I think I’ve read all Larocca books now. His first will probably always be my favorite but man he writes dark thought provoking novels and I’m here for it!

No one writes quite like Eric LaRocca does in the horror genre right now, and his work is dark, gritty, and sticks with you for days after finishing it.

Hey book lovers! 📚✨ I just finished reading "Everything the Darkness Eats" by Eric LaRocca, and WOW, what a ride! This book is an absolute gem if you love dark, twisty tales that keep you on the edge of your seat.

LaRocca's writing is intense and beautifully eerie, pulling you into a world where every page is packed with suspense. The characters are super intriguing, each one adding depth and complexity to the story. One scene that really stood out is when the protagonist faces their deepest fears in a chilling encounter—it's so vivid and haunting, you won’t be able to put it down!

If you’re into psychological thrillers with a dash of the supernatural, "Everything the Darkness Eats" is a must-read. Trust me, you’ll be thinking about this one long after you’ve turned the last page. Happy reading! 🌙✨

#BookReview #MustRead #EricLaRocca #ThrillerReads 📖🔮

Eric LaRocca’s Everything the Darkness Eats is a chilling blend of supernatural horror and small-town secrets, set in the seemingly peaceful Henley’s Edge, Connecticut. When a grieving widower is lured into dark rituals by the enigmatic Heart Crowley, the town's placid facade begins to crack, exposing an undercurrent of hatred and prejudice. As disappearances multiply, a local law enforcement officer uncovers a sinister truth that threatens to unravel the community. LaRocca’s prose is intense and atmospheric, weaving themes of loss, bigotry, and occult menace into a story that is as thought-provoking as it is terrifying. Everything the Darkness Eats cements LaRocca’s reputation as a standout voice in horror, offering a powerful, unsettling portrait of how darkness festers in unexpected places.

I’m not sure the synopsis coincides with the content like I wanted it to. I was hoping for more emphasis on the occult in a positive way rather than a device for destruction. That could be my skewed expectations though. The story is well written and will sit well with the right audience.

Unfortunately, this book wasn't for me. The premise sounded very much up my street, and it had some Lovecraftian vibes to it which I'm always a fan of, but this just didn't land.

My first issue was the writing - it was so heavy on metaphors and similies, it was unnatural, clunky, and really distracting. Some examples I noted were "as distinct as a lightning bug during a windstorm" and a vase of flowers being described as drowning woodland sprites. Some of this type of writing works, but it needed some heavy editing.

I'm usually a bit more lenient on how horror handles serious issues and trauma, because by it's definition you're supposed to be disturbed/unsettled/horrified etc. However, in this case it often felt gratuitous, with the most messed up thing the author could think of just shoved in for no reason. I won't include spoilers of course, but there's massive trigger warnings for rape, sexual assault, and queer trauma.

There were also instances of ableism that were not part of character flaws, but within the writing, which was unnecessary.

The final criticism were the plot holes and just how much suspension of disbelief was needed to get through this book. Suspending disbelief in a horror or supernatural book is a given, naturally, but a lot of the time this felt like a lazy way to cover up plot holes and to push the plot forward without having to actually write it.

It's a shame, because I've heard great thinks about this author's other work (which I will probably still give them a try as hopefully this was just an anomaly), but it just wasn't for me.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for my Advanced Review copy of this book.

This ended up being one of my favorite books of all time. Eric LaRocca is my number one author. No one writes about despicable things as beautiful as he does.

LaRocca gives us further proof of the furious mastery in his writing, showing no difficulty in adjusting to the novel form. Unapologetically queer and deeply empathetic for all its savagery, EVERYTHING THE DARKNESS EATS is clearly the work of a writer with nowhere to go but up.

This was highly disappointing. Unfortunately, being disappointed is becoming a trend for me when reading LaRocca's work. I was blown away by We Can Never Leave This Place, but nothing I've read since has lived up to it. This particular work was really tedious, with no major plot points occurring until around halfway through, and even then, nothing happened that made me want to continue reading. I truly only finished this because it was short and because I had this advanced copy. This book features two parallel stories, but the connection between them isn't solidified until the very end, and even then, it's pretty flimsy and seems unnecessary. These could've been two separate novellas within the same universe, and the stories would've fared better. The ending was extremely forced and very frustrating in terms of character development. The dialogue was also extremely clunky and unrealistic, which makes for a difficult read.

This one was hard for me to get through. It didn’t feel like horror should - cathartic. It just made me feel bad and gross, like brought me into a lowest of low mood. The violence didn’t seem to have a point and was just there to be there. Overall, not something I would recommend.

Larocca is great at shocking and gory and this book is definitely that. However, it had no real redeeming qualities and that eye-rolling ending.

"Everything the Darkness Eats" by Eric LaRocca is a highly anticipated and buzzed-about horror novel that delves into the existential terror of small-town life. Set in a rural New England village, the story unfolds as occult forces are summoned and unchecked bigotry threatens to consume the community.

Unfortunately, while this book started so we'll I didn't actually enjoy it. While I'm all for writers churning out books quickly or changing their writing style and branching into other genres, honestly this showed very little of the LaRocca style and energy I'm used to. Pretty much an auto read, and 5 star review, I'm not exactly sure what this book was about. Was it about missing old women? Was it about a supernatural old man? Was it about hate crimes? Who the hell knows? Probably the worst LaRocca so far

Stunningly beautiful cosmic and existential horror wrapped up in a heart-wrenching examination of shame and grief. This got under my skin and stayed there for a long time.

I had high hopes for this one. I was intrigued when I read a novella by the author, I thought a novel would be better. Unfortunately, I think I like his stories at novella length. The story felt a little too long for me, which in turn made it hard to get through. If you like weird fiction, horror, and small towns check this one out for sure.

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for an advanced copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.

I've read from LaRocca before, and their writing is beautifully grotesque. I sometimes read over the phrases several times, impressed by the prose. They manage to write about gore in a way that makes me want to highlight it and obsess over the word choice and yet feel guilty about loving a passage about blood and guts. I was excited for them to have a full length novel, and feel it had potential. With regret, I didn't love the read. The writing was still awe inspiring. The premise was impressive. But I think that the novella or short story is really where LaRocca shines. This novel didn't feel like it had enough "meat" to carry us through. It was confusing and had so much subtext, which are both things I love about a short story, but that create chaos in a novel. I'll eagerly await more from this author, but this one wasn't a hit for me.

It feels like two separate stories shoehorned together but they are also great stories. One evokes a lot of awesome Stephen King vibes while the other will truly horrify with its level of violence.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Everything The Darkness Eats
Eric LaRocca @hystericteeth
Horror
202 Pages
OUT TODAY (Happy PUB Day)

GR BLURB:
An insidious darkness threatens to devastate a rural New England village when occult forces are conjured and when bigotry is left unrestrained.

Proud new member of the Eric LaRocca fan club right here.

This is my first LaRocca and Holy👏 Shit👏 I was not disappointed.

This just had everything I wanted. Small Town, occult, supernatural, kinda cosmic horror at its best. I just can't get over this dang book. It's defenitly going to resonate with me for a while.

Creepy. Check. Unsettling. Check. Atmospheric. Check. Unexpected. Check. Dark AF. Check. Unexplainable. Check. Dual storylines.Check. How many times I said WTF. Too many times to count.

⚠️Content Warnings
Homophobia
Hate Crimes
Kidnapping
Murder
Animal Death

Thanks to NetGalley and Clash Books for an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.

*huffs and blows out air* Where do I start? Okay, the premise of this book is that the protagonist Ghost, a man with disabilities, encounters a strange, older gentleman who requests his help in order to complete a ritual. What Ghost doesn't know is that this kindly old man has been kidnapping people to help with said ritual.

Okay, so that being said, there are a LOT of problems with this novella (it's extremely short to be a novel, imo) that honestly should have been caught by a sensitivity reader or even the editor in the first go-round. Now, I am an honest horror fan. I love it. There's not too much that can be done in horror that can make me physically ill these days, especially body horror or bodily harm. However, there's horror/splatterpunk and whatever this is that LaRocca wrote. I wasn't a big fan of the gratuitous violence or the in-depth reporting of the rape, nor did I like the idea that the man that was assaulted found his assailant handsome, despite having just been beaten and stabbed by him as well. Also, the constant beating of gay men was not a good point for me.

I also saw a lot of ableism with the disabled girl and the promotion of the idea that her life would be better if she wasn't disabled. As someone who is physically disabled, I don't like the promotion of these types of ideas because it leads to some dark places. We are what we are, you know and we make do with what we have. I honestly think that could have been written a different way, sans ableism.

The writing could have also been much better, along with the pacing of the book. It feels like this book could have been fleshed out much further than it was, in addition to having it workshopped by other readers. I honestly can't recommend this book and would have preferred to not have read it myself. Shame, especially because LaRocca has been recommended to me by several book lovers.

This book was a little all over the place for me. It has lots of LaRocca’s classic themes, such as commentary on religion and LGBTQ+ rights. It had their usual gruelling elements. However, while I’ve been really invested in their short fiction, this one fell slightly flat for me as I didn’t feel connected to the characters. Instead of them being connected or the story being cyclical, this felt more like short stories or snippets of the characters’ loved being shoved between chapters, rather than interwoven. This made the book hard to get into, giving the chapters a bit more of a jagged feel. Overall, it was definitely classic LaRocca, just not their best!