Thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review. 4.25 rounding down to 4 for GoodReads. This was my first full-length Hailey Piper read after reading a variety of her short fiction in various collections. She has been on my radar for so long and I was absolutely thrilled to begin my journey into her longer works. All the Hearts You Eat is a very interesting one to start with. I went into this one thinking it was a ghost story mystery and on some level it is, but it quickly gets so much more cosmic and much more unique. I am not the standard audience for cosmic horror as I typically struggle to connect with horror at that large of a scale. But this book may have convinced me otherwise. I was having an okay time with this one but felt the pacing was a bit slow until about the 60% mark when things turned up a notch. When the cosmic pieces started to come together I wanted to start shouting from the rooftops about this book. The last forty percent were absolutely brilliant!! I have never read anything quite like the horror in this book and Piper manages to take different horror tropes/classics and combine them in such a distinctive way in this one. I struggled before I had all the pieces of the puzzle but once I had them I was floored. I feel like I don't even have to mention the LGBTQIA+ representation in this one but in case you didn't know, yes this book has representation, yes it is important to the story, and yes these characters are masterfully crafted. They are not there to be representation markers or boxes to be checked off, they are there because that is who they are as characters. I cannot wait to read more of Piper's backlist novels while anticipating her new ones.

Sigh - I really wanted to like this one but got about 35% in and had to call it. While I was somewhat interested in the mystery here, there seemed to be so much filler and it felt like it was droning on. I don't know if it is just the headspace I am in or what. I might give this one another go in the future but it just didn't work for me this first go-around.

Thank you to the author, @netgalley and the publisher for this e-ARC.

Emotionally gripping and full of gore, this is a tenderly-written take on the vampire mythos that cleverly utilizes the symbolism and imagery of common vampire stories to draw parallels to the trans and queer experience.

Piper writes authentic, multifaceted characters which are thoroughly enjoyable to read. All the Hearts You Eat was eerie and deliciously weird, turning the sub genre of vampiric fantasy on its head.
At points I found the story slightly disjointed, and couldn't follow the motives of the characters particularly well. Once I'd settled into the fact that this novel was much weirder than I had expected it was somewhat easier to follow, You've really got to ignore the desire to over analyse or relate to some of the decisions and reactions of the characters in the book.

DNF at 54 percent.

Thank you to Titan and NetGalley for my digital review copy.

I found that I couldn't get into this book. I know it's marketed as gothic horror and gothic horror tends to be slow, but I found that it wasn't gelling with me.

I also found some paragraphs to be worded horrifically (in a good way, but a way that wasn't for me)

I have had this sat in between reading stints that maybe the time in-between readings factored into the fact I DNF'd it this time.

I will try reading it again.

Not for me. I requested this to read in October, as I always like to stock up on "spooky stories" to get me in the Halloween mood. This wasn't quite what I expected, and not my favorite.

Ι feel so bad for giving this 3 stars. I DNFed at 75% but it was a struggle to get there. I enjoyed Ivory as a character and all tge body exploration linked with her identity, her sexuality etc was a fascinating exploration but the rest of the book couldn't grasp my interest no matter how much I kept reading, I really enjoyed the themes of this book but the mystery plot just didn't work for me I am afraid.

The writing really seemed to be great in this book, but I honestly don't think that this book was for me. It wasn't really what I expected from the summary going in, and I found it really difficult to get invested in any of the chapters that centered Ivory, one of the main characters, while I found the chapters about Xi and Rex to be much more engaging. It felt very difficult to follow the plot in some places, while some events felt as though they were included purely for shock value rather than advancing the plot. I came into it wanting to like it more than I did, but I just didn't enjoy reading it very much.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book.

What a unique, heartbreaking, and beautifully written vampire story. I hadn't read Hailey Piper before now but she had been on my list, and I really enjoyed this first foray into her horror works. I loved how she created this new kind of vampire that feels feral and more to the heart of the old school vampire mythology, and how she draws the parallels of transformation, isolation, and loneliness experienced by vampires and her trans characters. This book also has a MIDNIGHT MASS feel to it in terms of eerie build up of a small town with secrets, horrors, and the supernatural bobbing beneath the surface. It was a great introduction to Piper and I will definitely seek more of her books out.

** spoiler alert ** I will start by saying that I consider myself a huge Hailey Piper fan. I love her gruesome flavor of horror, I love the quirky sentimentality that she can instill into horrific body horror, I love her word use. But I will readily admit that when I saw the latest was a 450-page doorstopper that appeared to be a murder mystery, I was less than enthused.

Piper, my dear, how could I have ever doubted your talents?

So, indeed, "All the Hearts You Eat" is a door-stopper of a murder mystery, with a creepy gothic feeling of a small beach town that contains the brightness of Cape Morning, with its noisy tourists and party-friendly beach locals, and the shadowy Cape Shadow with Ghost Cat Island and the mysterious thing that followed Cabrina back from her swim.

The discovery of Cabrina's dead body on the beach by another trans woman, Ivory Sloan, sets the story in motion, particularly when Ivory also discovers a portion of Cabrina's 'suicide poem.' Ivory's search for answers sets in motion a series of actions that ultimately culminate in an orgy of death and dismemberment, as the denizens of Ghost Cat Island are finally able to emerge into the human world. Blood flows freely and viscera is flung about like so much meat in a slaughterhouse as Ivory and her inhuman lover unleash their strange vampiric horde onto the town.

All of this is well and good, but there's still a human story beneath it all, which is the story of two trans women, one undead and one alive, and the demons that they face with their families, their friends, and their communities. I think it is this message, underneath it all, that is the more powerful one.

I have to say that I loved the ending with Ivory and Honey, the two lovers, finally alone, curling up around one another. The gothic romantic in me forgave them for all their sins, in the face of their love. Sigh.

if you had told me there were vampires in this, i wouldn't have believed you. i still read the reviews that said there were vampires in this... and i still couldn't believe it. i think this is one of those things where the book wasn't meant for me and that's ok! there honestly wasn't anything inherently "bad" about the writing and i thought piper did really well building up her story but!! i just didn't connect with anything. not the characters, the plot, the vampires (not your typical vampires btw). there wasn't ever a point in the story where i HAD to keep reading; idk, this really wasn't it for me.

ty to netgalley and titan books for the arc ~

Hailey Piper's "ALL THE HEARTS YOU EAT" is one of the most unique, darkly beautiful, and unique vampire novels of the last twenty years. Of course, the vampires are hardly recognizable to faithful followers of traditional lore. I count this as an absolute strength. The visuals of these creatures, the shifting of old tropes into new and mesmerizing horrors, is both artistic and brilliant.

The story is told from the perspectives of several characters. It begins when Ivory, a trans woman, finds a snippet of poetry on the beach after coming across the body of a young girl, Cabrina Brite. All of our narrators are trans, and all are as different as snowflakes, their lives, their families, their dreams. Cabrina, through her diary, ties the group together, Rex and Xi - her best friends and sometimes lovers - are trying to find a way, occult, whatever, to save their friend. Ivory, who found the poem, becomes obsessed with Cabrina's story.

Without offering spoilers it is impossible to explain the depths of this novel, but somehow, within the folds of the story, there is a universe of pain and love, loss and anger that offers not only a dark horror story, but insight into our world through the eyes, voice and experience of characters beyond the realm of most readers. There are hints of Poppy Z. Brite (Billy Martin) in the characters, and there is a bit of the structure of Piper's earlier novel, "No Gods for Drowning," in the structure, but this book, in my opinion, absolutely cements Hailey Piper as an author who will help to shape horror fiction for many years to come. Highly recommended.

If you’re a fan of Hailey Piper, you’re going to want to sink your teeth into All the Hearts You Eat.

It’s everything you can expect from Piper, it’s poetic,savage, heartbreaking… This is longer than normal, but I enjoyed it and found it to be fast-paced and captivating. I don’t know how I felt about the characters, I loved and didn’t like some of them all at the same time but it worked. Perfect for spooky season, All the Hearts You Eat is a story about tribulations, love, life, and death (by vampire.) Thanks to Titan for my eARC. This one is out this week!

In her new novel, Bram Stoker award winner, Hailey Piper turns her hand to the vampire novel. Combining epistolary storytelling with a traditional narrative, Piper tells the story of two trans women, Ivory Sloan and Cabrina Bright.
The story centres around Ivory Sloan, who in order to fit in following a terrifying ordeal in her teens hides behind an almost Victorian epitome of womanhood, quiet and subservient. Hiding in plain sight, Ivy comes across the body of Cabrina Bright after her morning swim. Whilst examining the body she finds her suicide note, which turns out to be more of a poem rather than a message of pain. This leads Ivory to find out more about the dead girl and the reasons why she was found washed up on a beach.
As she digs deeper, her search leads her to the terrifying secrets of Ghost Cat Island and the bloodthirsty entity that wants to be set free on the world.
Now I have to say, I wanted to love this book, and guess what? I bloody well did. The story starts off small, examining the lives of the people that live in the town of Cape Morning, slowly transforming to a murder mystery to finally reaching its gore soaked crescendo and going absolutely batshit crazy.
Piper presents a different vampire story, and with her inimitable ability to draw from absolutely all the influences and a few more besides. The vampires themselves at times reminded me of those ones in the Stephen King film, Sleepwalkers as they are kind of a werecat. However, with her ability to use all the influences from both horror cinema and fiction, Piper crafts something new.
The book uses all the elements of gothic fiction, but changes them to give a distinctive feel, such as changing the looming, dark castle for a haunted island. However, the other elements are there, such as the ghostly figure, the malignant atmosphere and the ominous and superstitious elements, but the direction changes dramatically in the fourth act.
Throughout the book there is a definite argument against the traditional TERF diatribe that demoralise and stigmatise trans women, which is encapsulated by the two main characters, both the alive one and the dead one.
However, Piper hides this in the story and never hits you over the head with it, as this not only an angry shout at those that deny transwomen their womanhood and the trauma they inflict, it is also entertainment and Piper does this with style. Especially in the last act of the book, where the story becomes a climactic battle of Ivory’s rage and those around her.
All The Hearts You Eat is a brilliantly original take on the vampire legend and gives it a fresh vibrancy that

What happened to Cabrina Brite?

An accidental discovery of Cabrina's corpse and a mysterious note left behind pulls Ivory into a bizarre mystery focused on the supposedly haunted Ghost Cat Island. With unexpected twists and a variety of characters, it's a unique and at times entertaining story. Overall, I liked it even if I have some issues with pacing and the ending.
I can say that I certainly didn't expect it to go where it did. Whether that's a good or bad thing is up to you. But I enjoyed the originality of the story. It's refreshing. The characters are interesting and complicated, especially Ivory. I always love a diverse cast especially when more than one main character is trans. It's something I appreciate about Piper's work. I think it handles the topic of grief and how people react to a young trans teen's death, well. I liked how characters question why Ivory is even involved, she didn't know Cabrina after all. It's interesting when you can start out a book liking a character but swap opinions by the end, though I wouldn't say I necessarily dislike the character. I also always love a unique writing style so the bits of Cabrina's diary we get were a nice addition.
However, and this is a problem I have with a lot of Piper's work, the ending did not do it for me. Without going into details, it just felt so flat and left too many plot threads dangling. There's so many questions by the end that go unanswered and even questions that are manufactured by the ending. The pacing also felt a bit stop and go to me. There would be stretches with nothing happening and then suddenly a bunch of things happen all at once. It felt a bit long for the story ultimately being told.

I would still ultimately recommend it to any fans of queer horror. Hailey Piper thrives with unique ideas and that's what keeps me reading her stories. Just be super mindful of content warnings, because this gets heavy.

When Ivory discovers a body on the beach, with a poem indicating it was not intentional... she needs to know more about the mysterious Cabrina Brite

She tries to talk to the people she knows but gets the feeling they don't get it, or don't believe her. But when strange things start happening, and Cabrina may be back in a different way, she will need to dig deeper

However, Ivory isn't alone, in a small town everyone is connected and Cabrinas closest friends Xi and Rex have also been experiencing strange things, Xi especially

What happened to Cabrina and what is happening to them all now... and how will it affect the small town as a whole...

Definitely the strangest take on the vampire lore I've read, but kept me wanting to turn those pages to see where it was going

For warning, this book deals with a lot of tough issues around the characters and their real life going ons and challenges in addition from the fantasy horror portrayed here. Also has a lot of horror, especially body horror, so please check triggers if you need to

Out today! Go pick this up for spooky season if it sounds like your thing!

Thank you to NetGalley and Titan for the review copy.. all opinions ny own

Possibly a classic example of “there is a book for everybody, and this one just wasn’t for me”. The writing seems phenomenal, but in all honesty, I only made it through just past the first chapter. Admittedly, some books take a bit longer to grip the reader, but I just felt like I was never to connect with this protagonist the way I needed to in order to enjoy this one.

After finding myself thinking “I wonder how others connected with this book” I hopped on a couple different book review websites to see what other readers I trusted had to say about this book. One ‘friend’ stated that they had a difficult time getting into this story. Another mentioned something along the same lines and dropped the fact that this story contained vampires. While the author apparently puts an interesting twist on the mythical creatures, I just can’t do yet another vampire tale. They are least favorite mythical horror creature, and I will not do that to myself.

Others have been loving this book, and if you’re wanting a dark read that delves into heavy topic material then I encourage to give this a try. Just don’t be afraid to DNF, like I did, if it isn’t hitting right.

Thank you to Titan Books and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy, and I wish this book much success with the right readers.

I love everything I've read of Hailey's and All the Hearts You Eat is no exception. Epic in emotional scope but taking place in a strange little small town, the story is told by various narrators and is at times heartbreaking, at times visceral and intense, and always fantastic. I love Hailey's writing style, and this book really swings for the fences, a long (but not too long) and fabulously realized story of love and death and identity that just worked so well for me. I think we've seen some really fantastically interesting takes on vampires recently, from Nat Cassidy's Nestlings to Johnny Compton's Devils Kill Devils, and Hailey both nods to classic vampire stories and puts her own unique vision on the page in a way that feels both new and familiar. Really loved this one.

All The Hearts You Eat is a chilling gothic horror that is perfect for autumn and winter nights. Or any time if you love your horror. The very first thing I want to say is the atmosphere of this book is fantastic. You get swept up into the story and feel as if you are in the town with them.

The writing is wonderful with an array of characters that are fleshed out and include natural representation which is something I love. I will say I think some people may not enjoy the representation and some may not like the writing style and tone used but for me I thought it worked and worked well for the tale. The plot itself is so engaging with a beautiful mixture of haunting and heartbreak.

I don’t want to spoil anything but I will say I really enjoyed this one and I think if you are a fan of gothic horrors you will too.

As always thank you to Titan Books and Netgalley for my copy. My review is always honest, truthful and freely given.

Hailey Piper once again does what Hailey Piper always does so powerfully: tells a horror story that stirs the imagination with dark imagery while also offering an abundance of heart and passion to her characters. All the Hearts You Eat is chilling while, at the same time, painful. It’s a story composed of friendship and alliance and love, but is also tempered by longing and loneliness for Ivory—a woman who has spent her life trying to be pleasant and unobtrusive, perhaps not for the purpose of fitting in, but more so to not stand out.

Small town claustrophobia adds dimension to the story, in the sense that Ivory’s solitude comes largely from her desire to remain inconspicuous, to be unproblematic. Ivory wants to find love, but settles for being wanted; though, even the physical connections come with conditions. That is, when Ivory isn’t an inconvenience. The author’s answer to this is in the discovery and exploration of another world, a dimension that gives Ivory what she’s seeking. Including a thirst for vengeance.

One of the greatest surprises in this book is who becomes the heroes. This unexpected but beautifully executed turn adds more than a few touching moments within the terror. As a precaution to those readers who appreciate it, teen depression and suicide figure prominently into the plot. All Cabrina Brite wanted was to be herself. Her death is not simply a warning; it’s a clarion call for unconditional love and support.

Vivid narrative, intriguing characters, dark souls and local mythology defines this story in a way only Hailey Piper could breathe life into it.