We Ate the Dark

I’ll be honest: *We Ate the Dark* frustrated me as much as it fascinated me. Pearson’s writing is *so* close to genius—her ability to weave bodily decay with emotional dissolution is stunning in stretches. The opening act, where the women’s grief manifests in surreal, almost Lynchian detours (a scene involving teeth and a bathtub still haunts me), had me hooked. But the middle sags under its own ambition, meandering into repetitive introspection that even Alaska Jackson’s hypnotic delivery can’t fully salvage. Her performance is *excellent*—she nails the novel’s eerie duality, whispering one line like a confession, snarling the next like a threat—but the pacing occasionally drags, especially in the audiobook’s second half where the plot’s circularity starts to feel less intentional and more like stalling. That said, the finale is worth the slog. Pearson sticks the landing with a twist that’s equal parts devastating and inevitable, and Jackson’s narration in those final chapters is *chilling*—the way her voice cracks on certain lines makes the horror feel intimate, like a secret shared in the dark. The production is minimalist (no eerie sound effects, just raw vocal performance), which works in its favor; the lack of auditory crutches forces you to sit with the text’s discomfort. If you love horror that’s more atmospheric than action-packed, and don’t mind a slow burn with uneven momentum, this might be your next obsession. But if you need tight plotting or clear payoffs, you’ll leave hungry—possibly literally, given the book’s *very* specific brand of body horror.