⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Pros: gory, graphic, a wild ride from start to finish, I couldn't look away
Cons: I didn't find this to be a con but some folks in book club did... not one of these characters is likable.
TW: Addiction, Drug abuse, Drug use, Blood, Abortion, Child death, Excrement
I bring to you one of my new favorite books. Ghost Eaters has blasted its way into my top 5, maybe even top 3 books that I've ever read. I initially read this for the first time in October 2022and as I read, I notated how I was feeling: "Invested, genuinely creeped out this entire time and loving every second of it." Shortly after finishing, my husband and I took a road trip and I had him listen to the audiobook while I drove. He also loved it . Then, January rolled around, my birth month, so the perfect month to get Weirdo Book Club to read it with me for a third time!
This book was so grotesque, deliciously graphic and evocative. Every single gruesome thing was so vividly descriptive, I felt like I could see everything, feel everything.
I loved this book so much that I made fan art which I then made into a sticker sheet. It's one of the coolest things I've ever made and the kicker? The author Clay McLeod Chapman himself bought a sticker sheet!!! It was really cool. If anyone wants a sticker sheet of their own, you can find them in my Etsy shop. Enough about my obsession, let's talk about why I'm obsessed.
The story follows Erin, a directionless girl who is trying to sort out her life with no help from her friend group, namely, her toxic, junkie ex boyfriend Silas. After she, Tobias and Amara stage an intervention for Silas, things go awry and she snaps at him. The next day, Silas is dead. Erin is understandably wracked with guilt over how things ended between them and struggling with her unresolved feelings. Fear not though, Tobias has a plan: a new drug that lets you see and speak to ghosts. What could possibly go wrong with this plan, right?
Spoilers + Thoughts
Like I said, all of these characters are extremely unlikable. Erin is deeply flawed and at times, utterly hopeless and pitiful. She is so obsessed with Silas that it ultimately leads her to her doom, so it is hard to feel sorry for her when she finds herself haunted by all of her demons. Erin's relationship with her parents was annoying as well because you can just tell that they are out of ideas on how to help her but they continue to offer and try their best, but all Erin does is complain and whine about them. Utterly exhausting. Amara seems just as flawed by in a more chaotic way (the karaoke, the drinking, the moving away on a whim, the sleeping with Silas behind Erin's back) and then there is Tobias who is somehow even more obsessed with Silas than both girls combined. It was an all around toxic friend group. That goes without saying since he was the one who helped him workshop the drug (Ghost) and then pushed it onto all the grieving people he could find in order to perfect the formula.
Speaking of the grieving people, my god was that house a sick, sad place. The grieving mother in particular made me feel so hollow. I can't imagine the pain of losing a baby but then add to it the fact that you are now huddled in a strange house, searching for the ghost of the baby you lost, wasting away in your own skin. It was fucking devastating to read.
Speaking of babies, the damn demon baby with the empty eyes and mouth that Erin was playing peekaboo around the house with made my skin crawl. Absolutely not. Playing with it was one thing but then talking about breastfeeding it and fantasizing about her, Silas and the baby all living happily ever after in the boarded up house they haunt was almost too much. And oh my god, you just know that place smelled like death and rot.
One of the first "oh shit" moments in the book was after Erin took her first dose of Ghost and went to work the next day and claimed to smell BBQ, assuming someone in the office had gotten lunch catered. She then looks up and sees the ghosts of burned corpses wandering around the office. My breath caught, I was unwell. That was also the first time she realized that the ghosts could see her too and that they could smell the Ghost drug on her. Absolute insanity.
Near the end when most everything has been revealed and the ghosts start to rip themselves apart, I screamed. Literally, screamed in my car. My poor husband is so quiet and he didn't deserve it but it was a reflex, I could not help it. It was a full blown nightmare of skin tearing, eyeballs gouging, tongue chewing.
I absolutely hated the fact that she took more ghost in the end. I wanted to kick through the book and shake her, screaming "HOW DARE YOU!!! AFTER ALL THAT YOU PUT US THROUGH?!" I think it speaks to how addiction and obsession can have people in such a vice grip though and that even when it makes no sense, even when it is the worst decision you can make, people still go back to the things that nearly killed them. I still want to fight her though.
When Erin sees a mural of herself on the wall in town, I thought that was cool. She will essentially be a living ghost, a piece of lore tied to the town. I especially liked the epitaph:
Ever hear the tale of Erin Hill? She ground her lover into a pill. She lived in a house just down the lane, Until the day it went up in flames.
Listen, I know not everyone likes gore or gratuitous depictions of violent acts however, if you do, this book is a blast. It's well written, it's evocative and atmospheric, it would make an incredible horror movie that I would absolutely watch, with my hands covering my eyes for the majority. I've never read anything quite like this before and I am anxiously awaiting the day where I get to read something like this again for the first time. If you pick it up, be sure to come back and let me know if its haunted you the way it has me.
Also, please enjoy my GoodReads review and follow me there if you'd like! This review is a great summary of all the things I plan to discuss at length below.
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