Monster smut! But make it literary!
This is a delicious romance-horror from the wife-writer duo Mikaella Clements; Onjuli Datta, who wrote the excellent The View Was Exhausting a few years back. Feast While You Can is a serious departure from their debut: it's a novel about family, about the monsters we keep inside us, and about love. It's also about the horrors of intergenerational trauma, which, for me, is always a fascinating topic.

Angelina and Patrick Sicco (hahaha...yes!) are siblings living in the rural, run-down town of Cadenze. Don't ask me where it is - it seems to exist in an alternate US/Italy hybrid, mountainous, rustic, and vaguely American. Both Patrick and Angelina are defensive of the town to the point of fanatacism, partly as their family has lived there for generations. Angelina is gay and a little directionless. She spends her days working two jobs and picking up any pretty girls who pass through the town.

But when spiky, sexy Jagvi - the town exile, ex-girlfriend of Patrick - returns to Cadenze, a chance trip to a local cave together finds Angelina gripped by forces beyond her control. The forces? A big, old-fashioned, terrifying monster, hell-bent on a big ol' meal. The monsters started out slightly goofy (a GoodReads review compared the voice of the monster to Venom, and they are spot on) but as it grows in power it becomes something much more terrifying. The Thing From The Pit consumes people in their entirety - not just body and soul, but their memories, futures, and the memories everyone else has of that person. They are completely wiped from existence. It is horrifying!

The novel becomes more suffocating as the plot becomes more terrifying - and it all adds up to an impressive, propulsive read, albeit one that's a little slow to start. The small cast of characters is well-crafted and the reader gets under their skin (I can't help myself!) quickly, particularly in Angelina's case as she's our point-of-view character for most of the book.

I feel like this book will fly under the radar, which is such a shame, as it deserves to find its audience of horror-romance fans. Strongly recommend this one if you enjoyed Our Wives Under The Sea or Sara Gran's novels. It's a banger!

I could not stop reading this book, it was unlike anything I have ever read, completely unique and enthralling

This book was a glorious and unexpected find that I page-turningly devoured!

I loved the well-written folk horror feel of the small-town otherness. The town of Cadenze springs to life on the page, hemming the characters in and setting the reader on edge.

Our main character, Angelina, is so realistically human. She's not a perfect one-dimensional character with their shit together... no, she's a messy human who makes wrong choices, fills their life with mistakes, takes chances, and has no idea what she's doing.

Will anything be left to mess up in Angelina's life before the monster wants to mess everything up for her?

This is not a vapid surface-level story. The complexity and layers of generational trauma, secrets, lies, and unhealthy relationships all weave together to form a backdrop to this psychological horror.

The sapphic representation is great, and the monster is written so well that it's difficult to do it justice in this review without giving away spoilers.

There is so much packed into this story and a few twists I didn't see coming.

The whole experience of reading this was wonderful, and I will definitely be looking to read more by these authors!


*I received an advance reader copy for free, and I'm voluntarily leaving a review*

I didn't know what to expect from this one but it fit so well for spooky season. The combination of small town dynamics, folklore horror and slightly forbidden (1990's, older brother's ex-girlfriend) sapphic romance was just delicious.

The thing from the pit was actually creepy, and I was so surprised to see it so soon. I could feel the kinship between it and Angelina from the start. Similar to Angelina I also had conflicting feelings about it - I wanted it to come back, I wanted to know what it's motives were, but it was so spooky I was scared for all or the side characters we had quickly come to love. Patrick, Gemma and of course Jag. Everyone felt true and realistic as characters, I loved them all (except maybe Caro, but who can blame me). With reflection, maybe the plot wasn't the most original in the world, but the authors were so good at getting me into Angelina's head that I didn't see many of the major plot points or twists coming. <spoiler> I am still so sad about My Dog though, poor baby didn't know what was going on </spoiler>

The tension between Jagvhi and Angelina was brilliant from the start. I was screaming at them to kiss from the get go, and the payoff was SO GOOD. A literal eldritch monster was hunting them and they were still worried about Patrick's feelings, bless. I could tell from the start the monster wanted them to be together and that helped me like it more. <spoiler> until it tried to eat Jag, but until then we were on the same wavelength </spoiler>

There was obviously a ton of metaphor and symbolism going on here with the small town trapping and eating Angelica's future, just like the monster etc etc but I am too tired to fully go into it. And this isn't an analysis, it's a review - so suffice it to say I had a blast reading this, and I want to read more.

I'd heard a lot of excited chatter about this book, so was eagerly anticipating it, and sadly it was not quite what I was expecting - though still an enjoyable read for the most part. Whilst Feast While You Can certainly delivered on the promised sexiness, the horror was lacking, which was disappointing as there was some great tension built up early on in the novel that later fell flat when the ‘creature’ is revealed. The pacing also felt a little off - again, I could have used more tension building, a slower reveal; instead the supernatural presence is revealed, almost everyone is totally onboard straight away, and the rest of the novel is dedicated to figuring out how to stop it, and the build of Jagvi and Angelica’s relationship. Perhaps that is the issue - this is a very relationship focused novel, which was done really well - but the marketing and blurb suggested far more horror than was actually delivered, even almost hinting at a love triangle between Angelica, Jagvi and the demon which (spoiler alert) just isn’t the case - though the actual ‘love triangle’ present was compelling, and not really something I’ve seen depicted before. I also found the lack of specificity in setting - both in terms of time and place - frustrating. Reading an interview with the authors after finishing the book, it seems that this is intentional and meant to ‘unmoor’ the reader. I didn’t really feel unmoored, at least not in the way the authors might have hoped - I just felt a little annoyed, and spent a bit too much brain space trying to figure out the setting (which, it seems, is meant to be Italy, though initially I was convinced it was rural USA - this isn’t a US bias as I’m not American, just the writing tone felt very US-ian at times) or what year it was (vaguely pre-smartphone, but with the occasion quippy asides that feel very 2020's). This also meant in some key scenes I couldn’t quite ‘see’ the picture the writing was trying to paint, giving an unfortunate murkiness to the prose. Ultimately, I did enjoy the book - the bathroom scene at the beginning was chilling, and Jagvi was a fascinating character (more fascinating, I felt, than the protagonist - which the novel seems to agree with) and the relationship was well wrought. While in the end Feast While You Can did leave me feeling just a little, well, hungry for more, I’d still be keen to see what these authors do next.

Feast While You Can is a twisted nightmare of a book.

It thrives on its dark and isolated atmosphere with such a creepy setting, perfectly capturing that sense of push and pull associated with a small hometown. Angelina and Jagvi occupy such different positions around their ideas of Cadenze, influenced by familial relationships and the way they grew up. There is a way the setting almost imprints onto you, particularly in your identity and ideas of the world. It is stifling and achingly real. That sense of desire is tangible

I was drawn to this book based on the central concept: that idea of having your future stolen from you is one that is horrific and yet so human at the same time. We will never know all of the dreams we could have pursued, all the lives we could have lived. Here it is embodied in this monstrous form, but it speaks to a fear that most of us can relate to. The level of horror is great, building from a creeping dread into full-blown grotesque body horror. For me, the pacing was spot on, pulling you into this tangled web and letting you begin it unravel it a little. Eventually we reach the explosive conclusion and even have a great stinger in the epilogue. It is bloody and awful. There is so much manipulation at play and you can never fully trust what is being presented to you. The deeper themes here are rich and presented in such a fascinating way.

Feast While You Can unspools that thread of desire hidden in the depths of your heart and weaves it into a sinister, yet strangely entrancing, story.

This book was the perfect read in the run up to Halloween, it definitely was a monstrous read that kept me hooked.

Urgh YES this book is everything. Horny and creepy and unlike anything else I’ve ever read. Queer horror done RIGHT. More like this please. We are hungry.

I found Feast While You Can easy to get into even though I was unsure where the story was heading, the writing style was easy to follow and kept me interested. Each time I thought I knew what was going to happen next it took a turn and went a different way. I found it such an interesting dynamic with the secrets that were revealed within the family and from Angelina's desires and thoughts. Definitely a good read during spooky season as it was creepy and that ending was so good and unexpected.
A very interesting book about the rawness and scary parts of desire and identity.

Unexpected for a horror novel, but this was a heartwarming (and occasionally heartbreaking) sapphic love story formed in a community that rejects them.

The main character was so complex and layered, but it wasn’t just her I was impressed by. All the characters here, even the ones who have more minor roles in the overall story, felt so complete and equally real - super important for a story that heavily depended on its characters to move it along.

The beast itself could be a metaphor for so many things, but I thought the way it literally devours and feasts on her future was so smart. The beast was extremely critical of her, which again could be a commentary on so many things, but my personal takeaway was that the beast was the combination of her town, her trauma and own insecurities weighing her down and preventing her from being who she could be and from experiencing the joy she could be experiencing. It was beautifully told.

It felt unsettling the whole time I was reading it and at no point could I guess what was going to happen next. The fact you don’t know when or where this is set kinda bugged me at first, but over time I felt like it added to the unsettling feeling. I’ll be thinking about this book for a long time.

Thank you to Netgalley and publishers for the review copy!

Thank you Netgalley, Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta for allowing me to review this digital ARC

A Truly Unputdownable Horror

Feast While You Can is a horror novel that completely consumed me from start to finish. I had no idea where the story was going, and I absolutely loved the suspense of being kept in the dark. The constant guessing—whether I'd be proven right or wrong—made the experience so thrilling, and I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.

Angelina is a fascinating, albeit reckless, character. Her lack of direction and understanding of herself made her feel raw and real, and her relationship with her brother was deeply heartbreaking. He sacrificed so much, especially for Angelina and their mother Carro. Their tangled relationships with Jagvi felt suffocating, and I could really feel the pressure on Patrick and Angelina to be central to Jagvi’s world.

The unpredictability of the monster was incredible, adding a terrifying edge to the plot. The desolate setting perfectly mirrored Angelina’s fractured dreams of her future. Interestingly, I was on holiday in Madeira while reading, so I pictured the story unfolding there, which added a whole new layer to my reading experience. Overall, this book kept pulling me back for more—more revelations, more of Angelina’s chaotic life—and it didn’t disappoint.

This was really wild. I went into this expecting some spooks and smut based on the blurb but this was a lot deeper than that. Identity, family and the idea of home were big themes of the book and I really loved the complex sense of community that was explored.

The characters were very compelling and I found this hard to put down. I really liked how sinister the monster was considering there was no real description of it.

This story surprised me with its deep and dark exploration of family, identity, and queerness. It forces the reader to confront difficult questions in a beautiful but haunting way.

The horror elements of this book were not obvious jump-scares, they were built gradually and created an overarching sense of uncertainty. There was no part of this book that I really expected, and though it did take me a couple of chapters to become hooked, I thoroughly enjoyed this story.

The romance and family relationships in this story were extremely interesting and felt very raw and real. The progression of the story and the pacing does at some points feel slow, but upon reflection I think it creates the perfect atmosphere for the story and helped me understand and root for the characters.

As someone who loves a horror story that at its core is instead and incredibly raw exploration of human experiences, I really enjoyed this book and the experience of reading it.

Thank you to NetGallery and Simon & Schuster UK for allowing me to access this book.

simply DELICIOUS. i am not even a horror gal—in fact i am generally too scared to attempt anything in the genre—but i am a big TVWE fan (and if you are too there is a delightful moment in there for you) and i INHALED this. incredibly sexy and stressful!!! i love a SMALL TOWN, i love a horrible GIRL, i love a complicated family, i love ROMANCE. i ate it up!!!! Sorry For All The Feast Metaphors!!!

Feast while you can is a story about a small town lesbian trying to fight a mysterious monster well known through town legends for trying to consume people out of existence.

I can honestly say I did not see any parts of this book coming. Almost to the last page it kept me on my toes trying to figure out where this story was going. It wasn't about the plot twists but rather the journey itself. There were a few moments where I caught myself thinking "huh I don't know if the choice the character is making makes sense" and then another layer of the story was revealed and it clicked into place perfectly.

I loved how the monster wasn't the only thing that was trying to consume these characters. It wasn't just this paranormal entity that was there to take and take and take. There was also the town and the characters themselves, feasting on other characters' future and potential in a much more realistic way that still might not leave much of a person behind.

I was surprised that for me the ending felt like the creepiest and most hair raising part of this story. It left me with such an unsettled feeling and I don't think I'll forget about this book any time soon. And I just want to tell everyone about this book just to discuss with them the ending.

I really enjoyed this very queer monster horror story. I thought the way the characters and the romance progressed alongside the horror element worked really well and the monster was a interesting concept, along with being spooky enough that I gasped aloud in some places but didn’t lose any sleep over it (my preferred level of horror). The best part of this novel were the characters - Angelina and Jagvi in particular were so easy to root for but I also felt for Patrick and I thought the other members of Angelina’s family added an intriguing dynamic - her relationship to them and the town was so vital to this story. Halfway through I thought this was going to be my favourite read of the year - I really loved the characters, the concept and the prose. In the end I didn’t feel like it had left as much of an impact as I would have liked, I think especially with the change of POV near the end. I also think this is a really sexy book in terms of its themes of queer desire and hunger but I did think it was going to be a bit more explicitly sexy and I would have liked a little more of that personally. Overall a satisfying read but it did slightly leave me hungry for more (4.5 stars).

Feast While You Can is a queer horror romance novel about a monster that tries to steal your life, messier and more full of potential the better. Angelina Sicco has lived in mountain town Cadenze all her life, where her family are well known, but especially her, a mixed race lesbian. She lives with her brother and tries to draw tourist women to visit Cadenze to give herself a dating pool, but when hot butch Jagvi—who is also her brother's ex—returns to town, it seems Angelina's life got more complicated. Until, of course, the local legend monster from the pit targets Angelina, grabbing her memories and controlling her, seeming to set up for the final feed—and only Jagvi seems to be able to repel it.

This book was so much fun that it was difficult to put down. It's about hungry, desperate desire, and also a hungry monster desperate to steal someone's life, past, present, and future. It's also about small towns, and escaping them or not, and the different assumptions people have. The horror and romance elements are deeply intertwined so, without wanting to get too deep into spoilers, the book doesn't really need to pull between these elements (especially in horror it's rare to find sex scenes so integrated into everything else), and it makes the book more brutal and raw as a romance too. This isn't a fluffy 'small town and big city queer experiences collide' romance, but instead it is about two angry, desperate women whose future holds something more terrifying and complex than 'where would they live'. I particularly liked Jagvi as a character, a brooding figure who has a complex story of belonging and queer identity hidden underneath.

The element that did confuse me a bit was the book's setting, as at first I thought it was set in the US as that's what it felt like, and then it seemed to be set in non-specific Italy, with a lot of references to history that would place it in Italy and mentions of dialect etc, but never does it actually make this explicit. It also turned out from a line at the very end that the book was set in the 90s, which I also had no idea about from reading it. I can see that it is meant to be an ambiguous setting, but it threw me out of the reading experience trying to work out where it was meant to be set. As I read an ARC, this might be more apparent in the marketing or final book.

I had a great time reading this book, which has possession, light body horror, a consuming romance, and a memorable butch love interest (which a lot of lesbian romance lacks). It's not a scary kind of horror, but more of a monstrous, grotesque kind, with a darkness to the ending, and it shows that queer horror can have many guises.

This is an incredibly salacious, small town horror that I think is a perfect fall/winter time read. I did think it started out much stronger than it finished but overall still enjoyable.

Eldritch horror is my favourite kind of horror. This thing that lurks in the pit, that occupies the emptiness of the shadows in order to feast on its victims future was haunting. Its attachment to our main character Angelina was terrifying. Not knowing exactly what this thing is really adds to the quiet, tense feeling that permeates this entire book.

Oftentimes, the queer love story in this overshadows the horror elements. There's a real focus on Angelina and Jagvi and their experiences as the only brown, queer people in a racist and homophobic town. The brothers best friend trope is made fresh by the queerness of the romance. This is also one of the most realistic portrayals of queer culture and how that exists in small towns that I've ever read.

The writing style sometimes made it difficult to understand what was going on. Frequently, I had to reread whole paragraphs because of the authors choices of sentence structure and language. When the monster speaks it's not indicated by speech marks or italic but rather every word is capitalised which I thought was super interesting and unique. I'm fully willing to admit part of my confusion could be attributed to the fact I read this on a publisher provided ebook which sometimes does odd things to formatting. I also wonder if rereading a physical copy might change this for me.

The story itself lost me a little as it shifts its focus from plot to character at about 60% of the way through. This combined with the difficulties I had with the writing styles meant that I began to enjoy it a little less at this point. The climax scene and the last chapter I enjoyed in theory, however, the execution wasn't completely there for me. I found myself more confused than anything else. I did very much enjoy this one but in the end I gave it 3.25 stars. I would be interested in reading some other work by these authors and the horror vibes were immaculate, I just didn't 100% gel with the writing.

Thank you to netgalley and Simon and Schuster UK for this proof.

I really enjoyed Feast While You Can, it’s not the kind of thing I usually pick up, but I thought it was really well done. I’m a bit squeamish about horror, but I didn’t find this too intense, it was all fairly tame with one or two moments that were a bit harder to stomach (lol).

I liked the depiction of small-town living, and what it’s like being queer or otherwise different in this type of space. I also loved seeing the relationship develop between Angelina and Jagvi, and Patrick as well.

The setting didn’t really work for me, I would have preferred it to be set in a real place. I kept getting distracted by the details we were given about Cadenze and trying to figure out where it was set. It seemed very North American to me, but kept referencing ‘the war’ and the Romans? The time frame was also confusing, it felt very contemporary but then mentioned the turn of the millenia at the end? But overall that’s very minor and didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the story overall.