Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin
⭐⭐⭐ 3.5 stars
Publication date: 3rd June 2025

Thank you to Titan Books and Netgalley for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Michelle "Shelly" Pine sees a ‘HELP NEEDED’ sign in a flower shop window. She’s recently left her fiancé, and lost her job; she needs something good. Flowers are good, she decides, as is Neve, the beautiful florist. However, an orchid growing nearby is watching her closely. His name is Baby, and Neve belongs to him. He’s young, he’s hungry, and he’ll do just about anything to make sure he can keep growing big and strong.

This didn't quite hit the mark as I hoped it would; I'm sad about it because I was so excited about this book and its premise (and the cover? Glorious!)
I liked one of the unexpected narrators, the found family, the crumbling shopping centre, the protagonist reclaiming her life and the subtext about narcissistic, toxic and coercive relationships - this was all good stuff.
But I think I wanted more. A sentient people-eating orchid called Baby is plenty weird, and yet I wanted more weirdness. I wanted more body horror and I definitely wanted more of Shell and Neve. I'm still not sure whether I liked the ending or not, or even what kind of ending I would have liked to see. Overall, there was plenty to enjoy in this book but it left me a tad dissatisfied.

A Sapphic, Irish ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ from the author of ‘Other Words for Smoke’? Beyond wish fulfilment for me!

This is the apocalypse microscoped down to the scale of the soul (whatever that mixture of cogitating and emoting might be), and although every reference to Covid might have been edited out of its final form, ‘Eat the Ones You Love’ is still, most certainly, a Pandemic Novel. It’s decay, it’s a response to monstrosity, it’s an evaluation of humanity versus the loss of community. It’s a meditation on acts of intimacy. ‘Eat the Ones You Love’ has profound things to say about sheltered spaces and the safety we infer from them.

Yes, the novel speaks about love; yes, it speaks about death, but it does so in ways that I’ve rarely seen before, and I dug and I dug and I dug and Sarah Maria Griffin rewards every interrogation with revelation. In the first few pages, she loudspeakers “this is a novel about needing help!” and then spends 300 pages condensing what is observably her fathomless insight into the human complexities of need – needing, recognising need, meeting need – and of help – how and when to ask for it, what to give as it and how to give that.

Griffin launches plural anthropological investigations, all of which can be read or reclassified as Pandemic preoccupations. For instance, what is the function – psychologically and philosophically – of planning for the future; how to go from life looking one way to life looking another way; what are connection points between people?

There are more common deliberations given attention: friendship (how do you make friends? When should you keep them?); coming of age (further into adulthood); and badness (how uncomfortably close can we get to a villain?).
And all of this staggering thoughtstuff is channelled through the higher conceit of GROWING THINGS. We’re encouraged to assess the currency of growing things itself as a value: e.g., Jen leaves Northside Dublin to study growing things on the Burren – the value of growing things translating to value in her career (in fact, Jen’s the single instance in the novel that defies my next point).

It’s easy to say that ALL growth as it’s presented in the novel is cut off. Economic infrastructure growth in Northside Dublin is cut off with the shopping centre closure; the growth of Neve’s relationship is cut off as Jen leaves; the growth of Shell’s cosmopolitan self is cut off by the loss of her job and fiancé and moves back to an underprivileged housing estate; Neve welcomes the growth of our Audrey II – named ‘Baby’ by Griffin (‘a wolf in orchid’s clothing’, she writes) – into her body and this invasion cuts off her selfhood.

There are umpteen other instances of growth being cut off in the novel that repay consideration, and I’m purposefully avoiding the biggest ones: Baby growing in the terrarium at the ‘sick heart’ of the Woodbine Crown; and the growth of Shell’s attraction to Neve. To discuss these would be to spoil the book.

However, the top tier symbolism for growing things cut off is the novel’s situation in a florist’s. In interviews, Griffin has gone into detail about her fascination that cut flowers are death; florists meet people at moments of punctuation in life – growth moments, it can be argued – marriage , birth, new home. And at these moments of significant personal growth, we gift people death – dead things – flowers that we have cut off from growth. (Griffin retrained as a florist after burnout in late 2019.)

There’s reward to be had in further contemplation of floristry. Firstly, as ‘a deeply feminised trade’, Griffin has called it; secondly, apocalyptically speaking, it is a trade that people will be doing until the end of the world (since it’s a trade that AI can’t perform).

Plant Horror, Bildungsroman, Speculative Fiction, Pandemic Novel, Sapphic Romance, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Apocalyptic Fiction, Modern Gothic Romance, Sarah Maria Griffin’s latest release is all these things. To be the first thing she wrote after burnout and deciding she had ‘given up writing’, ‘Eat the Ones You Love’ is life-changingly brilliant, in the true sense of the word: brightly shining; distinguished by talent and cleverness; striking the imagination.

If Little Shop of Horrors were set in a dilapidated mall in Ireland, told from the point of view of a carnivorous orchid named Baby. When the adult life that Shell had been nurturing goes to seed, she returns to her family home and finds herself drawn to both a help wanted sign in a flower shop and to Neve, the florist who runs it. But the mall is crumbling from the inside out, and right at its heart lies a greenhouse where Baby spreads his vines and takes root in Shell's mind. This was funny and dark and kept me turning the pages long after bedtime. TV adaptation when?!?

Say it with flowers….but what are we really saying as we provide artfully arranged dead plant matter to people? Flowers can be symbols of grief, joy or desire. We assign meanings to them and they mark important milestones in life. In Sarah Maria Griffin’s unsettling novel Eat The Ones You Love we have behind an unusual tale of desire, new lives and a very different kind of all seeing narrator.

Shell is at her lowest ebb. She’s broken up with her long time boyfriend Gav; lost her office Marketing job and just for good measure is living back home with her parents and younger sisters. A chance advert in the window of a florist brings her into the world of Neve whose life orbits around her shop which sits in a condemned shopping centre. The two women bond but Shell is unaware that someone else is watching and making plans for her.

There is a huge amount I loved in this novel that keeps us guessing. At first just reading the scenes of Shell’s very unhappy life and this chance advert then immediately bonding with Neve we appear to be in a very wholesome domestic love story but then we realise our third person narration is actually an unseen character and they reveal they have not so kind intentions towards Shell.

This story is often about what is being hidden. To the outside world this shopping centre is on its way out as so many are becoming a sea of empty units and ever growing vape shops but inside Neve’s shop does great work and we find a small but close knit of workers who have illicit drinks and parties in the night. Griffin makes all her charged feel human and watching Shell get accepted and feel part of the world is a really lovely bit of character growth but at the same time we are increasingly aware something malignant is going on.

Floristry works as on one level it’s beauty and art and on another it’s performed in biting cold conditions, often using chemicals and tricks to make the dead things stay alive. Neve and Shell bind and are finding there is an attraction to each other but as our narrator starts to reveal themselves (yes a mysterious plant! Trust me it works) but it’s not alway clear if this is not down to their own mysterious influence. Neve has a secret hidden in her life, one that has destroyed her last serious relationship and it also hides in the rotting shopping centre, aptly as the story grows we feel this presence growing in power and planning for its next step in growth. It tells us of its past crimes and the people it’s killed. It’s not a moustache twirling monster but something that very much sees its own survival more important than the humans it is around. It’s ruthless, merciless and doesn’t like to be told what to do. How this plan now features Shell is a growing theme and tension in the book. Is Shell another feeding opportunity or something else?

Neve is a fascinating character and we rarely get into her thoughts. She seems a workaholic, we get to see her last break up and the growing attraction with Shell is starting to let her open up. But our narrator also reveals Neve’s if not outright involvement in deaths but at least a knowledge of them and ensuring no one else knows about them. We are kept guessing all to the end where Neve really fits into these events and it adds a lot of danger to this what could have been a simple romance.

It’s the ending where I think things get a little too frenetic. After so much build up I was expecting characters to start realising what the others were all up to and indeed that our unseen narrator really lets rip. Initially this seems the case but then we get some very quick wrapping up of storylines and even a softer ending that undercuts what we know has been going on. It’s perhaps a little too tidy and for needed the characters to at least start sharing their secrets a lot more - perhaps they would still accept them or been repelled but without that I felt slightly cheated of the drama explosion I was hoping for.

Despite that the wonderful strange mix of of horror and the domestic make this an engaging story and Griffin ensures with our unusual narrator we have what could be a very normal tale told in a very different manner. The character work is beautiful and watching this hidden world unfurl its wonders and terrors made for a really interesting read. Definitely worth a look!

EAT THE ONES YOU LOVE is so weird, but a good weird, and I think that's exactly what the author may have intended with this book! The story follows Shell, a young woman who begins to work at a flower shop run by Neve, and not that anyone knows it, by Baby, the parasitic orchid with a preference for eating humans. I think the weirdness of this book is what made me enjoy it so much, and coupled with the real eccentricity of young people and life, cinches it as a great read of 2025. The prose is down-to-earth and violent, and I love how Griffin tackles obsession and hunger and love and lust all through these wacky POVs. I think if you're in the mood for something fresh, particularly in the horror genre, this one is the book for you!

Eat the Ones You Love is a unique and compelling horror tale from Sarah Maria Griffin. The story follows Shell, a young woman who has moved back home following a split from her boyfriend and the loss of her job. She sees a sign advertising a job in the local florist. Shell takes the job working for the beautiful Neve in the local shopping mall. But Neve isn’t all that meets the eye – she belongs to Baby the orchid that grows in the heart of the mall and Baby’s hungry, hungry for human flesh.

This has got to be one of the most strange and unusual stories I’ve ever read. This is my second book from Sarah Maria Griffin and it was a really enjoyable read. I really liked Griffin’s prose and I thought she did a brilliant job of describing this dilapidated shopping mall that’s slowly rotting away. Griffin also builds the tension really well and I loved the tense, unsettling atmosphere in this story, particularly in the chapters from Baby’s perspective.

The characters were well crafted and I really enjoyed Shell’s story. She’s quite lost and unsure at the start of the story and develops into so much more. I also liked the way Griffin developed the relationship between Shell and Neve as the story progressed. Eat the Ones You Love is well paced and the story ended in a way that I definitely didn’t expect. This unique, slightly unhinged tale is definitely unlike anything I’ve read before so if you love creepy plants or horror books that will stick with you long after reading, you definitely need Eat the Ones You Love on your reading list.

I absolutely loved the atmosphere and the relationship between Shell and Neve and the little nods this book gave to the little shop of horrors, It was a quick paced fun read 4 stars.

Loved this! The voice and perspective of the "narrator" made a really interesting approach to storytelling

I knew Sarah Maria Griffin was the queen of weird after reading Other Words for Smoke, and Eat the Ones You Love only further solidifies that title.
The slow building tension of the novel, through the eyes of our beloved Baby, is genius in how it lures you into Shell and Neve's world whilst unsettling you chapter by chapter. I absolutely loved rooting for Shell and Neve's romance, despite becoming creepily obsessed with the plant that can't let either woman go.
The twists and turns of this book are more branches from the trunk, than diverging paths, as Griffin masterfully shows where the novel is going whilst simultaneously shocking you in the moment. This was a book that I just had to savour - each page as important as the last.

Something tickles my brain in all the right places with creepy LGBTQ+ horror and Eat the Ones You Love ticked all the right boxes.

This just got weirder as it went on, in the absolute best way, but I'm not sure I liked the ending? I feel like it would have made sense if it was just fleshed out by like 50 pages, give it more space to breathe. I don't think it's a bad ending at all, just not the one I think the brilliance of the book deserved.

Unsettling and weird fiction is so popular at the second and this book fits the bill perfectly, The setting was also so perfectly described, I felt so immersed!

I worked in retail for over a decade as a bookseller, and my last few years were spent in a shopping centre that could be described, charitably, as on its last legs. While the shopping centre in this novel has different inspirations, I was viscerally reminded of the decrepit shopping centre I spent years in, where the staff elevators had cavities where phones used to be, decades of graffiti layered over the walls, and no signal. They sank into the basement storage area where it was commonly agreed the zombie apocalypse would begin.

This is a brilliant book about the horrors of working retail, of picking up the pieces of a life swerved off course, and figuring out who you actually are—and that it may not be good. But it’s also about what makes a home, the ties that bind you to people that aren’t about family but are still about love. And of course, it’s about Baby, the young sentient, malevolent orchid growing in the green heart of the shopping centre, who is always hungry.

Baby comes from the same pantheon as Sweet James, the monstrous owl in the wallpaper in OTHER WORDS FOR SMOKE, Sarah Maria Griffin’s earlier novel, and much like I can’t look at owls and wallpaper the same way again, I can now add plants and orchids to the list.

It’s okay, though. I was never much good at keeping them alive.

I finished this one last night and I am still amazed.
Kind of like Little shop of horrors but Audrey 2 is some kind of Orchid and obsessed with a human. And forget the comedy and make it real horror, really dark.
It also has lesbian and bi protagonism Wich is really nice!
And also make it king of gothic but in a old, decrepit, almost abandoned mall in Ireland.
So good!

My swollen hayfeverish eyes leaked in sympathy when trainee florist Shell’s itch started and 👀 shot open when murderous plant Baby’s big eye appeared. This was a very weird adventure into the dark depths of a near-abandoned Irish shopping centre and, despite slightly losing sense of what was going on towards the end as often happens with horror or fantasy, I loved it.

A one of a kind read - unsettling, zany, suprisingly lyrical in parts. It brings Sarah Maria Griffin's fascintating writing style into a whole new world. As a native Dub, the locale of a crumbling Dublin shopping centre is something I can vividly place this story in. The blossoming relationship between Neve and Shell is expertly offset by our ultra creepy narrator Baby, a monsterous plant creature. Such an interesting story, I'm always impressed by this author's work.

Shell has just broken up with her fiancé, lost her job and moved back into her noisy family home. She wants a change! So when she sees a ‘help wanted’ sign in a weird little flower shop in her local shopping centre she decides to give it a go. Shell starts working with Neve who she immediately fancies. There is another presence in the shop though, a mysterious creature called Baby.

I’m a plant girl! A flower girl! Naturally (lol) I loved all of that. The shopping centre where Neve and Shell work is perennially (lol) closing and the gang of people who still work there really add so much. They’re a hoot! Would’ve loved even more of them tbh.

Always fun to have a weird little guy which is something Griffin does so well. I will say I did find some of Shell’s choices to be a bit odd and out of step of what I thought her character was but it did keep me on my toes!

Raced through this. A great time.

Eat the Ones You Love is the perfect read for lovers of weird horror, literally horror and sapphic horror. I have to say I wasn’t sure what to expect but being a lover of The Little Shop of Horrors and the above genres I was excited to try. I’m so glad I did. This was a slow burn read with a unique and wonderfully weird storyline that gets its teeth into you (pun intended) and won’t let go.
The writing is fantastic and really keeps you in the story. You cannot help but become invested and want to know what will happen next. I adored it. I won’t spoil too much but I will say this is a must read for anyone who loves a bit of botanical horror.
As always thank you to Titan Books for the advanced copy to review, my reviews are always honest and freely given.

I have to say, this is certainly the first story I've ever read about someone being in a toxic and abusive relationship with a plant. And boy, it was a ride from start to finish.

After Shell lost her job and broke off her engagement, she had to move back with her parents and sisters while she was doing anything in her power to find a job and move on. She stumbles on a job ad in a flower shop. Neve is looking for a florist assistant. What Shell doesn't know is that there's a plant living in this mall, obsessed with Neve and with his own designs for Shell.

I really loved the characters in this story. Shell is a mess but she's such a relatable mess for me. Having to move back home at 33yo to a city that's slowly being ruined by the current capitalistic nightmare and having no options of getting out is honestly my biggest nightmare. So it was very easy to understand the choices she was making and the bad decisions she was so set on going along with. Neve on the other hand is such a fascinating character because she's so charming and sweet from the start but the more we find out the more horrifying picture it paints and leaves us with a question... How much of her choices can be justified at all.

And then there's Baby, a mysterious plant and omniscient narrator of this story. It's both a brilliant narrative device and horrifying creature that you know from the start cannot have any good intentions.

This book is an enjoyable read, and it doesn't veer too far into horror to make it inaccessible to a casual reader in my opinion.

I have a penchant for weird, literary horror, and it’s always better when it’s sapphic and has sentient carnivorous plants so I really couldn’t ask for any more than ‘Eat the Ones You Love’.

What’s interesting about the horror in this novel, largely body horror, is that it feels more camp than anything. Possibly a nod to the most famous carnivorous plant story, ‘Little Shop of Horrors’? It’s a really compelling juxtaposition against the commentary around the cost of living, housing crisis, and degradation of the estates and suburbs around Dublin.

During a visit to her local shopping mall, Shell Pine sees a ‘HELP NEEDED’ sign in a flower shop window. She’s just left her fiancé, lost her job, and moved home to her parents’ house. She has to bring some good into her life, so she takes a chance. And flowers are just the good thing she’s been looking for, as is Neve, the beautiful florist. The thing is, Neve needs help more than Shell could possibly imagine.

An orchid growing in the heart of the mall is watching them closely. The beautiful florist belongs to him, and he’ll do just about anything to make sure he can keep growing big and strong. Nothing he eats— nobody he eats—can satisfy him, except the thing he most desires. Neve. He will stop at nothing to eat the one he loves.

Infused with wit, heart and horror, this is a story about possession, monstrosity and working in retail. It is about hunger and desire, and other terrible things that grow.

‘Eat the Ones You Love’ is also an examination of the intersection of desire, loneliness and community in this specific setting of a slowly crumbling estate and mall with finding a place and a heart of these communities and discovering a part of yourself that had been forgotten. The workplace romances and intense friendships that form in the Woodbine Crown mall are the heart of the novel and I loved getting to know them all.


The other heart of ‘Eat the Ones You Love’ is, of course, Baby. Baby is a sentient, carnivorous orchid who is rooted in the Green Room of the mall, having its hooks in Neve, the owner of the florist, and reaching for Shell to get what it wants: Neve’s heart. It’s campy and creepy, unnerving and also a little funny, and I mean that in the most positive way. It adds such a fun and compelling element to the story because of course I don’t want this malicious entity to win, but also, wouldn’t it be interesting to find out what that would look like?

The ending really took me by surprise and I was on the edge of my seat waiting to find out what happened but also not wanting to let go of these characters just yet. ‘Eat the Ones You Love’ is a wonderfully dark and twisty addition to the sub-genre of sad women unhinged horror that I absolutely adore.

Thank you to Titan and NetGalley for the review copy. ‘Eat the Ones You Love’ will be released in e-book, audiobook and paperback on 5 June 2025.

Written by Sophie

After loving Other Words for Smoke and Spare and Found Parts this book was a no-brainer. I adore Griffin's writing, it's perfectly balanced between down to Earth and dark magical weirdness and Eat the Ones You Love definitely delivered on my expectations!

I listened to the audiobook of this one, as well as reading along via ebook, and I enjoyed the added drama the voice acting brought. This is, of course, inspired by Little Shop of Horrors, as well as drawing on Griffin's own retail and floristry experiences. The combination really allows Griffin to draw you into this incredibly realistic world of a run-down suburb of Ireland.

Small towns can bring their own creepy vibe on their own, and Griffin really leans into that to emphasis our main character Shell's separation from her "big town" friends and her previous life before she came back to her hometown. And our sentient plant, Baby, weaves his way into the life of her friend group and into the shopping centre itself. Let alone Baby's entwining with Shell and the flower shop owner Neve.

I adored the LGBTQ+ representation in this book. We specifically have gay, lesbian, and bisexual representation, and they are interwoven so naturally into the book. Just as a natural part of life, as they damn well should be. I'm very glad to see this becoming more common now in publishing!

The book really ramps up near the end, after a long slow build that really entrenches you into the world. The story draws you in, slowly, surely. Linking you intrinsically to Shell's life, to the shopping centre and Neve her new friends. Just as Baby links himself, slowly but surely, into Shell's being.

This book was everything I wanted from Sarah Maria Griffin and I'm so excited for everyone else to discover the Woodbine gang and become invested in this short span of their lives.