Formats: Print, digital
Publisher: Black Hare Press
Genre: Comedy Horror, Romance,
Audience: Adult
Diversity: Lesbian main character and author
Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Alcohol Abuse, Cannibalism, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Gore, Homophobia, Medical Procedures, Violence
Blurb
Jules is a first-year medical student with an exceptional mind for anatomy, a devotion to precision, and a carefully controlled emotional life. That control shatters when she meets Maureen.
Maureen is magnetic—confident, beautiful, effortlessly desired. What begins as attraction quickly deepens into something sharper, darker, and far more consuming. Jules mistakes intensity for intimacy, chemistry for destiny, and fixation for love.
As their relationship lurches between passion and distance, Jules begins to unravel. The boundaries between study and obsession blur. Anatomy labs bleed into fantasy. Hunger—emotional, erotic, psychological—becomes impossible to ignore. Every slight feels catastrophic. Every touch feels like a promise. Every rejection fuels something dangerous.
Set within the sterile world of medical training, Eat Your Heart Out explores the seductive logic of obsession and the quiet horror of a mind convincing itself that devotion justifies anything. Desire becomes possession. Love becomes entitlement. Control slips, slowly and then all at once.
Dark, intimate, and deeply unsettling, this psychological horror novella traces the path from longing to fixation—and the terrifying places desire can lead when nothing is ever enough.
Oh man, N.J. Gallegos had me at “toxic lesbians” and “cannibalism.” Add in a medical setting and a kickass playlist, and I was sold. Cannibalism is hinted at throughout the story: Our protagonist, a queer medical student named Jules, constantly compares parts of her cadavers to food (to the point it makes her hungry), uses kuru as a random example of a neurodegenerative disease, and named her cat Jeff after serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (aka the Milwaukee Cannibal). So you know that at some point someone is getting eaten, you just don’t know how or when.
Jules is an introverted horror nerd who is studying to be a surgeon. She loves medicine, her cat, and her classmate Maureen (who Jules calls Mo). Sadly, Mo doesn’t seem to even realize Jules exists. But after Jules’ best friend, a neurology nerd named Chris, gives her molly at a Halloween party (which Jules attends dressed as Patrick Bateman), she finally has the courage to approach her crush. The two women end up having a drunken hookup and spend a cozy weekend in Jules’ apartment having mind blowing sex. Jules falls hard and fast. Her obsession with Mo (which Jules mistakes for being in love) only gets worse, to the point she’s already planning the rest of their lives together. Now she just has to convince Mo, who doesn’t even want to be exclusive, that she feels the same way about Jules.
Jules’ obsession and possessiveness is disturbing, but also kind of sad, especially since Mo is not that great. For one thing, she pours ketchup on an expensive steak that Jules spent a lot of time making for her. If I did that, no jury in the world would convict my wife after she inevitably chopped me up and fed me to the cats. Mo strings Jules along, fully aware that she has fallen hard and wants to be exclusive. And while Mo is honest about just wanting to be casual and seeing other people, she also gives Jules just enough hope to keep her from breaking it off. You can’t help but feel bad for Jules, even as you cringe at her creepy, obsessive behavior.
I really loved Gallegos’s prose. The story is narrated by Jules, and the writing can range from flowery (“Professor Adams’ weaselly face twitched with frank pleasure, luxuriating in his droll pontifications”) to blunt (“she made love to me then completely shit on my feelings”) underlining Jules’ flair for the dramatic and her wildly changing moods. One moment she’s a poetic romantic, the next angry and immature. Jules only gets more unhinged as the story progresses, stalking Mo, sending her cryptic texts with song lyrics (how very 2000s emo teen of her) at all hours of the day, and harassing Mo’s other lover, Tyler, the dumb jock ortho. The humor sprinkled throughout Eat Your Heart Out blends well with the horror without feeling out of place, and the pace of the story kept me invested (despite my ADHD) without feeling rushed.
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