Excerpt from Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

A graphic design job like her old role at Fox & Moone now was as good as a pipe dream: a situation that felt impossible to replicate. 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 to 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 hadn't been looking for work. It was more that she'd 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.

So sorry to hear about you and Gav, such a shame about Fox & Moone, just between you and me we're actually letting so many people go right now, love a recession, lol, I'm sure you'll be snapped up in no time babes x

Eventually, they stopped asking at all how she was getting on with the hunt.

Every message she got back from every query hit the same beats. They might as well have just said: Sorry to hear about your life, but I've got nothing for you, someone else might, I suppose? Over and over, until all of Shell's long-treasured favours were tapped out, and she was left staring into her laptop all day, scrolling, hope numbed, unable to cut back any self-pity. She'd have emigrated already if she had the money.

Her mother had expressed concerns about her going off and starting over at her age, at thirty-three—but what about Galway? That would be far enough away for a new beginning but near enough home, too. Just across the belly of the country, the other coast.

Still, even that kind of move was steep cash, and as much encouragement as her mother gave her, there was no world in which Shell was being bankrolled. Shell was to sort herself out.

So, sorting herself out could look like retail. Forty hours in a shop a week was preferable to the wallowing, to the endless pingback of So sorry hun. Minimum wage would be a slap, but one she could take. Floristry was the same as design, right? The meticulous organization of beautiful, delicate things. Shapes. Shell liked shapes. She scooped a heavy bouquet—expensive, but best to look like that wasn't an issue—from a bucket out front and walked inside. One arm weighted down with carrots, six densely wrapped chicken breasts, and a large tub of gravy granules in a cloth bag, the other cradling a carefully-organized-to-look-kind-of-wild clutch of sunflowers, eucalyptus leaves, ferns, and some mad, virgin's-cloak-blue blossoms she couldn't name.

The shop was a little larger than the walk-in wardrobe she'd shared with Gav, back at the apartment. The ceiling just as low. Lit funny, yellow almost, by multiple lamps instead of one overhead light. It was so cold, so suddenly, that Shell felt a chill go over her and her nose turn pink. The shelves were jammed with wreaths, succulents, swags. Buckets on buckets, some tall, some stout, rammed with flowers, organized by species, not colour. Pots and pots of monstera, the kind you see a lot of on Instagram now that nobody leaves their house so much anymore. Talk radio played at a low volume, almost inaudible, but Shell just about caught the jingle: Woodbine Crown FM, afternoon vibe at 106.9! There was an almost-chaos to the place: it was overrun with life. Well. Not life. The flowers were dead the second they were cut, weren't they? Shelly supposed nothing in here was alive, only a handful of potted plants and herself.

However, it was not just Shell and the merchandise. Down the back of the lush, close den was a high counter, and perched on a stool behind it, reading a book, was the florist.

Shell knew the outline of her, somehow. Had they been in the same school? A few years apart? It wasn't until the florist looked up from her reading and right into Shell's eyes that she started to feel in any way nervous. The florist closed the book, tilted her head to the side, and said, "Delphis and sunnies. A dream. Let me stick a little extra paper around those for you."

Excerpted from Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin. Copyright © 2025 by Sarah Maria Griffin. Excerpted by permission of Tor Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.