This Vicious Hunger

by Francesca May

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Wild and Wicked Things comes a dark gothic fantasy about intoxication, obsession and a desperate hunger for knowledge, whatever the cost.

'A queer fairy tale of toxic romance that echoes with longing' Tanya Pell, author of Her Wicked Roots

Thora Grieve finds herself destitute and an outcast after the sudden death of her husband, but a glimmer of hope arrives when a family friend offers her the chance to study botany under a famed professor. Once at the university, Thora becomes entranced by a mysterious young woman, Olea, who emerges each night to tend to the plants in the private garden below her window.

Hungry for connection, Thora befriends Olea through the garden gate and their relationship quickly and intensely blossoms. Intoxicated, Thora throws herself into finding a cure for Olea's ailment and sinks deeper into a world of beauty, poison and obsession. She's finally found the freedom to pursue her darkest desires, but will it be worth the price?

'This Vicious Hunger will consume you like a sweet poison. May deftly unfurls the dark, dangerous underbelly of science, obsession and desire through the lens of three morally grey women that will keep you turning the pages long into the night'
Maddie Martinez, author of The Maiden and Her Monster

'The dark, romantic gothic fantasy of my dreams! The atmosphere is truly luscious, the intrigue takes root in you and won't let go, and the payoff is absolutely delicious. I devoured it'
Hannah Mathewson, author of Witherward

Praise for Francesca

'Brimming with romance and gilded with danger, Wild and Wicked Things is a heady, lyrical gem of a book' Hannah Whitten, New York Times bestselling author of For the Wolf

'Haunting, immersive, and seething with dark magic, Wild and Wicked Things cast its spell on me'
Alexis Henderson, author of The Year of the Witching

'Wild and Wicked Things ticked all my boxes . . . I couldn't put it down'
Genevieve Gornichec, author of The Witch's Heart

Readers are loving This Vicious

'I absolutely loved every second'
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

WOOOW. This book was such a fantastic read. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, it was so intense and beautiful, and mysterious and romantic'
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'The atmosphere and intrigue have you turning pages like there's no tomorrow!'
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'If you looked up the definition of gothic fantasy, it would just be a picture of this book.
add in slow burn and this is a feast fit for a king'
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'Haunting and seething with dark desires'
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'This Vicious Hunger delivers everything I want from a gothic fantasy . . . moody, claustrophobic, and full of dangerous beauty'
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Gothic, Lesbian, LGBT, Queer, Vampires

433 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 26, 2025

About the author

Francesca May grew up in the middle of England where she spent her childhood devouring fantasy books and brewing potions in her back garden. She currently lives in Derby with her partner, three black cats and two elderly rescue dogs.

By day she works as a bookseller. By night she accidentally kills every house plant she touches and writes novels about gothic mansions, witchcraft, and queer love.

Reviews

[Bon · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐️ 3 (closer to a 2.5, honestly.)

This book is written beautifully and that's just about the only thing it's got going for it, which is incredibly sad as I am a staunch defender and fan of May's other novel, Wild and Wicked Things. I was waiting for this release with bated breath and when I was approved for an ARC, I was ecstatic. It truly sounds right up my alley on paper. However, in reality, This Vicious Hunger is mind-numbingly repetitive and quite frankly, unfinished. May is able to paint a gorgeously gothic world with words, the atmosphere of this novel is vivid and horrific and quite disgusting at times, but setting aside her prose, you'll find this beautiful world empty. There is not much world building, although this is an alternate world to our own, I believe, and the characters within just...simply didn't wow me. They were boring, or alternatively, unlikable. I know one of the main themes of this book was obsession and I'm not against unlikable characters, infact I think they can be enthralling within the right narrative, but these characters were just annoying. This mixed with the incredibly repetitive nature of dialog made the majority of this story a slog. A pretty, well-written slog, but still dull. There's actually a point in which a character says to another something along the lines of "how many times are we going to be having the same conversation?" That felt like lampshading.

There's also the ending, which isn't really an ending. The book just kind of...ends. There's no real conclusion and I do not believe this book is the first in a series, and for that reason alone I couldn't in good conscious recommend this story. If you do like lesbian horror (this is weak on actual romance, however), and you have a thing for plants, this might be for you. I will be reading anything else May puts out but this one definitely wasn't for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Brend · Rating 4 out of 5]

With a 3.13 av. rating, I fear some of y'all just don't get. Skill issue.
This one's for the real yearners, the real dark cottage core lovers, the real fantasy dark academia fellows.
And if you don't get it, it's fine. But you would if you were a true evil lover girl.

[DianaRose · Rating 4 out of 5]

firstly, thank you to the publisher for an arc!

3.5 stars

2025 seems to be the year for toxic sapphic romance, but also sentient flora and fauna that are obsessed with humans! this vicious hunger revolves around toxic (literally!!), sapphic botanists in a dark academia setting, with many surprise twists.

[alyssa✨ · Rating 2 out of 5]

i’m actually so frustrated by this and i’m so sad that this was a miss because it sounded like something i would love. sapphic dark academia with botany?? sign me the fuck up. unfortunately the execution was not there :(

this was so repetitive, and ultimately just flat out boring. the same things kept happening over and over again and i felt like the characters kept having the same conversations every couple chapters. and don’t get me started on the ending. when we finally start getting something interesting it just ENDS. so unsatisfying

[Rachel (TheShadesofOrange)]

3.5 Stars
This was a lush piece of gothic horror. This isn't a personal favourite subgenre, but I thought this one was well drawn with interesting characters.

I particularly enjoyed the use of the plants within the story which was one of the best aspects.

I would recommend this one to readers who enjoy Gothic horror or have a particular affinity for plant horror.

Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

*VERY light spoilers below*

Man, this sounded so awesome and turned out to be a letdown. It was all over the place in terms of character, plot, and writing.

The story starts with nice worldbuilding about the grief rituals of this world, which then doesn’t really get used for anything important. I was excited to see what else was in store, but then there was hardly any more worldbuilding and several aspects that made me ask inconvenient questions. I didn’t really get why women weren’t allowed to study at the university, except this one random woman who has an introductory letter, and I would have loved more backstory on why the society is so (clumsily) sexist. The narrator notes that plants have “Latin names” and describes a “Franco meringue” smell. But this book clearly does not take place on Earth as we know it, so these seemed like things an editor should have caught.

I noted similar sloppiness in the writing, which had occasional moments of creepy, seductive loveliness but was more often anachronistic and clunky, especially in the second half or so of the book. For instance, we get a “‘Sorry,’ I said apologetically,” along with similar bad dialogue tags, and characters keep asking each other if they’re “okay” and eventually adding “fuck” to every sentence. I have zero problem with profanity if it makes sense to the characters and world, but the book had a Renaissance-era setting and started with more flowery language, so these choices took me out of the story as surely as references to the real world did.

The characters are nonsensical. Our protagonist is weak even when she says she is strong, and near the end of the book insists she has changed to be stronger because otherwise the reader wouldn’t have noticed. She originally plans to get close to her love interest to steal plants from the garden, until the author realizes that another character is bad for having done the same thing, and suddenly this motivation is never alluded to again.

She falls into insta-lust with the love interest, who is just a sexy mysterious cardboard cutout until the narrator gets close enough to her, at which point she (the love interest) suddenly develops a strong will and something resembling a personality so that the plot can grope blindly for a new direction. (Don’t get too attached to this newfound characterization, because her resolve will ebb as the plot needs it to.) Let’s not forget poor Leo, who is just an uncomplicated nice dude who exists to get emotionally beat up and to provide an opportunity for the heroine to exchange cringy banter. And then the villain is a cartoonishly evil caricature who lacks only a twirlable mustache, despite the author’s feeble attempt at an explanatory backstory.

And with characters like that, could there be much hope for a believable plot? It slows to a crawl around 60% and just meanders through a bunch of manufactured crises, stupid decisions, lots of sex (which honestly is written fine so props for that), and weird fake science that doesn’t get much explanation when it works (or doesn’t?). The main characters, particularly the protagonist, have almost no agency and almost never move the plot forward through their own actions. The narrator is also frustratingly slow to figure things out. And then the ending is unsatisfying, hinting at a story that might have been a lot more interesting. Sequel bait, perhaps? I don’t think I’ll bite.

I save 2-star reviews for books I’m not excited to pick back up to finish. I kept reading because this one had SO much potential and I wanted to see where it was going, but it needed another draft or two to work out the kinks.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[shotsofbrandy ✨ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you, NetGalley and Redhook Publishing for this ARC.

This book hardly made it to 2 stars for me. I wanted to love this. SO BAD. The premise held such promise but was poorly, poorly executed. I am a sucker for gothic academia and I bow to any sapphic romance... My first immediate thought when starting this book was how utterly disconnected I felt from the main female character, Thora. The depth of Thora was limited, which didn't help the situation. This story progressed at a snail's pace. It dragged, and sadly, I was relieved when it was done.

[Zana · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow, what a dull, plodding, repetitive mess.

Publisher's Weekly called this "disappointing" and "all vibes, no follow-through," and I agree 110%.

I even had to check the publisher's website to see if this was YA or adult because the tone was quite juvenile. This novel unsuccessfully tried to be serious and deep with its fantasy Victorian Gothic themes (lack of women's rights, rigid roles for men and women, woman trapped in a dark magical garden, etc.), but it came off as tropey and uninspired.

The worldbuilding itself made no sense. It was like the author didn't have a good grasp on her own world. I thought this was a fantasy world unrelated to the real world. But then there were Italian names mixed in with English names, and Latin words and phrases ("Doctrina est vita aeterna") were sprinkled here and there. I was confused. Such lazy worldbuilding.

The characters weren't any better. Everyone except for the FMC felt severely underdeveloped. Leo was giving major Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice vibes. I thought that Dr. Petaccia would be an interesting and memorable character; she was anything but.

At several points in the story, I legitimately thought that the love interest was a ghost or just a figment of Thora's imagination. Imagine my surprise when I realized that she was an actual person who was just there hanging out in the creepy secret garden. What.

The second half of the novel was egregiously bad. The story became so repetitive that I wondered if I was rereading the same chapters. Thora and Olea meet. They have sex. Rinse and repeat.

I'm a terrible person who loves to read about toxic relationships and problematic MCs and/or love interests, but even this one couldn't save my reading experience.

The climax and ending made no sense. No spoilers here, but I thought that the author really wanted Thora to break out of the typical Victorian lady mold. Instead, her character "growth" became more and more cliched. Or maybe that was the point. I don't know. I stopped caring a while ago.

For such a cool title and cover, this entire thing ended up being so disappointing. I wish this novel was about Thora's family's religious death rites referenced in the beginning, but sadly, that part of the story didn't pan out.

Thank you to Redhook and NetGalley for this arc.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have deeply mixed feelings about This Vicious Hunger. It is slow, tense, and creeping sapphic gothic horror, exploring hunger and toxicity in both the literal and metaphorical sense. Success, love, fame, belonging—for women that are forbidden from such wants, hunger comes at a great cost. Moreover, the book explores toxicity in relationships: what happens when desire becomes selfishness? When success outweighs all else? When you believe you know what is best for another? The book pits love against academic valor, twisting it all in a botanical horror where plants are both refuge and toxin. There are a lot of really interesting ideas at play in this book, though I struggled with the pacing and worldbuilding, particularly with a somewhat unsatisfying ending.

Thora, daughter of an undertaker and recently widowed of a brief and unhappy marriage, is at the mercy of her in-laws: she has no money, and has no desire to fall back into the cage of marriage with another. Salvation comes when she is invited to study at a prestigious university by a renowned botanist and medical researcher—a friend of her deceased father whom she has never met. She is swept into the world of academia, the lone woman in world of men. She finds solace only in the garden outside of her window, and the strange woman, Olea, who lives inside. Caught between her pursuit of academic success and her greedy fascination and lustful friendship with Olea, Thora must navigate a world which seeks to cage her and desires that could not be more difficultly intertwined.

The tone of this book is fascinating; it achieves a great sense of gothic horror. It never feels as though all is right with the world. The reader is always left with the sense of darkness brewing in the background, of something that could go wrong at any second. This, combined with a really fascinating take on plant-based horror, was fascinating. I loved the use of toxicity, of poisonous plants and an overgrown garden, as both danger and refuge. While the romance is certainly its own breed of toxic across the book, I also really enjoyed much of it: rife with miscommunication and flawed protagonists, the book presents haunting and compelling metaphors of hunger and desire. In this, I do think the book was a success. I finished the book feeling like I had a lot to think about within its symbolism and relationships.

That being said, I also struggled with this book. It’s really slow and meandering. I’m familiar enough with gothic horror to expect a degree of tense, deliberate pacing. However, I felt that this book was brought down by the sheer amount of repetition and the feeling that the plot often just wasn’t moving forward. Ideas are repeated a lot; the characters often have very circular thought and behavior patterns. While I know that this was intentional to a degree, the book just feels too long. It was a 6-7 hour read for me and probably could have been a 5-6 hour read and achieved all of the same things. It takes a lot for the plot with Olea to really begin. I found this to be especially exacerbated in the ending: the book is so slow, so meandering, so repetitive, especially in the end. I don’t want to say much to avoid spoilers, but a big part of the ending is deliberately off-page and ambiguous. While I can tell it is a deliberate decision to be on-theme with the rest of the book, it was also just frustrating after an already slow reading experience.

Another minor nitpick is that the world is clearly a fantasy world: made-up country names and places, made-up deities, its own folklore. However, these ideas were used so sparingly that, when they were brought it, it almost felt like a mistake. I think it needed to be fleshed out to really have impact. For example, Thora is the daughter of an undertaker and has spent a lot of time around death rites. The death rites are modeled on deities unique to the world. We hear references to these deities and their myth no more than a handful of times throughout the book. With death and the ritual of death is so important to the story, it feels like something is missing when it’s built on a fantasy world that is so swept into the background. We hear one folklore in the book which is clearly meant used symbolically for the characters, but it feels so obvious and intrusive because the worldbuilding is otherwise nonexistent. I normally love the use of folklore, but in this book it ended up feeling more like the reader wasn’t trusted to see the themes of the book than something organically built into the story.

In the end, I’m giving this book 3.5 stars rounded down. There’s a lot I liked about it, and a lot of the themes were explored successfully. However, I still just struggled with some aspects of the book. I would recommend it for a reader interested in sapphic gothic horror who is looking for a book with a slow pace and a lot of complex and intriguing metaphor to think about long after the book is done.

Thank you Redhook and Orbit Books for providing an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Ally · Rating 3 out of 5]

Got an arc from orbit’s mailing list. 3.5 rounded up I think?

This was an interesting book. The writing is lovely and I devoured (no pun intended) half of it in two days as I was desperate to know what was going on. It’s deliberately paced in a way that to me didn’t feel boring, just doling out information at a pace that kept me so intrigued I didn’t wanna put it down.
I found the last 100 pages or so to be a touch repetitive, in terms of the characters’ arguments though. It feels like it’s setting up for a sequel that I will gladly read but if that’s the case I think it should’ve ended sooner than it did. I can’t say “nothing happened” because that’s not it at all, lots of important things do happen, but where it concludes feels like strange placement to me, where ending it sooner I feel could’ve told a more complete story.

Like I said, I did like it and I loved trying to figure out what was going on and what would happen next, I just feel it stumbled a smidge at the end when it didn’t have to! That said, I will read a sequel if there is one because I want to see this wrap up solidly!

[blank ⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺]

arc secured

[Denise Ruttan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed Wild and Wicked Things so I was curious about this author's next effort as well, but I had some of the same issues with this one as I did with her first. However I loved this enough to take it to a 4 star rating.

This Vicious Hunger is moody, atmospheric and dripping with Gothic ambience. This author is excellent at setting a scene and building dread. It also hits some of the trends that seem to be hitting the shelves lately: sapphic plant horror, vampirism and cannibalism.

There is a romance in it but ultimately this really isn't a romance with a satisfying HEA; this falls more solidly into the Gothic horror category. But this author really does horror right. Not in the gory, in your face way, but more in the burrow into your bones sort of way until you're thoroughly creeped out.

Thora feels trapped from one gilded cage to another. A closeted lesbian in a heterosexual society where that isn't allowed, she goes from studying botany with her undertaker father and dreaming of university, to marriage to an abusive man. Her husband dies soon after in a fire, and her bridal family, desperate to be rid of her, saddles her off to university, where an old friend of her late father's has asked to take her on as an apprentice.

The professor is a woman, it turns out, and a ruthless, driven scientist who is working on a secret research project. At first Thora throws herself into lectures and makes a new friend, Leo, who is also a closeted gay man but can't acknowledge it. This book did a very good job showing how oppressive compulsory heterosexuality can be. But for being her lifelong dream, Thora doesn't seem excited about university, and quickly loses interest in academia.

She instead becomes obsessed with the garden underneath her window and the girl who is trapped inside, Olea. It soon becomes apparent that Olea, living in her poison grove, is sick, and Thora is desperate to find a cure. But all is not what it seems and the plot descends into twisty madness from there.

Spending more time around Olea, Thora is stricken by a ravenous hunger that can never be sated. Is her obsession influenced by the poison, the sickness? Or something else entirely? What's real and what's madness? The book kept me on the edge of my seat trying to figure out what was going on, reading like a fever dream much of the time as the second half spiraled out of control.

Sometimes the science didn't seem all that accurate and appeared more supernatural than scientific. Olea could also often seem like a child and I had a hard time rooting for their romance because of the imbalance in their power dynamic. But this isn't a romance, this is toxic lesbian love and obsession at its finest. I found the progression of the obsession gripping.

My main issue was with that ending. No one dies (well, in the final, normal sense of the word), but I found that open-ended conclusion very unsatisfying as a resolution. It felt like a tease for series potential but I wouldn't read a second book in this series. I really wanted it to be a stand alone. It just felt muddled at the end. Thora never really could escape, which is a very unsatisfying resolution.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Jamedi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review originally on JamReads

This Vicious Hunger is a gothic romantic fantasy novel written by Francesca May, published by Orbit Books. A delicious and tense story built around a slow-burn sapphic romance that is used as the way to explore hunger and toxicity in the literal and metaphorical sense, analyzing to which point a relationship might just become selfishness, and giving us a broader picture over academia, the price of success and the role of women over a fundamentally masculine environment.

Thora, daughter of an undertaker and recently widowed, is at the mercy of her in-laws; salvation comes in the form of an invitation to study at a prestigious university with a renowned botanist and medical researcher, friend of her father. She's promptly swept into the world of academia, a woman in a male-dominated world; and in the garden outside her window she discovers a strange woman, Olea, who lives inside. A moment that marks the start of a fight between her determination to get academic success and the lustful friendship she develops towards Olea; desires that seem to go in opposite directions, and that she must navigate.

May managed to create a novel that is part gothic fantasy/horror and part a study of a character: Thora is a fascinating character to follow; her transformation as her bond with Olea is developed and how toxic it becomes mimics a bit the amount of toxins she's receiving from the own garden; but at the end, what she's showing is her own nature, a person who refuses to fit into the role others prepared for her.
The romance between both characters is lush and intoxicating, pretty much fitting into what you could expect from gothic horror; Olea is sometimes the opposite of what Thora represents, but is needed for the growth of our character.

Don't go expecting a straightforward story, as May takes a sweet time to put all in motion; the plot is clearly divided into two parts, marked by Thora's change. The atmosphere is sublime, pretty much capturing all the tension until it needs to be released; the academia and botanic aspects create a great setting for our main plot to be developed.

This Vicious Hunger is a really enjoyable novel, especially if you are looking for a gothic atmosphere that serves as the setting for a slowburn sapphic romantic that shows the most toxic aspects of the relationships (certainly the most unhinged). A must read if you love the genre!

[Kaitie Reads · Rating 2 out of 5]

🖤 Sapphic
🌿 Botany
🖤 Secret Garden
🌿 Science and Ethics
🖤 Gothic Vibes

~

Ugh, this one was extremely disappointing, unfortunately.

I think what I dislike most about this book is that it has so many elements I love: feminine rage, botanical horror, a gothic setting, sapphic yearning, and a fierce FMC, and it falls short in each category.

While the prose itself can be stunning at times, it is such a slow and meandering story riddled with excessive repetitive dialogue and scenes. Despite this, I pushed myself through to see how it ends: folks, there is no conclusion. It just *ends*.

The FMC is also wholly unlikable, and while I generally do love an unlikable female protagonist, Thora is just insufferable. She jumps down the throat of anyone before they have a chance to speak, she's cruel and she's just generally flat outside of being a spitfire for no reason at all.

I'm not sure whether it was mentioned (despite many things being mentioned at least 10x over) but I couldn't get a handle on the setting or time period for this? At times it felt historical and at other times the language was jarring and modern. For me this created a very inconsistent flow throughout.

I think maybe there was a great idea buried somewhere here, but the execution is lacking, and a story can not be built on poetic prose alone.

~

𝓣𝓱𝓪𝓷𝓴 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝓽𝓸 𝓝𝓮𝓽𝓰𝓪𝓵𝓵𝓮𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓞𝓻𝓫𝓲𝓽 𝓑𝓸𝓸𝓴𝓼 𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓐𝓡𝓒 𝓸𝓯 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓼 𝓫𝓸𝓸𝓴. 𝓐𝓵𝓵 𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓱𝓽𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓯𝓮𝓮𝓭𝓫𝓪𝓬𝓴 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓪𝓲𝓷𝓮𝓭 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓼 𝓻𝓮𝓿𝓲𝓮𝔀 𝓪𝓻𝓮 𝓶𝔂 𝓸𝔀𝓷.

[charlotte, · Rating 2 out of 5]

On my blog.

Rep: lesbian mc, sapphic li, gay side character

Galley provided by publisher

Francesca May’s second book (or second under this name) is one that I’ve been anticipating for a long time. I’ve sort of been putting off this review, as such, because — to be brutally honest — it was an awful letdown. This is not to say I won’t read this author again. This one simply felt like an aberration. All the potential was there for it to be good, but it ended up as 400 pages of nothingness.

Let me skip over anything resembling a plot summary because, at this point, I read this one about 3 months ago and that’s more than enough time to forget even the slightest details. It begins with a death of a husband, leading to our main character being able to enter university as she’s always wanted to do anyway (lucky for her). She ends up studying under a woman she idolises (also lucky for her) and meets a mysterious girl in a locked garden who she falls under the spell of (perhaps less lucky, given how the story goes — turns out I do remember a bit!).

It was a sort of inauspicious start, I suppose, when, within a few chapters, any worldbuilding we had been introduced to (here, regarding mourning rituals) was dispensed with quickly and made no impact on the plot. Of course, not all worldbuilding has to be plot relevant but it just felt like a cute little aside the author had come up with and wanted to shoehorn in somewhere in this case. Introducing it so early, you would think it would come up again later, but no. That, frankly, was the only remotely interesting thing about the world besides — it’s hard to tell exactly how you’re supposed to read the world in this book, as some fully fantastical world but with recognisable real-world elements, or an entirely real world (sans names) with the occasional bit of fantasy. Either way, it was bland and boring.

This might have been easily overlooked, if the characters had been any more interesting. And really, they ought to have been. They needed to be. Nothing else was carrying this book, but if the characters had been compelling, then that might not have mattered as much. Alas, that was not the case. The characterisation, much like the worldbuilding, feels barely there, as though it hadn’t yet made it out of first draft status. Our main character vacillates between emotional states at the drop of a hat, moving between moods in sudden and unprompted changes ��� usually (and I’m not one to defend men here but) biting off the head of a perfectly unassuming and inoffensive man who is apparently her only friend (but not if she’s treating him like that for no reason). I’m sure these mood changes are meant to show the impact of the garden on her, even if she doesn’t initially recognise it, but there must be more subtle ways to do this and not ones that leave you feeling like she’s not a fully formed character. The love interest, too, is tissue paper flimsy. At no point is it clear why exactly the main character has become infatuated with her, to the point of putting her university place (which we are repeatedly told means a lot to her in a sexist world where [checks notes] women can’t go to university) at risk. It’s clear that everything relating to the mysterious love interest will tie into the main character’s equally mysterious supervisor, but when it does it just feels incredibly false and forced.

The tie in, which I barely even remember except to say it made for a damp squib of an ending, also leads to a one-note villain monologue — again, if there had been any depth to any of this, it could have been a decent book. Admittedly, I’m not sure that, if I had known the ending to it, I would have picked it up either way (damp squib, again), but just something slightly better constructed would have done this one a world of good.

As it is, I will just chalk this one off as a miss, and hope that Francesca May goes back to writing hits.

[El | libro.vermo · Rating 2 out of 5]

This Vicious Hunger reminds me a bit of The Secret Garden, but for adults. It’s like a gothic fairy tale, an allegory for the struggle queer people face: do we choose the safety of hiding who we truly are, or the freedom and risk of letting the world see us for ourselves? It’s a beautiful idea, the prose was lovely, and the sapphic yearning was on point (especially because being queer was so taboo and forbidden), but I just didn’t enjoy the overall way it was executed.

As I said, the prose itself was so, so lovely, with vivid descriptions of the garden and Thora’s feelings for Olea. But the writing was kind of all over the place, and it was repetitive in a way that felt like characters were having the same discussions over and over as filler more than anything else.

The pacing was very, very slow. Even the exciting events didn’t happen with any real sense of urgency until a single intense scene at the end of the book, which was then followed by an extremely dissatisfying ending, which felt like a lackluster cliffhanger, but I can’t find anything about a second book so I have no idea if that’s what it is or not.

Thank you Orbit for the ARC of this book.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sapphic horror plant girlies. This was cute and gross, haunting and ethereal, and I really appreciated it!

I will absolutely read any other sapphic books Francesca May puts out in the future. She did a really great job of making this garden and the girls within it feel otherworldly and magical and dark and dangerous. This was a wild ride, and I was absolutely buckled in and here for it.

The only negatives were 1) the first chapters before we get to Gay Gardens, while appropriate and effective in setting the stage, were slow and harder to get into, and 2) I don't have a poor communication kink, so Olea and Thora's dynamic got on my nerves sometimes. Although, I will say, it wasn't always without reason.

And, I completely ate it up anyway. I would totally read a sequel or companion novella to this. While the ending does wrap up everything well enough, I'm still left wanting to see what happens next.

Thank you NetGalley and Orbit for the ARC! My favorite ARC to date!

[Chelsea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to Orbit and NetGalley for the ARC.

This book was exhausting. The premise--Gothic, dark academia with a botany element and some sapphic romance--was promising, but it just circled around and around and around, repeating itself endlessly. It's four hundred pages long, but it felt absolutely eternal. It seems like the author eventually realized this (one of the characters even asks how many times they're going to have the same conversation) and went "Whoops, better get going" and gave both main characters personality transplants in order to do so. Even with that, when the story seems like it's building up to something, it just ENDS. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a series or not, but either way, it wasn't a great ending, because it's not a strong enough book to make me want to read more of this.

I'm also not sold on the CENTRAL PREMISE of the story. May needed to either make up some more plants of her own or really put some sort of alchemy system into place here, because the premise that the poison from a real plant, that REALLY EXISTS, mixed with blood, can make someone a vampire is so incredibly half-baked at best that it undermines the tension of the story entirely.

Two stars for the Gothic vibes and early worldbuilding (honestly this book could have been way more interesting if it stayed in the arena of the interesting funeral rites), but this is not something that I would recommend overall.

[Zoe Stallings · Rating 3 out of 5]

This Vicious Hunger by Francesca May is a dark, atmospheric fantasy with a strong gothic vibe and an intriguing sapphic romance. The world-building is rich and immersive, with themes of magic, power, and desire woven throughout.

While I enjoyed the setting and the moody tone, the pacing dragged in places and I struggled to connect with the characters on a deeper level. Some plot points felt repetitive, which lessened the emotional impact.

Still, it’s a solid read for fans of slow-burn gothic fantasy with morally grey heroines.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

RTC

Thank you Netgalley and Orbit from Little Brown Book Group UK for providing copy of this ebook. I have voluntarily read and reviewed it. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Release date : 26 August 2025

[Lore Penny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gothic fantasy with strong horror elements towards the end of the book, This Vicious Hunger follows Thora and her desire to be free, through slow, creeping dread and unease, until she finds herself ensnared by obsession and toxicity so deep that she may never escape. All of this, coupled with sapphic yearning, dark academia vibes, and set within the confines of a poison garden, where everything has the potential to kill you with a single touch. Sounds pretty good!

I will, however, start with a caveat to this review - I don't necessarily think this book will be for everyone. The pace of this story is often slow and meandering, with a fair amount of repetition towards the end. For me, this only added to the sense of horror and the corrupting effect the garden had on Thora. Despite the pace, I was never bored - it suits the gothic genre, the slow-building worries and the feeling of wrongness. If you're more of a fast-paced, questions answered kind of person, this might not be for you.

If, however, you're a fan of titles like The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue or Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab, or The Familiar or Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, I would urge you to give this book a go - you might very well find a new favourite!

Francesca May's writing is gorgeous - lush and vibrant, while also eerie and haunting. The world she builds is intriguing and deep, and I would love to read more about it in future books. The love story between Thora and the mysterious Olea is beautiful and deadly, rendered expertly in May's lyrical writing style, exploring the depths of their love and lust; their desire and obsession. It's a true gothic love story, in the sense that it reminds us that not all love stories are good and pure, or have happy endings.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Little Brown Book Book Group UK/Orbit for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

[Amelia Yates · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up. I love Francesca writing it’s so descriptive and beautiful, a vicious hunger is a complex story of sapphic awakening and gothic horror. The imagery really drew me into the world. I did find the pacing a little slow in the first half but after that it gained momentum and I found the plant horror side of the story fascinating whilst also disturbing at times.

Thank you NetGalley for the arc opinions my own

[emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

francesca may does it again, folks! i’ve been a fan ever since i read her debut, wild and wicked things, all the way back in 2022 when it first came out (which, by the way, if you haven’t read that already you know what you need to do). i loved the gothic, spooky, sapphic vibes of that book and i’m so happy that i got to tap into that sphere again with this new one!

first of all, i loved the worldbuilding, especially surrounding the funeral rites and mourning practices since thora was born into that world. it had the perfect balance of feeling realistic while also bringing us into a different world from our own. this is something that i feel like she’s done well with both of her works — the setting has some base in the familiarity of our own history (such as the gatsby-inspired events of her first book, or the gothic-victorian vibe going on here) while leveling up the story with magic and fantastical elements of her own. it’s so good!!

it’s hard to fully describe how i feel about thora and olea without spoiling what happens, but there’s something soooo personal to me about bloody messy poisonous sapphics. the overarching plot does get a little slow around the 75% mark or so, but when i realized what was happening toward the end it honestly made up for it. don’t go into this expecting something very fast-paced and i think you’ll be just as pleased as i was! i can’t wait to see whatever francesca may does next.

thank you to netgalley & the publisher for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

this could have been 100 pages shorter

[Natasha Leighton · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intoxicatingly gothic, dark academia fantasy exploring desire and the toxicity of obsession— I genuinely didn’t want to put this put down!

Firstly, I just have to say I loved Francesca May’s debut, Wild and Wicked Things so was beyond excited for the chance to read her newest release. And I’m glad to say it’s just as deliciously gothic and atmospheric! With a sapphic, Rappacini’s Daughter-edge to May’s haunting prose that burrowed under my skin and had me desperate to know how things ended.

The dark academia setting was a gothic feast for the senses too, and I was fascinated by forbidden longing, poisonous double standards and cloying sense of oppression that pervades soo much of our protagonist, Thora’s life.

A recently widowed woman, whose longing to study botany has outlasted both her father, and her husband. Thora was a complex and incredibly compelling character to explore, though not necessarily likeable in the way most MCs are.

Fuelled by her new freedoms and mentorship with the eccentric Dr. Petaccia (the only female botanist on staff and an expert in her field), Thora’s studies have given her a new sense of confidence and purpose.

But it’s her unrelenting hunger and desire for more (knowledge, power, emotional connection) and infatuation with the mysterious Olea that really got me turning the pages.

And with not one but two morally grey characters; Petaccia, the demanding, yet aloof professor, and Olea, the beautifully alluring woman bound to an unusual garden (locked from the outside)— I honestly felt like all my christmasses had come at once!

I will say, it is more of a slow burn read (so do take that into consideration), but with the prose, visceral imagery and immersive setting it’s definitely a book you’ll want to experience in all its decadent glory.

Overall, a poisonously addictive tale of ambition, desire, beauty and obsession that all gothic fantasy lovers need to consider adding to their TBRs this autumn!

Also thanks to Nazia and Orbit UK for the stunning finished copy.

[val | starrynight.reads ✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

rtc: this was too long 😭

[Aila Krisse · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 / 5 stars

This book was unfortunately disappointing and ultimately quite frustrating, because it had promise, but ended up falling far short. The main positive about this book was the writing style, which I did enjoy reading. But that’s really the only positive I can think of, though it did have a large enough impact on my reading experience that I am rounding my 2.5 star score up (for goodreads and netgalley). While I wouldn’t say that the book truly succeeds in creating a gothic atmosphere, it does still manage to impart the eerie and lonely nature of Thora’s existence quite well.

Now to the not so good things. Really my biggest issue is the ending, which does not feel like an ending. I completely understand that whether or not you like open endings is up to personal preference, but I honestly can’t see anyone, even someone who loves open endings, being content with this. Because this ‘ending’ feels like it’s supposed to go right before the actual ending. Like the author ran out of time and decided «eh, good enough» and just handed in the manuscript sans-ending.

The characters were one of the more frustrating parts of the book, because they are actually interesting and layered, but then their story doesn’t really go anywhere. Look at the protagonist, Thora, for instance; she grew up somewhat isolated from the normal world, as a result of being an undertaker’s daughter and having lost her mother early in her life. Her father married her off to a seedy man because he was dying (something that he only told Thora about shortly before his death), since a woman couldn’t really survive alone in their society and the guy was the only man who would take Thora, unappealing as she is. A few weeks after their wedding, her abusive husband dies and her in laws just want to get rid of her, so they shuffle her off on some professor of botany at the local university who offered to take her under their wing - even though women are not usually allowed to get a university education. Thora quickly realises that there is something strange about her new mentor’s work, but she’s unwilling to say anything about it because this position is her last resort, and without it she would have nowhere left to go. Like, that is absolutely a great constellation of circumstances to make a fascinating character, but again the deeply unsatisfying ending just makes it all seem pointless.

The romance between Thora and Olea is also just very disappointing. The character of Olea also starts with an intriguing basis to her character, but more and more she just starts becoming annoying and repetitive. There is some chemistry between Olea and Thora in the first half of the book, only for it to completely disappear by the halfway mark, even though their romance is the axis which this whole story orbits around.

In general there are just a lot of weird author choices throughout the book. Like, why are all of the names Italian (Petaccia, Niccolo, Leonardo, Elianto), but then the protagonist’s name is Thora Grieve???? Why is this set in a fictional, albeit vaguely Italian-inspired, world, yet the characters reference figures from Greek mythology and smallpox? Who thought «speak in the plain fucking common tongue» sounded good? Why is this tagged as adult fiction but reads as YA all the way through, except for the sex scenes maybe. So yeah. Quite disappointed.
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Thank you to Orbit/Little, Brown UK for the ARC

[nabi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you, Net Galley and Orbit, for the opportunity to read and review this arc in advance.

I had thoroughly enjoyed the themes of feverish obsession and desire that had pervaded throughout the novel. The gothic academia setting aided in further bringing these qualities to the forefront. The novel had more of a medium/slow pacing that gradually led you along through the progression of Thora and Olea’s obsession with not only one another, but with their morbid fascination with knowledge and their research. The mysteries behind the garden and Olea had been intriguing and had me wanting to know more as they unraveled. A gripe I did have with the novel though, was how it felt as though there were things left unanswered that left me wanting to have more closure after I had finished the novel. Despite that issue, overall, I really enjoyed the novel and would highly recommend it to anyone that is looking for a Sapphic gothic fantasy that features a dark obsessive all-consuming passion between the women, their academic pursuits, and their innermost desires.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't ask me wtf happens in this book, but this book is perfect. Not objectively perfect - it's not for everyone - but for me, this is it.
2025 books continue to break me.
(Also 2025 - please keep publishing subterfugey vampire novels like this that pretend not to be vampire novels!)

[Leah M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to Redhook, Orbit, Oliver Wehner, and Oriel Voegele for sending me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed the author’s first novel, and I was really looking forward to reading this one. In fact, I was completely prepared to love it. It’s got a lot of the elements that I enjoy reading about—dark academia, gothic setting, botany, and sapphic romance. However, it quickly became apparent that as much as I loved her first book, this wasn’t going to be a similar reading experience.

There are some great things about this book. May has a gorgeous, lush, and descriptive way with words, and this book is no exception. She creates a vibrant world full of dangerous plants, toxicity, and the endless quest for knowledge. Her writing is flowery (no pun intended) without overdoing it, and this is honestly what kept me reading. I also really liked the idea of vampirism that is portrayed in this story, and I would have really liked to see more of that.

Initially, we are introduced to Thora. She was raised by her undertaker father, so she has an unusual understanding of the rituals of grief in their world. Initially, it seems much like the Victorian era: the society is a patriarchal one, with women having almost no control over their own lives; women receive limited education; they can only wear dresses, never pants; it is overwhelmingly heteronormative; and society doesn’t tolerate any deviation from acceptable behavior. However, it becomes clear that it is set in an alternate world that merely overlaps in some aspects once May begins to explain the death rituals that Thora has become proficient in, along with her interest in botany that was taught to her by her father. These are mentioned multiple times, yet don’t really play into the story all that much, which was disappointing.

The world-building encounters some serious problems. We get the vaguest mention of deities, but that’s really all there is. The magic system seems to be comprised of vibes alone, rather than having it be well-defined and fully realized. Additionally, I was taken out of the story multiple times by the lack of continuity in the world-building. A story set outside of our reality on Earth really shouldn’t have overlap with things unique to our world, and this one fails to live up to that. There are mentions of Latin names and phrases, which wouldn’t exist in a world that didn’t give rise to the Roman Empire, as well as Italian names and mention of French meringue. Each time it happened, it reminded me of this issue and pulled me out of the story. The Latin names for many of the plants weren’t even analogous to our world—why even come up with scientific names and not refer to them by some other, more understandable taxonomic system?

Things move really slowly in the beginning of the book, and I was so sad to realize that May hasn’t addressed the pacing issues that she struggled with in her other book. I don’t mind if a book moves a little slower at first, especially if it rounds out the world, the magic system, and the important characters, but this isn’t quite what happens in this book. I was disappointed to realize that we were offered a lot of information which becomes immediately irrelevant to the story itself. But perhaps the biggest letdown was the way the story itself unfolded.

Despite being determined to study botany since she began learning about it with her father, Thora is aware that she’s likely to just be married off to another man since she has no assets or possessions of her own. But just when all seems lost, she is given the incredibly rare gift of admission to a university to study botany! She has the opportunity to live her dream, but one view of this mysterious woman who only tends to the garden near her window at night and she forgets about her lifelong dream to pursue what is essentially insta-lust for this woman, who she learns is named Olea, and is confined to the garden of dangerous, toxic plants and the tower she lives in by a curse.

Along the way, we are also introduced to Leonardo, who becomes a friend to Thora, yet doesn’t really have much going in the way of personality or depth aside from a sense of loss for the wife who left him. Instead, he seems to find one subject, usually the one that Thora isn’t willing to get into, and stick doggedly with that. Either that or serve as her verbal punching bag. But seriously, she is awful to poor Leonardo, and he just keeps coming back for more. Speaking of flat, Olea is a pretty flat character, and doesn’t ever speak up for herself, except for once close to the end of the book.

Once the pace picks up a little, things quickly become repetitive. The characters all have endless repetitions of what is essentially the exact same conversation, to the point where one of the characters even acknowledges this in dialogue. It was so similar that it felt like things were moving faster, but were just repeats of earlier scenes ad nauseam. I struggled with caring at all about the toxic relationship that blooms (yeah, pun intended this time) because Olea is so one-dimensional that she’s basically the character equivalent of ‘just vibes,’ and from the moment Thora encounters her, she just chases after this character and completely regresses with all the progress she starts to make.

The central themes of the story were seeking freedom contrasted with having little or no autonomy, obsession and addiction, and toxic plants being researched for medical purposes juxtaposed with the toxic relationship between Thora and Olea. Thora specifically mentions things that gave me red flags for addiction—a creeping sense of malaise when away from the garden (yep, got me again, another plant pun), being unable to stay away, feeling intoxicated when able to interact with Olea, loss of interest in anything other than Olea and the garden, risky behavior to get close to Olea, and even withdrawal symptoms. However, the toxic nature of the relationship and Olea’s calm acceptance of her confinement compared to Thora’s fierce desire for freedom are a recipe for disaster, and they develop a supremely unhealthy relationship dynamic. These two swing between the same conversation and sex, with very little deviation.

Overall, this was a lackluster follow up to the outstanding debut, and left me with some mixed feelings. The ending left the most to be desired, finishing where it made the least sense to end, and leaving exactly nothing wrapped up had me feeling as though there should have been either more, or the book should have ended earlier. The ending of the book made no sense, and while this appears to be a standalone, the way it left off seems to need a sequel to answer any of the questions. I did like the way it portrayed an addiction so realistically, even as everything else felt less and less real. There’s plenty of sapphic spice in this book, but there’s even more sapphic yearning and angst. I wasn’t sure why Thora began dropping f-bombs more often as the story went on, but it seemed excessive even to me, and I love my profanity as much as the next trucker. So if you do undertake (another pun mwahahahaha) reading this book, go into with the understanding that it isn’t going to be overly like the reading experience from Wild and Wicked Things so you can manage your expectations. I promise I’ll stop with all the puns now.