Grief Eater - Emma Osborne

GRIEF EATER

EMMA OSBORNE

*****

Visceral, gritty, and unforgiving, Grief Eater is a zombie story like you’ve never read before.

When Kristina rises from her violent death, she’s not the same fragile woman her family once abandoned. She’s rageful, powerful, and hungry—for the blood of the ones who were supposed to love her. With a newfound craving to see vengeance and grief served, she launches into a once-in-an-undead-lifetime journey across blood-slicked highways to the scorched Australian bush and her hometown. As her body fails and her mind fractures, she’s left with one final question: Is she here to forgive, or to feed?

A transgressive, gory examination of queer identity and found family, Grief Eater sinks its teeth into trauma and what it means to be devoured by grief. 

MY REVIEW

*****

‘When I was bitten and turned, the walls crumbled into nothingness. The pain and the hate and the grief and the fear cascaded though my body, right down to my bones.’

When Kristina is bitten by one of the undead, she is turned into a creature of instinct and survival. However, there is a hurt and a hatred and a rage within her that starts her journey to find her family and get her revenge.

Grief Eater is a fresh retelling of the somewhat overdone zombie apocalypse trope. Rather than focussing on the end of the world and how it has come about, we are fully focused on our main character. The narrative alternates between her journey as one of the undead and flashbacks to her life before, which is pretty miserable and contains a lot of trigger warnings. As a teenager, coming out as queer, the physical abuse from her father and brother and mental abuse from her mother are a tough read in places. However, we fully empathise with her, even as she is stalking humans as prey and carrying out a mission to slaughter her entire family.

As well as descriptions of abuse, the book contains a lot of violence and images of blood and gore (which to be honest you’d fully expect going into a zombie novel from the zombie’s point of view!). It’s well written though and had me hooked throughout. Although it’s less than 100 pages, it has a self-contained story arc and a satisfying conclusion that left me thinking about the book and the characters long after I’d put the book down.

Overall, Grief Eater is fresh meat and a great twist on the zombie apocalypse trope, with a character you really care about and a story you won’t want to put down. Thank you to NetGalley and Interstellar Flight Press for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

LINKS TO BUY

Amazon UK