Haunting and wonderfully written. Eric LaRocca never misses to make me uncomftable while reading his shortstorys and i love it!

LaRocca is definitely now a favourite author of mine. I was hooked from the first page and fully invested in seeing how it all turned out.

I am really sad to say that this LaRocca book was the first that I did not enjoy. I could not even finish it because even though I liked the storyline, I did not like the execution. However I still like the writing style as in his other books.

This was pretty good and quite different from all the Eric LaRocca I've read before. It had a huge Stephen King feel to it and so I'd recommend for anyone who loves King and wants to branch out to reading some queer horror that has the same sort of vibe to it. I wasn't completed obsessed with this story but I thought the characters were good and the pacing was great and kept me interested. LaRocca always has a theme of religion in their stories - sometimes this manifests as religious horror and other times it is just an undercurrent of the story. It can sometimes confuse readers if they don't know the background of LaRocca's relationship with religion but I have come to expect in in their work and find it quite interesting to see where they are going to go with it. It took a bit of a backseat in this story but I didn't mind as it didn't really need a huge religious element to it. Been kind of worried about diving back into LaRocca as I know so many people don't like their work but I did enjoy this one so will be reading their other books pretty soon.

Sometimes I struggle to find horror actually scary, but this chilled me to my core.

It's one of those 'wait for it...' books. One of those weirdly strange, slightly abstract books. I'd call it Annihilation meets Paradise Lost if asked to describe it compared to other books.

It did a great job of penning the indescribable horror that some queer people face when surrounded by unseen/anonymous homophobia... in a way that reaches the emotions of those of us outside of that experience too.

All 🙌🏾 the 🙌🏾 religious 🙌🏾 imagery 🙌🏾 I will take religious imagery in horror any day. It's just so perfect.

While it is a 'wait for it...' story, I appreciate it being a short read because it kept the pacing up throughout and it means you don't have to wait all that long.

I'm sorry but I hated this book and was just able to finish it because it was so short and I kept hoping it would get better... but it judt kept getting worse. I'm sure this was not the author's intent but it read like torture porn and made me physically ill to read it. I loved Things Got Worse Since We Last Spoke, which was a lot more body horror and this one read less like body horror because of how real a lot of the scenes felt - like in my view body horror works because it feels a bit unreal. The storytelling didn't work for me either and the ending gave me such whiplash.

Well this was different for LaRocca! I enjoyed this one and felt the repetitive nature of it actually fed into the suspense. The themes of this one made me feel like I was really watching it all play out infront of me like a true crime drama…then it all got a bit wild! Whys it always in a basement?!?

This book was great I loved the story and the characters kept me interested throughout. Im a little late reviewing this book (finished it a few weeks ago) but I really enjoy Eric’s books. I look forward to reading more by him 4 ⭐️

I've come to learn with Eric Larocca books that I won't always understand what is going on, but I will always understand his very unique voice in telling it. Unfortunately the beginning of this book felt like it was written by someone else and it threw me off kilter. By the end it felt like we were back on track, but it was slow going for a while. Let's be honest I thought the start was boring, the second part was horrifying (great), but confusing. Not my favourite, the plot felt very unsettled.

Evil stalks a small town in Connecticut as people begin to disappear. Darkness lurks in the home of Mr Crowley but will the evil be stopped before all hell breaks loose, literally.

I really enjoyed Things have gotten worse since we last spoke and was interested to read this short story. However, this was very graphic and there was a lot of gratuitous violence as well as a rape scene so trigger warning so this was not a novel that I personally enjoyed.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review.

Horror as I’ve mentioned before is a genre seeking our emotional response to the tale being told. Horror is often thought as filled with monsters and all sorts of supernatural creatures. In some ways these can be comforting. The other disquieting type of horror can be what human beings are capable of. In some ways more terrifying as we will cross paths with other people as our lives continue. In Eric La Rocca’s disturbing and ambitious novella Everything The Darkness Eats we have a dual narrative trying to blend the two together and while I found this a tale hard to put down there are aspects I am not too sure quite gel together.

Ghost is a man in pain. A terrible accident three years has hurt his body and the aftermath left many mental scars too. He lives apart; hiding from debtors and tormented by a strange spirit only he sees. Each day is a struggle. Elsewhere in the small town of Henley’s Edge is being rocked a by number of strange disappearances and a mysterious seller of burial plots named Heart Crowley is wandering looking for new customers.

Elsewhere in the town Sergeant Nadeem Malik is concerned that his neighbourhood is not welcoming of their first married gay couple in the area. There is a growing escalation of abusive messages to him and his husband Brett that hints further danger is arising but even his employer thinks its his gestures of affection in public that are at fault. Much greater danger connects these characters and Ghost, Crowley and Malik will cross paths in unexpected ways.

Noe this is a novella with two sides of horror being linked by the idea that terrible things can just happen to people out of the blue through no real fault of their own. We have those who tread into Crowley’s supernatural games and malik falling victim to a neighbourhood’s dangerous homophobia. Both sides of the horror that I referred to and individually each strand is told very well and kept me involved but the ultimate fusion of the two tales unusually I think lessened their impact. This felt overall one time I needed a little more from both plots to really make the story work and for a change the novella form seemed not to aid the story.

La Rocca is a captivating writer capable of exploring the darker side of life and making us feel exposed in ways few horror writers can manage. In Ghost’s part of the story everything is strange and there is a feeling of suspense. Crowley is a classic adversary knows a lot of the supernatural and as we see with some of his earliest victims, he knows how to press a person’s buttons to get what he wants. Temptation is his game, and the question is how Ghost will be involved in things. This plotline impressively surprised me where it went and links the two plotlines. It’s a smart idea but does create a perhaps convenient way of wrapping things up very quickly. A satisfying supernatural adventure.

Malik’s side of the tale is the more complex. We feel his horror at finding his ideal home slowly plagued by acts of homophobia and this escalates and escalates. He is being penalised purely for being gay and even his boss thinks he is at fault – one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the story and highlighting the power of intolerance. We watch him lose control and things then go into a very dark place. We have very dark scenes of violence and rape that I think readers need to be aware of. We watch Malik being almost broken and seeing his eventual torturer almost as someone he must obey. These are dramatic and powerful scenes that very much sucked me into the tale but ultimately especially in how the tale ends I’m not sure they needed to be in the tale. Malik is ultimately just a convenient interruption to Crowley’s world that allows the finale to progress and for me the more I felt after reading my impression was that I’d read two very good horror tales but they actually when blended together lessened each other’s impact. Indeed, the rape scenes feel more there for taking the reader to a dark place more than enlighten the story. A bit more to malik’s life and perhaps a bit more for malik to do in the finale may have justified this character’s horrible nightmare journey into intolerance. The overall effect I think is lessened too much to make it fully work in a shorter fiction form and a bit more time developing this plotline before and after the graphic scenes may have worked better.

Is this a good horror story- definitely. It creates that feeling of dread and the story has plenty of surprises and neat character work but I think it slightly misses its target to wrap everything up effectively and make its points. Le Rocca is still though an author I’m intrigued by what they will do next. Worth a look.

**Thank you to Netgalley and Titan Books for allowing me to read this book. All thoughts are my honest opinions.**

I was so excited to read Eric LaRocca's debut novel after previously enjoying his short stories, and Everything the Darkness Eats exceeded my expectations! As with his short stories, Eric manages to say so much about the dark side of humanity, and religion, without overtly spelling it out. Everything the Darkness Eats follows two POVs, with them combining in a way I simply did not see coming. The trigger warnings are not to be taken lightly with Everything the Darkness Eats: Homophobia, Rape, Violence, Sexual Violence, Child death, Death, Excrement

This a horror story on steroid. It's dark, very dark. It's twisty and there's hyperviolence and some very nasty things.
Eric LaRocca can write and their style of writing is intriguing and doesn't let you stop reading even if you want to give.
There's hate, there's black magic and there's something that could be what is happening now in the world even if we don't think there's any cosmic horror behind it.
There's only one ultraviolent scene that was a sort of placeholder.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Having read quite a bit of Eric LaRocca's shorter fiction, I was interested to see what he would come up with in a longer format. Like so much of his other work, this is a particularly strange tale. Focused on the small town of Henley's Edge and a slew of disappearances. there is an underlying current of danger throughout the narrative that was reminiscent of David Lynch's take on suburbia. Homophobia plays a key role in the plot and there are some incredibly uncomfortable scenes with this at the forefront. Similarly, the narrative deals deeply with faith and belief in God, which also leads to some difficult moments. Overall, I thought the imagery and prose were great but wasn't blown away by the plot itself. I would be interested to see more stories set in this town, but this one wasn't my favourite.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

eARC in exchange for a review
An absolutely spookily haunting thriller from the author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke.

3.5⭐️

It took me a while to get into the dual POVs as they didn’t seem to have very much at all in common until very late into the book, and even then I still struggled to pull the similarities in them together. I did find the representation in the book good with characters being of different sexual orientation, disabilities being shown, different races and religions.

While I enjoyed the overall premise, I found the narrative at times taking a while to form due to the heavy use of metaphors that at times took my attention away from the actual plot. It was almost distracting how long some of the descriptive sentences were.

Certain plot lines made me quite uncomfortable however, the very graphic rape scene in which a victim refers to her attacker as attractive and “a god” made me feel uneasy beyond what I’m comfortable reading about. I think it could’ve been handled a lot better.

I really liked this first full novel by LaRocca! Even though as usual it was just wayy to in your face with the LGBT stuff, I'm not against it but dull it down a little please.
Story wise- this was incredible graphic in scenes (hence the horror/gore aspect) with a really nice back story of family and forgiveness. I also liked that Egyptians were featured quite heavily, made everything seem more real. Somehow, even with the parts I didn't like, I will always read LaRoccas work.

More macabre stories from LaRocca, exploring the darkness that lurks in the corners of our lives, as if waiting for us to uncover it.

I really thought I would enjoy this book.

I have 2 other books by this author, The trees are because I bled there and Things have gotten worse since we last spoke but have not read either yet.

The first 50% of this book had me hooked, I really wanted to find out what was happening but things just went down hill for me for the rest of the book...

I can't even say that I fully understand the ending, or the point behind this book.... I'm not too sure the 2 storylines were completely necessary.

It wasn't my cup of tea but that isn't to say that others may really enjoy it.

Overall, I am keen to read the books I do own by this author but I won't be rushing to read them over other books I own.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. Although the dual perspectives of characters being separate got tedious at times. The stories were quite different and felt a bit disjointed but overall I throughly enjoyed the horror atmosphere.

So I'm a huge fan of Eric LaRocca's works, and I think anyone else who feels the same will love this.

It's beautifully written, as all LaRocca's works are! The imagery is incredible, the tension builds wonderfully, I was always desperate to read more, to know what was coming. I never know what to expect with LaRocca's works so I'm always waiting for that turning point, that twist, where things start to go a bit crazy.

Unfortunately, and this might just be me, but this all felt a bit too thin for me, there just wasn't enough depth. Especially compared to everything else I've read by LaRocca. There was some horror and gore, some awful, heart wrenching moments, some moments where I felt like my whole body was curling in on itself. But overall it felt too quick, the jumps between scenes were too big, the overall storyline ended so fast, and there were entire character storylines I felt were unneeded. Now obviously this is a short novel and there's a lot to pack in, so that's not unexpected. I just wish maybe some characters had been missed out to give time for the main characters to gain a bit more depth, and maybe for a bit more padding inbetween.

It was a bit too much fantasy and not enough horror for me, (and trigger warning for abuse which I wasn't expecting that really hit me hard), but overall this was a great read and I definitely recommend it, especially if you're a fan of LaRocca already. There's something about the way they write that's so easy to get through while still packing a huge punch, I can't get enough!

Thank you to @netgalley + @titanbooks for the ARC!