The Lamb by Lucy Rose

Hello beautiful people! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into a horrific tale, The Lamb by Lucy Rose. A horror novel that will make you sick, but keep you glued to the end, it’s truly a tale about a house of horrors.

Main Characters:

Margot: Our main character, and honestly, the reason you stay. She’s deeply unsettling but also weirdly sympathetic. Raised in absolute chaos, she doesn’t know any different, which makes it hard not to root for her, even when she’s doing things that should make you fully recoil. Her perspective is warped, but it’s not her fault, and that tension carries the whole book.

Margot’s Mother: Genuinely horrifying. Not just because of what she does (which is a lot), but because of why. She’s deeply insecure and channels that into control, violence, and power, literally consuming people to feel something. She’s manipulative, unstable, and creates the house of horrors Margot grows up in.

Eden: The most confusing piece for me. Her presence feels important, but also not fully explained. The way she enters the story and integrates into their world left me with more questions than answers, which made parts of the plot feel a bit disconnected.

My Review

My gosh. The Lamb is a lot, but in a good way for sure. I will say that I love taboo and just super creepy books, so I was okay getting into this one. However, it should be said that this book includes a lot of gore, abuse, violence, and cannibalism. While I am okay reading a book about a little girl eating human meat like it’s a bologna sandwich, not everyone is, and I just wanted to make it super clear what the aspects of the book are, so people don’t dive into this one blind.

While I found the plot of The Lamb to be spine-tingling and hard to put down, I will say that the book did fall flat for me in a few different areas. Due to its faults, it did get a lower rating of 6.5/10 from me. There were a few aspects of the book that just didn’t totally make sense, and some areas that just didn’t pull me in. I would for sure recommend checking this book out, though, because despite its faults, I did enjoy it, and it did leave me thinking for a while afterwards.

The Lamb is a spine-tingling domestic horror that follows Margot, a young girl raised in an isolated home with her deeply unstable mother. Other than attending school when her mother feels like it, Margot is totally alone. Even at school, she is teased and ridiculed due to her poverty. Inside those walls, normal rules don’t apply; violence, control, and even cannibalism are part of everyday life. As Margot grows, she begins to navigate the twisted reality she’s been taught, all while new elements, like the arrival of Eden, start to shift the fragile balance inside the home. The story explores abuse, survival, and the terrifying ways love and violence can intertwine.

As mentioned earlier, this book is not for the faint of heart! The premise alone is enough to pull you in: domestic horror mixed with literal cannibalism? Say less. And honestly, the execution is strong in a lot of ways. It’s creepy, unsettling, and at times straight-up hard to read. The imagery? Incredible. In the worst way possible. I could fully picture the disgusting, claustrophobic house Margot grew up in, and it made everything feel way too real. The way the cannibalism is written is especially disturbing, not just because it’s graphic, but because it’s made to feel so normal. So domestic. It hits differently than your typical horror.

And Margot, she’s such a strong character. You shouldn’t root for her, but you do. Because at the end of the day, she’s a product of her environment. She didn’t choose this life; she was raised in it, and that makes everything about her feel more tragic than anything else. You become so much more connected to her as the story goes on, and she starts to question her world. She is at the point where she realizes that the kids around her live differently, and it’s not just the poverty aspect; it’s that they don’t spend hours cleaning up blood and body parts from their home every time their family feasts. She does not have many safe people to cling to, and even if she tries, the fear of what her mother will do spoils everything.

But, this is where it lost me a bit. I just couldn’t fully grasp where the story was going. It felt like I was waiting for something to click into place, and it never quite did. The plot had all the right pieces, but they didn’t always come together satisfyingly.

Eden’s character especially threw me off. I didn’t fully understand how or why she ended up in their home, and instead of adding clarity or tension, it just made things feel more confusing. I mean, yes, I fully understood how she showed up to the house; she fell into Margot’s mother’s trap that she uses to catch fresh meat for the family, but I don’t understand why she saw the household and what they did as normal, so that she could become a part of it. She just shows up one day and never leaves. I mean, yes, I can understand that maybe she started her relationship with Margot’s mom to survive, but she does not give out that vibe at all; she wanted to be there.

The pacing also dragged in parts, which surprised me given how short the book is. Some moments felt stretched out without really adding to the overall story. That being said, the ending? Terrible, but also good. Like I hated it, but I also respect it. It’s the kind of ending that makes you sit there for a second and just go, “what did I just read?” And honestly, it is worth getting to.

Overall, this is a book that sticks with you. It’s disturbing, memorable, and definitely unique, but for me, it just didn’t fully come together in the way I wanted it to.

I hope you enjoyed this review! Thank you for checking it out! Feel free to subscribe to the page at the bottom to be one of the first to know when I release a new review!

*** Don’t read any further if you don’t want to read any spoilers ***

With Eden now in the house, and Margot’s mother having more than just Margot to love, things start to shift. Margot can tell that her mother’s patience with her is getting thin, and she starts to suspect more is afoot.

Margot worries that now with Eden to love, her mother will see her as she treats her, like a pest to get rid of. Margot starts making small moves to make a plan to protect herself, but again, she is just a little girl and has little control.

Some more things happen in between, but eventually Margot concludes that Eden and her mother are planning to eat her. They make it seem like it’s a sacrifice made out of kindness, but Margot knows they just want to be rid of her.

Margot’s mother uses a drug to make their “guests” that show up at the house once their car breaks down, to pass out, so they can kill them. Margot essentially gorges on the drug before Eden, and her mother kills her and eats her, so that when they eat her, they will die too. It’s kind of her last thing to control; she couldn’t get help before, but she can stop them from hurting more people.

So, not an overly satisfying ending because I didn’t want Margot to have to die, but I am glad she could take her mother and Eden out with her, and expose the environment that she has lived in her entire life.