!

It also meant a lot to me as a queer woman myself to see so many different representations of f/f relationships throughout.

3.5/5- excited to see what this author writes in the future!

I liked some of these stories, but some of there were just too horrifying for me and I DNF. Nothing wrong with the writing which is wonderful, nor the stories which are imaginative. But I'm not very good with this level of aaaaargh. But, if you like your horror gruesome, you're going to love this book!
So, recommended with provisos...

🦴 👁️ Eyes Guts Throat Bones by Moïra Fowley 👁️ 🦴

Thank you to W&N and Orion Publishing for this e-ARC!

What will the end of the world look like? It’s a good question and one this book of short stories asks.

Lines I like:

“But life goes on, even if it looks different to the way you’d hoped, or thought.”

“Year Avis I’d’ve been called a changeling but in the year of our Lord 1995 I was just a mess of a girl.”

I’ve never read anything by this author before but I loved this collection of short stories! The poetic writing, the queer love, the beautiful story telling…I can’t choose what I like most.

4/5 would definitely recommend