Unfortunately, I wasn't the biggest fan of this. I wanted it to be as good and memorable as Meat, but it just wasn't, to me.

this was a fun read, the cover drew me in and I always enjoy the horror and comedy genre. The characters were great and it goes from one genre to another in a fast. I had a lot of fun reading this book and look forward to more from Mr. D'Lacey.

I requested this book because I thought it had an interesting cover. What I discovered was Downton Abbey meets The Little Shop of Horrors with a touch of Fifty Shades of Gray thrown in. Lady Cynthia Fortescue is a wealthy member of the privileged class who wants to dominate the world. For her upcoming birthday Herbert brings a nondescript plant in a rather garish pot but then decides it is not good enough and instructs the gardner Pincher to throw it out. Pincher sets it aside and forgets about it and it is gone when he later goes to get it. Fast forward through the cruelty to the staff and the weird sexual habits that almost had me tossing the book (and my cookies) aside. The Fortescue's were definitely not a likable bunch and in fact were some really warped characters with no redeeming qualities I could see. Perhaps this was the author's purpose. But it is the plants who steal the show. They are sentient beings who also want to take over the world. They make Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors look like a dandelion! The descriptions of the plants and their actions were fascinating, appalling, and horrifying.
I kept reading this book only because I had promised a review. It has cruelty, sex, and a lot of gore. It also has some humor, albeit of a warped sort. I found the ending especially humorous. I will give it 2 stars on the premise of the book and the plant descriptions alone. I would caution those with a weak stomach to skip it.
As I finished the book I discovered that the publisher has withdrawn it from publication due to comments on social media by the author. The publisher, a small independent publishing house, felt the author's comments on the COVID pandemic and Qanon were dangerous at this time and detrimental to the success of his publishing house. Indeed other authors had threatened to pull their books if he published this one. Although I don't approve of censorship I admire the independent publisher for standing up for his principals. He returned a fully edited and promoted manuscript ready to be published that the author can now self-publish, so he is not really censoring it and has indeed given it more publicity than it deserves. Let the book find more fertile soil and grow where it will if it will.

This such a crazy, fun read.  Described by some other readers as Downton Abbey meets Day of the Triffids or Little Shop of Horrors and even The Thing, I can confirm that I totally agree, and I would like to chuck a smidgen of Gardeners' World in to the mix too.  A very silly dysfunctional family drama and B-Movie horror with tons of imagination and fantastic characters.  A brilliant read.

An excellent mix of horror and humour that sees Day of the Triffids meet Little shop of Horrors. A really fun read that doesn't take itself too seriously yet the comedy elements don't detract from the overall tale. Well worth a read.

Holy Shiitake ! That was a family drama garden nightmare. This family are the rich and powerful but never feel they have enough. They are vile, ruthless, disgusting people who are not so different from the weeds.
The matriarch has her eyes on ruling the world and is training up her son to continue her vision. Well one of her sons. There are family issues, skeletons in their closets. They abuse, belittle, crush their staff, they are horrible.
The Deaths, whoah ! Seriously, demented ways of dying. The is one that was so twisted, I wanted to turn away in disgust and laugh at the same time. TWISTED !
The characters we are pretty unlikeable for me, some I cheered their deaths. This book has all the triggers, beware. this is true horror and it’s not all the weed doing the bad.
Did I like it ? I don’t know. Parts of it dragged on too long, the bad things were really bad. It was hard to read a couple scenes. It was what it said it was, horror. I’d give it 4 stars for being what it said it was and horrifying me.

Although it was slow to take root and could benefit from a little pruning, Weed was a thoroughly enjoyable bit of horror that sprouted admirably in some surprising directions. Joseph D'Lacey has crafted a socially and ecologically aware story that sort of floats around in time, often feeling like something from the early twentieth century, but which is actually very contemporary.

Lady Cynthia Fortescue is a cruel, cunning businesswoman whose investments are a driving force in global politics. She's a woman who feasts off of famine and soars through market crashes. Her only escape from that high-pressure, high-intensity life is sexually abusing her cook, administering to the plants of her greenhouse, and grooming her oldest son to one day take over the empire.

Desperate for her attention and approval, it's her youngest son who brings the titular Weed into the greenhouse as a birthday gift. That tiny little plant soon proves to have a mind of its own, growing quickly, moving about of its own volition, feasting upon the mammals of the estate grounds, and infecting Lady Fortescue with its tendrils. It's a genuinely terrifying garden beast, but by the time anybody realizes that, of course, it's far too late.

As much fun as the plant horror is, it's the cooks, gardeners, housekeepers that make the book. They're a peculiar bunch, each of them with secret needs, hungers, and perversions, and the story really reaches its heights once fear for their lives overcomes that of the Fortescue family. There's plenty of sex here to accompany the violence, and while it may not be explicit, context and circumstances make it memorable. I can't say much without spoiling the story, but nature tends to mirror our basest impulses, and that leads to an erotically terrifying end for one character that had me laughing so hard I cried.

The Fortescue estate offers up some fantastic settings for the horror, from the wine cellar to the greenhouse to the pond, all of them examples of how what men and women built ultimately fails against the unconquerable force that is nature. Within that conflict, there's a thread involving the gardener and his predilection for a different kind of Weed, and it brings the story full circle. Not my favorite part of the book - I'd rather read visceral horror or extreme erotica than scenes of smoking, toking, or vaping - but it works.

There is human evil and cruelty to be found here, including rape and abuse, paired with natural (possibly supernatural) horror, but there's also deep roots of black humor that fertilize the story. A little pruning of the first and third quarters would have tightened the pacing, and the Weed saviorism felt a tad heavy-handed, but overall this was a fun read with a great cast of characters and some genuinely funny moments.

If you like a bit of humor and fun served with your plant-based horror, be sure to check out Weed when it is released February 2021!   There are strange things going on at Fortescue Hall, and not just with the staff and family members.  An unusual plant is slowly taking over, devouring everything in its wake....    This is one of those books I can totally see becoming some cult classic horror film.  I cheered the demise of certain characters while rooting for the survival  of others; I didn't know whether to laugh or say "eeww, gross" at a couple of the more, er, unusual sex scenes; and since finishing this novel, I have developed a more wary relationship with my houseplants (I'm currently keeping tabs on one that seems to have started a bit of a growth spurt in recent days).  Good, horrific fun.   
Thanks to NetGalley and Horrific Tales Publishing for offering this ecopy for review!

Trigger warning: Rape, drug use, extreme violence

I was a little skeptical when I first started the story but ended up getting hooked on the book. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of gore and violence. It reminded me of one of those horror flicks that you just can’t stop watching. The descriptions in this book are so vivid I could picture the gore as the plants took over the humans. It was a little slow to start but once the action picked up it’s highly entertaining. I’d definitely recommend this to anyone who loves horror stories.

Good old fashioned horror with a dose of sex and drugs thrown in. For the full review go to https://joebloggshere.tumblr.com/post/638786484735967232/weed-by-joseph-dlacey-is-perfect-lockdown

I really wanted to like WEED much more than I did, I was a massive fan of MEAT by Joseph D'Lacey and although he has written other interesting fiction, nothing comes close to MEAT. As this was his first new work for a while I was hoping for something special, but instead was given a novel which was ridiculously long (432 according to Amazon) and went on and on. For what was ultimately a very violent and sleazy monster novel, releasing a book at this length was unforgivable and losing 150 pages would have been desirable.

Populated with unlikable characters this was a novel that truly never did end and it took me ages to reach 10% on my Kindle! Considering the plot was fairly minimal, revolving around a parasitic plant in a country estate, there was not enough going on to hold my interest. The author goes out of his way to shock with some quite funny gross out scenes, but ultimately I thought the whole thing was a mess. A very long mess.

Weed’ is a weird ass book. Some of that weirdness is deliberate - graphic scenes of blackly comic gross out sex and horror abound. But a lot of the weirdness (for me at least) came from the fact that it often feels like it doesn’t always know what kind of a book it is. I had fun with it, but to say it’s not likely to be for everyone is an understatement.
It’s set in a British country house in the Home Counties, a sprawling mansion owned by an enormously powerful and wealthy woman, Lady Cynthia Fortescue. Lady Cynthia is served in the house by a staff – a chef, a maid, a housekeeper, a butler and a gardener. They’re also joined by her two sons, Jacob and Herbert. With that varied cast assembled, Joseph D’Lacey builds a plot around them involving unexplained deaths and very unusual flora.
By the end the book is properly bonkers and very entertaining, the problem is it takes a long time to get there. At over 300 pages it’s a fair bit longer than the content really merits and parts of it kind of drag. It certainly take a long time for the horror to kick in. The first 100 or so pages read more like a modern take on the ‘Downton Abbey’ or ‘Brideshead, Revisited’ style of aristocratic melodrama. It’s not unenjoyable, in fact the strong writing throughout makes it a pleasure to read. But when you start a book expecting a gross out horror novel, you want a gross out horror novel.
Don’t worry though, when ‘Weed’ gets going, it really gets going. It’s got more deviant sex than any book I’ve read in the last few years (I even had to get my dictionary out at one point) and the gore is similarly graphic. For that reason, and the slightly uncomfortable mix of country house drama and splatterfest, I wouldn’t recommend it unreservedly. If the promise of weird ass sex and violence appeals though, I expect you’ll enjoy it.

A large estate housing Lady Fortescue, her two sons and the properties hired help, face an incursion worthy of a horticulturist worst nightmare. The wealthy manor encompassed by sex, power and domination is now infested with a parasitic vegetation. The only thing standing between life and death for the occupants is a terrifying undergrowth of the botanical kind.
Joseph D’Lacey breathes life into a rare species of plant life akin to the Venus Flytrap and other forms of greenery. This horrific botanical enhancement merits revulsion and dread not only for the individuals in this book, but for the reader as well. Building the plot around a house of hidden motives and desires while an ever growing menace endures and thrives are key elements to the success of this disturbing novel. With its lewd, crude and rude no holds barred approach, Weed stands on its own rootlet fictional foundation. A living pipework of infestation waiting for a human host from which to develop...think of The Ruins meet The Thing, and you have one heck of a creepy novel.
Not very many novels have grabbed me the way this edgy eco-horror novel did. Joseph D’Lacey has easily made this a top read of 2021. Be aware when reading Weed, not to fear those hair thin green capillaries beneath your skin slowly stirring. I’m sure they are only goosebumps. A five star must read recommendation from the Horror Bookworm.

This ARC was provided to me in exchange for an honest review. Trigger warnings: body gore, rape, sexual themes.

This story focuses on Fortescue Hall in all its glory. The head of the family, Lady Cynthia Fortescue, is a ruthless business woman with a passion for plants. Then you have the sons: Jacob the “mama’s boy” and heir and Herbert, drunk, cynical and a bastard. You also get to meet all the staff of the imposing manor: Leabank, the butler that likes to be dominated; Miss Ketley, the domineering governess; Nora, the quiet maid; Julio, the Spanish chef; Sophie, the stable girl with a secret; and of course Pincher, the cannabis crazed gardener. The action ensues when a new exotic plant enters the Lady’s gardens and all is not what it seems.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It’s weird, spooky and has a gothic vibe to it. Maybe the trigger warnings put you off, but the book has actually some comedy about it, a bit of comical nonsense to it.The best thing about it was definitely the atmosphere. You could feel the weirdness throughout the book.

Secondly I really liked the characters, there’s quite a lot of them, but each and everyone has such a distinct personality and was presented to us in such a fun way that it would be impossible to forget any of them.

There is a lot of action, sometimes more fast paced than others. The only “major” fault were the sometimes long descriptions.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. What starts out as a Downton Abbey-esque character drama, albeit dripping with sarcasm, resentment and very dark humour, turns by the midway point into a hilarious, brutal and gore-soaked body horror novel, with some - ahem - memorable demises. Throw a little social commentary into the mix, along with Mr D'Lacey's fluid, easy to read and descriptive writing style and you end up with a truly enjoyable horror novel