Sarah Maria Griffin’s Eat the Ones You Love is a rare specimen in the garden of contemporary horror fiction—a novel that intertwines workplace drama, queer romance, and botanical horror into something both beautiful and deeply unsettling. This story of a sentient, malevolent plant and the humans caught in its tendrils offers a fresh take on possession narratives while exploring themes of loneliness, connection, and the monstrous nature of desire.
Set in the dilapidated Woodbine Crown Mall in Dublin, Griffin crafts a claustrophobic world that feels simultaneously mundane and magical. The shopping center itself becomes a character—a decaying temple with a strange glass terrarium at its heart, housing something ancient and hungry that calls itself “Baby.” This setting provides the perfect soil for Griffin’s exploration of how the extraordinary can bloom within the ordinary, and how dangerous beauty can be when it takes root.
The Protagonists: Tangled in Greener Pastures
At the center of this botanical nightmare stands Shell Pine, newly single and unemployed after her relationship and career collapsed simultaneously. When she spots a “HELP NEEDED” sign in a small florist shop, she sees an opportunity for rebirth. What she finds instead is Neve, the enigmatic shop owner whose strange relationship with the plant called Baby will ultimately entangle Shell in something far more sinister than a workplace romance.
Griffin excels at character development. Shell’s journey from a woman seeking simple stability to someone caught between desire and horror is compelling, while Neve’s mysterious connection to Baby creates a fascinating dynamic that drives the narrative forward. Their complicated relationship feels authentic, with Griffin capturing the uncertain dance of attraction between two women who can’t quite articulate what they want from each other.
The novel is also narrated in part by Baby itself, giving readers a chilling glimpse into the plant’s consciousness. These sections are some of the most effective in the book, written with a predatory intelligence that makes the botanical villain genuinely frightening. Baby’s voice is both alien and intimately human, a contradiction that makes its hunger all the more disturbing.
Narrative Structure: Growth Cycles
Griffin structures her novel around botanical growth metaphors—Seed, Shoot, Blossom, and Fruit—creating a natural progression for the horror to unfold. This structure works wonderfully with the themes of the novel, allowing the story to develop organically while constantly reminding readers of the unnatural entity at its center.
The pacing is deliberate and hypnotic, with Griffin taking her time to establish the strangeness of the Woodbine Crown and the relationships between her characters before accelerating into more overt horror. Some readers might find the middle sections a bit meandering, but this slower growth serves a purpose, allowing the characters and their connections to develop fully before Baby’s true nature is revealed.
Griffin’s Prose: A Hothouse of Language
Griffin’s writing is lush and atmospheric, with a distinctive voice that blends poetic imagery with sharp observations:
“The corridors pulled back almost into darkness: somewhere down the line the white, buzzing lights were off. The carpet was beige, laid in tiles. The walls were, or had been, painted white but had aged into a near yellow. It was notably cold, and Shell felt her nose turn pink against the change. She felt like she had stepped into somewhere winter, somewhere distant. She loved it.”
This richness sometimes threatens to overwhelm the narrative, particularly in Baby’s sections, where the figurative language occasionally becomes too dense. However, when Griffin strikes the right balance, her prose creates an immersive experience that draws readers into the decaying mall and the increasingly disturbing events unfolding within it.
Themes: Hunger, Desire, and Possession
Eat the Ones You Love explores several interwoven themes with intelligence and nuance:
Hunger vs. Desire: The novel constantly blurs the line between wanting to possess someone and wanting to consume them, suggesting that love and predation might be closer than we’d like to admit.
Control and Autonomy: Both Shell and Neve struggle with questions of agency, with Shell escaping one controlling relationship only to fall into another, while Neve’s relationship with Baby represents the ultimate loss of self.
Decay and Renewal: The dying mall becomes a metaphor for how endings can spark new beginnings, though Griffin subverts this by suggesting that what grows from decay might be more monstrous than what came before.
Isolation: The characters are all isolated in different ways, and their loneliness makes them vulnerable to Baby’s manipulations, highlighting how hunger for connection can lead us into danger.
Strengths and Weaknesses
What Flourishes
Atmospheric Setting: The Woodbine Crown Mall is vividly realized, a perfect petri dish for horror to grow.
Complex Characters: Shell, Neve, and even Baby are multidimensional, with clear motivations and internal struggles.
Unique Horror: The botanical terror is a refreshing change from standard horror tropes, making familiar fears feel new again.
Queer Representation: The romance elements feel genuine and complex rather than tokenistic.
What Withers
Uneven Pacing: Some middle sections drag slightly, while the conclusion feels somewhat rushed.
Occasional Overwriting: Griffin sometimes piles on metaphors when simpler prose would be more effective.
Underdeveloped Secondary Characters: Some of the mall workers feel more like sketches than fully realized people.
Ambiguous Ending: While intentional, the conclusion might frustrate readers seeking clearer resolution.
Comparisons to Other Works
Fans of Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties will recognize similar themes of bodily horror and queer experience, while readers who enjoyed the sentient plant horror of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation will find much to appreciate in Baby’s alien perspective. Griffin’s previous works, particularly Other Words for Smoke (which won an Irish Book Award in 2019), showed her talent for weaving supernatural elements into realistic settings—a skill she refines further here.
Eat the Ones You Love also shares DNA with Seanan McGuire’s Into the Drowning Deep and T. Kingfisher’s The Twisted Ones in its blend of character-driven narrative and slowly building dread. However, Griffin’s distinctly Irish sensibility and her focus on workplace dynamics give this novel its own unique flavor.
Final Thoughts: A Hothouse Gothic for Our Times
Eat the Ones You Love is a singular achievement in contemporary horror, blending elements of workplace drama, toxic romance, and ecological anxiety into something genuinely unnerving. Griffin has crafted a novel that will make readers look differently at every houseplant in their home, while also considering the ways we become entangled in relationships that might be growing in unhealthy directions.
Despite some pacing issues and occasional stylistic excesses, this is a book that will root itself in readers’ minds long after the final page. For those seeking horror that is as thoughtful as it is disturbing, Eat the Ones You Love offers a garden of delights—though you might want to be careful what you touch.
Eat the Ones You Love is recommended for fans of:
Body horror with a botanical twist
Character-driven supernatural fiction
Irish Gothic literature
LGBTQ+ horror
Stories that blend the mundane with the monstrous
Be warned, however: like Baby itself, this novel has a way of getting under your skin and taking root where you least expect it. Read at your own risk—and perhaps keep your houseplants at a safe distance while you do.