The world of plants is one that is only intermittently associated with speculative fiction. We are used to strange creatures—from alien life-forms to monsters, ghosts, vampires, and dragons—inhabiting the worlds of science fiction, fantasy, and horror; plant life perhaps usually not so much. Yet there have been several interesting works of speculative fiction that centre plants, both sentient and sometimes malevolent. One of the most famous examples of this is John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids (1951), in which the apocalypse is caused by giant, venomous plants attacking people. A forest of deadly trees plays a major role in M. R. Carey’s The Book of Koli (2020). Noah Medlock’s A Botanical Daughter (2024) has plants being fashioned into a sentient human in the vein of Frankenstein’s monster. Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin can be regarded as the latest addition to this tradition, though it is smaller and more intimate in scope than most of these books.

The novel contains a number of interesting descriptions of flowers and botanical life: “The shelves were jammed with wreaths, succulents, swags,” we read. “Buckets on buckets, some tall, some stout organized by species, not colour.” The botanical theme is prevalent throughout, with sections of the book given titles like “seed,” “fruit,” “shoot,” and “arrangement.” But Eat the Ones You Love is also as much about human relationships, workplace dynamics, and the modern capitalist landscape as it is about sentient plants.

The novel follows Shell, a thirty-three-year-old woman who takes up a job at a flower shop in a mall following a spell of unemployment. She’s also dealing with the end of a long-term relationship’s aftermath. The new job is not what she had envisioned for herself—she used to be a graphic designer, and was initially looking for a similar role, but opportunities in the field elude her:

The listings Shell found were all for entry level positions that somehow required five years of campaign experience, or executive roles that held no appeal for her, even if she had been qualified. She was stuck in the house with too many other adults: her sisters, her parents, too many of them in the space all day. Annoying one another. Her sympathy pass had run out weeks ago; now she was an interloper. It wasn’t like she wasn’t looking for work. It was more that she had been sending miserable emails to friends, peers, friends–of–friends, trying to suss out if their companies were hiring and being met with more unemployment, more bad news.

Through Shell’s struggles, then, Griffin paints a vivid picture of the present-day job market, and the complexities and struggles of living through a situation like hers. Once she starts working at her new job, however, Shell’s outlook rapidly changes. She sees it as a new beginning, something she marks by posting pictures of flowers on her Instagram account. It does not take her long to fit in at her new workplace, as well as to develop new friendships and relationships.

Shell is almost instantly drawn to Neve, the owner of the flower shop. Indeed, she finds herself attracted to both Neve and a younger man, Kiero.

Much of this part of the book seems like a cozy contemporary read—even the descriptions of Shell’s new workplace are particularly striking. Then we meet the narrator of the book, Baby, a sentient orchid obsessed with Neve. Baby’s relationship with Neve is uniquely unsettling: It is toxic, predatory, and reminiscent of abusive dynamics in real life. When Shell enters Neve’s life, Baby sees it as an opportunity, while also sounding like a stalker:

If Shell had been paying more attention to anything further than her own feelings, she might not have missed so many details sitting out of place in the flower shop. The vines growing over the ceiling, on the floor—she stepped over them without looking. The long, thin bruises on Neve’s arms—she only noticed the florist’s hands because Neve showed them to her, in flirtation. The wrong things in the space weren’t convenient to Shell: she was only really looking at the woman in front of her, only really looking at the bouquet, only really thinking of how to help herself. Oh, she’s perfect.

Much of the rest of the story takes place within the confines of the flower shop, and the mall it calls home. Indeed, Woodbine Crown Mall itself is intrinsic to the story, almost playing the role of a character. It is described as a “time-locked” building, a place that looks exactly the same as it did when Shell was a child. Griffin describes the shopping mall as an ecosystem, and a later plot point comes to be about its possible closure, providing an interesting look at the decline of the shopping mall with the advent of online shopping and changing consumer preferences.

The most interesting aspect of the book to me, though, was its portrayal of relationships and friendships in the later stages of young adulthood. The experience of having to start anew after the failure of a long-term relationship is poignantly portrayed. “Her life had been simpler, emptier before,” Shell thinks at one point. “Void of social complexity and emotional etiquette. When she’d been with Gav, her social role helpfully began and ended at Gav’s girlfriend.” The experience of being attracted to someone new, and the way that attraction takes over your life, is also a prominent theme in this book.

Much of this book is devoted to descriptions of plants and flowers, and that enhances the creeping atmosphere as the character of Baby brings in a sense of horror. Overall, however, the character, workplace, and relationship dynamics stood out for me more than the genre elements. This is not to say that they weren’t intriguing: The mystery involving Baby intensifies with the introduction of the character of Neve’s ex-girlfriend Jen, and her investigations into the matter with another character, Bec; I found the first-person narration from the point of view of the plant to be convincingly menacing. In fact, these aspects—which stress the malevolent, stalkery characteristics of the plant—provide an interesting contrast to the much softer tale of Shell finding love, community, and newfound purpose. Amid all the character development and cosiness, the plant is constantly present in the narrative, sometimes taking centre-stage, other times being more subtle—and yet always there, creating a sense of unease.