Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - Feed Them Silence

First of all, this is NOT a horror novella and I'm not sure why it keeps winding up on lists of horror stories. It is a sci-fi novella focused around a failing marriage between two academics and a research project where our narrator gets to experience what it's like to be a wolf.

Despite not being horror, I think if you liked Our Wives Under The Sea you might like this. It's a different take on "failing sapphic marriage," if you can handle a narrator who is a self-centered racist dick.

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depmythmoon's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This is a book where I struggled to find the meaning upon the end, so much so that I went to the acknowledgement page seeking answers. I’m not 100% sure I found them, but it at least gave me a satisfying enough answer to come to a conclusion.

I believe this book aims to parallel what COVID did to us as a society, how it “chemically altered” our brains… with a sci-fi wolfy take. Much like we all isolated due to the pandemic and developed our obsessions with particular media, hobbies, or entertainers, this novella shows how a neuroscientist, Sean, turned to an obsession with wolves in her times of loneliness. (She wasn’t really alone though; she was just actively choosing work over her wife, Riya, who was growing tired with her one-sided support.) I feel like this aimed to show the dramatized outcome of how these obsessions and parasocial relationships that some of us developed during our COVID isolation caused our real life relationships to suffer. Then again, I’m reaching at straws here because the ending still left me confused. Someone smarter than me would have to figure that one out. I don’t believe I was the intended audience, honestly.

Sean is a selfish character whose words say one thing while her actions say another. She just cannot take accountability for her actions to save her life. This woman supposedly loves her wife and wants to mend their relationship, but each time Riya holds out an olive branch, Sean finds some way to slap it back in her face. She’s so obsessed with feeling what her wolf subject, Kate, feels and the intimacy of their supposed “connection” that she neglects the very real connection to her wife. She even has a therapist telling her that her priorities aren’t in order, and while she says she understands she has to fix things, she goes right back to obsessing over work again. I enjoyed how the writer was able to portray Sean as selfish, all the while not having the protagonist be aware of that character flaw herself.

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misssleepy's review

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challenging dark sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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fieldfarmer's review

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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saturdayslaughter's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Ouch. A story deep with guilt, (spoilers for the ending)

it felt both awful and true to life how Sean ends up in a better place while the wolves will never recover.

Shit sucks! It was satisfying to get a very depressed mood like this

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panickedhonking's review

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

This book will not feel good to read. The afterword describes the book as coming from the "fertile, toxic soil" of the doomspiral of COVID. It's not a bad book, and if the subject intrigued you go for it, but... Woof

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mahitdzmare's review

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

sean was not deranged enough

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wafer's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Holy shit this is everything I want in speculative fiction. Terribly fucked up and gorgeously written. Tackling abuse and parasocial dependency in such a way I can only describe it as “emotionally gut-wrenching in a detached way” - it’s like reading a necropsy report without a clinical eye. Brilliant.

One of those rare “I thought the cover looked cool and now it’s a top contender of the year” books for me.

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