Thank you to Avon and Harper Voyager for providing and eARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

The Starving Saints delves into themes of desperation, power, and all the different forms of hunger while featuring masterful prose. It definitely hits the creepy, gory, and shocking aspects of the horror genre, but it’s not thrilling which is something I personally really like in my horror. There are amazing creepy elements introduced as the plot unfolds, and I think if there was more suspense and that “edge of you seat” feeling, it would’ve had a bigger impact. The book felt long and dragging at time, and I don’t think it’s because it was a slow book, but rather it was more medium paced when I really think the whole experience would’ve been elevated if the story was quick and concise. The gore sneaks up on you, and the descriptions are so well done that there were times I physically cringed (and I’m not squeamish). I loved the parts that were written in a way that you didn’t immediately get what was going on because the structure of the writing was fully immersing you in the experience or emotion it was describing — such masterful showing-not-telling writing. It’s a fever dream of an experience in that it’s so strange and unhinged, but I liked that you got most of your questions answered and weren’t left completely hanging. Towards the end, however, I found myself reading sections over and over trying to piece together some of these answers because some of the fever dream aspects of the book started to get messy and disorganized to follow. I felt completely immersed in the strange world this book creates thanks to the clever writing. There wasn’t any dense exposition to introduce the world, just indirect descriptions of the environment from the characters. Overall, I’m blown away by this book, it was a great way to end my reading year, and I can’t wait to see what else Caitlin Sterling writes.