Eat the Ones You Love Summary, Characters and Themes
Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin is a contemporary fantasy novel set in a decaying Dublin shopping mall, exploring themes of loss, identity, and transformation through the lives of Shell and Neve. Shell, a woman in her early thirties, returns home after personal and professional setbacks and finds herself working in a struggling florist shop run by Neve, who tends to a mysterious, sentient plant called Baby.
The story unfolds amid the decline of the mall, revealing complex relationships, emotional struggles, and a magical presence that links the characters and their environment in unexpected ways. It’s a blend of urban decay, queer relationships, and subtle supernatural elements, showing how people grapple with change and hope in uncertain times.
Summary
Shell has recently returned to her childhood neighborhood in Northside Dublin after losing her graphic design job and breaking up with her long-term partner, Gav. She lives with her parents and siblings in a crowded home and struggles to find new work.
Financial and emotional pressure weighs heavily on her, leaving her feeling trapped in a life that seems stuck in time—much like the rundown Woodbine Crown shopping mall where she starts working. The mall itself is a fading relic from the 1970s, filled with empty shops, worn floors, and a neglected glass terrarium symbolizing its decline.
Shell’s life takes a turn when she notices a handwritten “HELP NEEDED” sign in the florist’s window inside the mall. Curious, she buys flowers from the shop to brighten her parents’ home and ends up meeting Neve, the confident and somewhat enigmatic florist.
Neve has been searching for an assistant for months, and despite warning Shell about the tough work conditions, she offers her the job. Shell, desperate for stability, accepts.
As Shell begins working with Neve, she learns about floristry and the challenges of maintaining a business in a dying mall. Their working relationship is marked by an unspoken attraction and emotional vulnerability.
Neve’s past relationship with Jen, a scientist who left because of Neve’s devotion to the struggling shop and the mall, adds emotional tension. Jen’s departure represents a desire to escape stagnation, contrasting with Neve’s commitment to the mall and the mysterious, almost supernatural presence within it.
The story reveals this supernatural presence as “Baby,” a living green entity housed in the glass terrarium in the mall. Baby depends on Neve’s care, but it’s not just a plant—it’s a sentient, parasitic force with a complex, symbiotic relationship to Neve and, eventually, Shell.
Neve has cared for Baby since childhood, tending to it in secret rituals. Baby’s nature is protective but also hungry, feeding on the emotions and memories of those around it.
This strange connection adds a layer of tension to the story, blending everyday life with a creeping supernatural force.
Shell’s relationship with Neve grows as she becomes more involved in the flower shop and the community of mall workers around them, including friends like Daniel, Bec, and Kiero. Shell also begins to explore her own identity, including a tentative acknowledgment of her queerness.
At the same time, she struggles with a mysterious skin condition—itching, rashes, and eventually strange plant-like growths—which Neve helps treat with painful but necessary care. The condition is a physical manifestation of the plant’s influence spreading within Shell.
Jen, from afar, worries about Neve and the dangerous obsession with the mall and Baby. Through letters and visits, she tries to maintain contact but remains on the outside, haunted by guilt and fear for Neve’s safety.
Her work as a scientist investigating the plant’s strange effects adds a scientific perspective to the mystical elements.
As the mall’s closure becomes inevitable due to structural decay, Shell, Neve, and their friends face the challenge of preserving their lives and work. They consider moving the flower business online and supporting each other through the change.
Shell’s social ties outside the mall break down dramatically after an intense confrontation at a party, where old friends accuse her of disappearing and changing too much. She cuts ties, fully committing to her new life.
The story escalates as Baby’s presence becomes more invasive. Shell steals a ring from Neve—a symbol of her past relationship with Jen—and buries it at Baby’s base, deepening the plant’s connection to their lives.
This act triggers a dark ritual where Neve is consumed by Baby, dying and being reborn as part of the plant. Shell is left devastated, caught between horror and a strange enchantment.
Jen returns to confront the plant scientifically, battling the supernatural force to contain it. She nearly dies but survives, helped by Bec and Shell.
Together, they escape the collapsing mall, which symbolizes the end of the old order and the destruction of the dark power lurking within.
In the aftermath, Shell relocates to Galway, trying to rebuild her life while staying in touch with Jen, who continues to study the plant in a lab. Their shared experience forms a fragile community bound by trauma and hope.
The story closes with a symbol of ongoing magic—a mysterious leaf from Jen—signaling that while the mall and its dangers are gone, the legacy of Baby and the bonds between the characters endure.
Throughout the narrative, the decaying mall reflects broader themes of urban decline, lost community, and resilience. The complex relationships between Shell, Neve, Jen, and the sentient plant reveal different ways people cope with loss, identity, and the need for connection.
The blending of mundane life and the supernatural raises questions about transformation and survival in a changing world, where hope persists even in the face of darkness.
Characters
Shell
Shell is the novel’s central figure, a woman in her early thirties who returns to her childhood neighborhood in Northside Dublin under difficult circumstances. She is portrayed with a vivid internal complexity, grappling with feelings of shame and failure after losing her graphic design job and ending a long-term relationship.
Her return home to a crowded family household symbolizes both a physical and emotional stasis, mirroring the decaying mall where she later finds work. Shell’s vulnerability is deeply intertwined with her cautious hopefulness, as she tentatively embraces the new role as Neve’s assistant in the struggling florist shop.
Throughout the story, Shell evolves from a tentative, somewhat isolated individual into someone beginning to reclaim agency and identity. Her connection with Neve sparks a transformation, both emotional and supernatural, especially as she navigates her mysterious skin condition linked to the mall’s magical plant entity.
Shell’s journey explores themes of loss, renewal, and the fragile hope for belonging in a world that feels worn down and uncertain. Her relationships—particularly with Neve and later Kiero—reflect her tentative steps toward intimacy and trust, highlighting her internal struggle to reconcile past pain with a desire for new beginnings.
Neve
Neve is a striking and enigmatic presence within the story, embodying a complex mix of strength, vulnerability, and deep emotional wounds. As the owner of the florist shop within the decaying Woodbine Crown Mall, she is fiercely attached to both the physical place and the secret magical entity known as Baby that she tends with ritualistic care.
Neve’s connection to Baby is intimate and symbiotic; she nurtures the plant not just with water but through an emotional bond that reflects her own hidden struggles. Her guarded nature stems from past heartbreak, especially her ended relationship with Jen, which adds a poignant layer to her character.
Neve is portrayed as a figure of resilience, refusing to abandon the dying mall and her shop despite the hardships, symbolizing a stubborn hope and resistance to change. However, beneath this exterior lies a darker tension: Neve’s care for Baby also involves managing a dangerous hunger within the plant, one that threatens destruction even as it offers protection.
Her evolving relationship with Shell reveals a softer, more vulnerable side, marked by mutual attraction and shared emotional pain. Neve embodies the themes of obsession, survival, and the delicate balance between nurturing life and confronting its darker edges.
Baby
Baby is not a human character but a central, almost sentient force within the narrative—a mystical, growing green plant housed in a glass terrarium at the heart of the mall’s secret Green Hall. It represents a living, magical presence that feeds on emotional energy and life, displaying both nurturing and predatory qualities.
Baby’s relationship with Neve is deeply symbiotic; it depends on her care and emotional connection to survive, yet it also exerts a dangerous hunger that consumes those who come too close. Baby’s existence introduces a supernatural element to the story, blurring the boundaries between the natural and the uncanny.
Its influence extends beyond the physical, manifesting in Shell’s strange skin condition and transformation, symbolizing how the mystical and the personal intertwine. As a character, Baby embodies themes of dependency, growth, and destruction—simultaneously a guardian and a predator—reflecting the complex emotional undercurrents running through the human relationships in the story.
Jen
Jen is a scientist and Neve’s former partner, whose return to Dublin introduces a perspective grounded in reason and concern. Her character contrasts with Neve’s mystical and emotional world, as Jen works in a remote conservation center and views the mall’s strange phenomena with suspicion and alarm.
Her relationship with Neve ended due to Neve’s obsession with the shop and the magical plant, highlighting divergent responses to stagnation and change. Jen’s involvement in investigating the supernatural elements of the mall adds tension and urgency to the narrative, especially as she experiences firsthand the dangerous influence of Baby.
Her near-fatal encounter with the plant and subsequent struggle for survival deepen her character’s complexity, intertwining scientific rationality with personal trauma and guilt. Jen’s ongoing connection with Shell and Bec after the mall’s destruction symbolizes an attempt to contain and understand the dark power unleashed by the plant, emphasizing themes of healing, responsibility, and the limits of control.
Kiero
Kiero is a younger character who serves as both a model and a tentative romantic interest for Shell. Their gentle flirtation and evolving relationship provide moments of tenderness and lightness amid the story’s darker and more intense themes.
Kiero’s presence introduces a hopeful possibility for Shell’s future, symbolizing new connections outside the claustrophobic and decaying world of the mall. As a supporting figure, Kiero also helps in practical ways, such as assisting with flower deliveries when the mall’s closure forces the business to adapt.
Through Kiero, the narrative explores themes of youth, renewal, and the potential for love and friendship to offer escape and comfort in difficult times.
Bec
Bec acts as a loyal friend and emotional anchor within the narrative’s broader social circle. She supports both Neve and Jen during their struggles, particularly during Jen’s recovery from her traumatic encounter with the plant.
Bec represents the stabilizing force amid the chaos of the mall’s decline and the supernatural threats. Her friendship underscores the theme of chosen family and the importance of solidarity in the face of hardship.
Bec’s presence adds a human, grounded element to the story’s magical and emotional complexities.
Supporting Characters
The wider cast, including Shell’s siblings, old friends like Chloe, Lorna, and Emily, and ex-partner Gav, serve as reflections of Shell’s fractured past and the social pressures she faces. They embody the tensions between Shell’s old life and her new identity, highlighting feelings of alienation, judgment, and the painful necessity of breaking away.
These characters emphasize the novel’s exploration of community—both its loss and its reconstruction—and the personal cost of transformation. Their interactions with Shell mark critical turning points, revealing her growing isolation but also her determination to forge a new path.
Themes
Identity and Transformation
Identity in Eat the Ones You Love is portrayed as a fluid and evolving concept, deeply intertwined with personal trauma, growth, and the supernatural elements surrounding the characters. Shell’s journey vividly illustrates the tension between who she once was and who she might become.
Returning to her childhood neighborhood and living with her family after losing her job and relationship forces her to confront feelings of failure and displacement. However, the mysterious infection by the plant and her gradual acceptance of the strange flora growing inside her represent an external manifestation of internal transformation.
This bodily change is not only physical but symbolic of her shifting sense of self and her awakening to new possibilities beyond her previous life. The novel frames identity as both fragile and resilient, shaped by relationships, environment, and hidden forces beyond human control.
Shell’s slow emergence from isolation through her work with Neve and her flirtation with Kiero further explore how connection to others can foster new facets of identity, including tentative explorations of sexuality and belonging. Meanwhile, Neve’s relationship with the sentient plant Baby serves as a metaphor for the complexity of maintaining selfhood amid overwhelming emotional and supernatural dependencies.
Their symbiosis blurs the boundaries between human and other, challenging conventional notions of identity. The transformative processes the characters endure—both intimate and ecological—underscore a key tension between decay and renewal, suggesting that personal reinvention often arises from confronting and integrating difficult, even alien aspects of the self.
Community and Isolation
The theme of community versus isolation runs deeply throughout the narrative, set poignantly against the backdrop of the decaying Woodbine Crown Mall, a symbol of fading communal spaces and lost connections. Shell’s return home places her within a crowded but emotionally strained family environment, highlighting the paradox of physical proximity paired with emotional isolation.
Her former social circle accuses her of abandonment, while her new associations with Neve and other mall workers represent a fragile but genuine attempt to build a new, supportive micro-community. This smaller, intimate group becomes a refuge against loneliness and societal neglect.
The mall itself is a character of sorts—once a bustling hub now deteriorating, mirroring the eroding social fabric of the area and the broader urban decline. Within this space, the characters negotiate varying responses to alienation: Neve chooses to stay and nurture the shop and Baby, while Jen seeks escape, symbolizing different ways people cope with community breakdown.
The story also explores how secrecy and silence, especially surrounding the plant Baby and the supernatural elements, both protect and isolate the characters. The emotional and physical boundaries between them are both porous and guarded, showing the difficulty of forming true connection amid trauma and uncertainty.
Ultimately, the novel suggests that community, however fragile or unconventional, is essential for survival and healing, even in environments marked by decay and loss.
Love, Obsession, and Dependence
Love in this story is complex and often entangled with darker emotions such as obsession, dependence, and pain. The relationships between Shell, Neve, Jen, and even the sentient plant Baby reveal different facets of intimacy that challenge traditional romantic or familial notions.
Neve’s bond with Baby is emblematic of a consuming love that requires constant care but also threatens destruction; it blurs the line between nurturing and being consumed, reflecting the difficulties in managing intense emotional attachments. Neve’s past relationship with Jen, marked by love and eventual rupture, adds another layer to the narrative’s exploration of attachment and abandonment.
Jen’s guilt and concern for Neve reveal the costs of devotion when it conflicts with personal freedom and survival. Shell’s tentative romantic and emotional awakening with Neve and later Kiero highlights love as a potential source of renewal and connection, yet it is shadowed by secrets and fear.
The parasitic nature of Baby also metaphorically extends to human relationships, suggesting that love can sometimes feed on pain, trauma, and the unresolved wounds of those involved. This theme probes the delicate balance between holding on and letting go, illustrating how love can both sustain and endanger the self.
The narrative resists simple resolutions, instead presenting love as a force that is at once beautiful, dangerous, and transformative.
Nature, Decay, and the Urban Landscape
The setting of a deteriorating 1970s mall with its failing shops and hidden green oasis embodies the tension between nature and urban decay. The mall is a physical and symbolic representation of decline, stagnation, and lost potential, mirroring the lives of characters who feel trapped or left behind by larger societal changes.
Yet within this decay, the secret magical garden and the sentient plant Baby introduce an element of nature that persists, grows, and even threatens to reclaim the space. This juxtaposition highlights themes of resilience and regeneration amid destruction.
The plants symbolize life cycles—growth, death, and rebirth—and their supernatural qualities emphasize nature’s mysterious power beyond human understanding or control. The mall’s imminent closure signals the end of an era and a forced transformation, compelling characters to confront what they must leave behind and what they might carry forward.
This theme also connects to the characters’ internal struggles: as the urban environment crumbles, so do old identities and social structures, making way for new, if uncertain, forms of existence. The ecological imagery tied to parasitic plants, invasive growths, and secret gardens deepens the narrative’s meditation on how environments shape human experience and vice versa.
It ultimately suggests that even in places marked by ruin, life in unexpected forms continues, embodying both danger and hope.
Trauma and Healing
The narrative explores trauma not only as a personal wound but as something embedded in the physical and social environment. Shell’s loss of her job and relationship, Neve’s painful past with Jen, and the collective decline of the mall community all contribute to a pervasive sense of grief and dislocation.
The strange plant growing inside Shell’s body acts as a metaphor for trauma’s invasive, lingering nature, altering identity and perception in profound ways. Healing, then, becomes a fragile process involving both acceptance and confrontation of pain.
Neve’s rituals with Baby represent attempts to manage this trauma through care and control, while Jen’s scientific interventions suggest a rational approach to understanding and containing harm. The contrasting methods reflect the complexity of recovery—physical, emotional, and spiritual.
Relationships, especially those formed in the mall’s micro-community, provide spaces for support and repair, although these connections are often fraught with misunderstandings and fear. The narrative acknowledges that healing is neither linear nor complete; it is an ongoing negotiation with loss, memory, and the unknown.
By entwining supernatural elements with real emotional struggles, the story amplifies the sense that trauma shapes human experience in ways that can be both destructive and generative, demanding resilience and adaptation.