Feast While You Can
Authors: Mikaella Clements & Onjuli Datta
Published by: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 297
Format: Paperback
My Rating: ★★★
Published by: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 297
Format: Paperback
My Rating: ★★★
There is a monster inside of Angelina Sicco. All she wants is to walk her mongrel dog, hold court with her brother in their local dive bar, and bait hot queer women to her sleepy, conservative hometown, Cadenze. The problem is, so does the monster. It wants what Angelina has done, it wants what she’s going to do. It wants to eat her whole life, and every version of every future she might have with it.
Until it possessed her, the famous monster of Cadenze lived deep in a pit inside the mountain. But on the night when Angelina runs into her brother’s ex, the sternly handsome Jagvi, the creature rises hungry and ready to eat. Its claws comb through her private thoughts, her most intimate and traumatic memories. Only Jagvi's touch repels it, but the monster feasts on all the mess that makes up a life, and Angelina Sicco's has never looked tastier. What will Angelina do to protect her future? And just how much will it cost her?
Until it possessed her, the famous monster of Cadenze lived deep in a pit inside the mountain. But on the night when Angelina runs into her brother’s ex, the sternly handsome Jagvi, the creature rises hungry and ready to eat. Its claws comb through her private thoughts, her most intimate and traumatic memories. Only Jagvi's touch repels it, but the monster feasts on all the mess that makes up a life, and Angelina Sicco's has never looked tastier. What will Angelina do to protect her future? And just how much will it cost her?
My thoughts:
Feast While You Can is a queer gothic/body-horror tale that delivers atmosphere in abundance. It can be lush, eerie, and often beautifully grotesque. The horror is imaginative without being gratuitous, and the queer relationships woven through the narrative add layers of tenderness and tension that feel thoughtfully rendered. Clements and Datta create a world that feels damp, hungry, and slightly feral, the kind of setting that should sink its teeth in. And at times, it does.
Yet despite its strong aesthetic and the intriguing premise, the story never fully sank its hooks into me. For all its striking imagery and thematic potential, the emotional and narrative beats didn’t land with the force I hoped for. The characters felt compelling on paper but didn’t quite resonate in practice, and the plot’s momentum sometimes drifted instead of tightening the suspense. The horror elements are inventive, and the queer dynamics are handled with sensitivity, but the emotional impact felt muted. I kept waiting for a sharper twist, a deeper resonance, or a character moment that would linger - and while the book was consistently fine, it didn’t leave much behind once I closed it.
Still, for readers who love gothic atmosphere, bodily dread, and queer lenses on horror, this is an enjoyable, if not unforgettable, read. For me, it was a solid, perfectly fine read: engaging in the moment, but not one that lingered after the final page.
Overall reaction:
Feast While You Can is a queer gothic/body-horror tale that delivers atmosphere in abundance. It can be lush, eerie, and often beautifully grotesque. The horror is imaginative without being gratuitous, and the queer relationships woven through the narrative add layers of tenderness and tension that feel thoughtfully rendered. Clements and Datta create a world that feels damp, hungry, and slightly feral, the kind of setting that should sink its teeth in. And at times, it does.
Yet despite its strong aesthetic and the intriguing premise, the story never fully sank its hooks into me. For all its striking imagery and thematic potential, the emotional and narrative beats didn’t land with the force I hoped for. The characters felt compelling on paper but didn’t quite resonate in practice, and the plot’s momentum sometimes drifted instead of tightening the suspense. The horror elements are inventive, and the queer dynamics are handled with sensitivity, but the emotional impact felt muted. I kept waiting for a sharper twist, a deeper resonance, or a character moment that would linger - and while the book was consistently fine, it didn’t leave much behind once I closed it.
Still, for readers who love gothic atmosphere, bodily dread, and queer lenses on horror, this is an enjoyable, if not unforgettable, read. For me, it was a solid, perfectly fine read: engaging in the moment, but not one that lingered after the final page.
Overall reaction:
