Book Review: Voracious by Belicia Rhea

“It made her think how sad it was that when people were suffering, they could be taken advantage of so easily. The way parasites fed under the guise of being there to help. How people believed the craziest things just to be saved.”

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Sixteen-year-old Lila Morales is pregnant, suffers from an eating disorder, and endures unrelenting, insect-filled apocalyptic visions that render her weak, exhausted, anxious, vulnerable, and painfully hypervigilant. A harbinger of doom, she’s friendless and untrusting, longs for freedom, finds solace in books, lives in constant fear of parasitic invasion, and views her body as a prison and object of conquest. She exists in a cerebral dystopian nightmare, forced into therapy by her mother, who places her under the care of a therapist drowning in her own life problems and challenges. Will Lila get the help she needs to overcome her struggles, and is her perceived doomsday role something real or imagined?

Voracious is an intense and complex account of abuse, cruelty, and dishonesty; suffering, shame, and survival; savagery, mortality, and humanity; fear, control, and revenge; mental illness, self-loathing, and bodily autonomy; and toxic masculinity, male entitlement, and insatiable desire (literal and figurative). It’s a harrowing, stomach-churning, nerve-fraying, anxiety-inducing exploration of ruthless parasites, both insect and human, and a dread-inciting story of rage, heartbreak, and hatred — deep, dark, and ravenous feelings that ultimately consume if left unfed.

Every page of this debut novella is layered, prophetic, rich, and propulsive, pulling the reader into Lila’s anxiety-fueled mind and producing a truly disturbing, powerful, and exceptional psychological horror experience.

Thank you to BookSirens and Dark Matter INK for providing an eARC of this novella for review consideration.

❤Amanda