Jenna LaBollita
Tatiana Schlote-Bonne’s What Feeds Below is thrilling, imaginative, and absolutely disgusting. I mean that last part as a compliment. Its horror is gory, detailed, and deeply uncomfortable, yet despite the strangeness of its premise and the extremity of some of its imagery, the novel never feels inaccessible. Schlote-Bonne gives readers a narrator whose voice feels familiar enough to ground an extraordinary world, making its horrors feel uncomfortably close.
Petra is an orphan approaching the age when she will have to leave the orphanage that has been her home. Her plan for what comes next is ambitious: she wants to open a clinic using medicinal plants, and doing so requires money. Petra earns that money by diving into the Void, a dangerous environment composed of different levels, each inhabited by its own species of plants and creatures. Some plants are medicinal, while others are carnivorous, venomous, or poisonous. The deeper Petra goes, the greater the danger – and the greater the potential reward.
That setup gives the novel an especially effective tension because Petra has a reason to keep pushing herself further. The dangers of the Void are not simply something happening to her; she chooses to enter them because she is trying to secure a future for herself. Her dream of opening a clinic also creates an interesting contrast within the world itself. The same environment capable of producing poison, venom, and horrifying creatures also contains the resources Petra hopes to use for healing.
Petra’s closest relationship is with Jade, her best friend, chosen sister, and dive partner. The two work together in the Void, but their approaches to diving are noticeably different: Petra is the more prudent of the two, while Jade is much more willing to push deeper and take risks. That contrast matters because Petra’s caution is not cowardice; she understands exactly how dangerous the Void can be and treats it accordingly. When one of their dives goes badly and Jade is injured, Petra returns to the surface for help, eventually reconnecting with Flint, a childhood friend. Flint is convinced that creatures from the deepest parts of the Void may be capable of living among humans, an idea that initially seems difficult to believe. As Petra, Flint, and Jade descend together, though, the boundaries between human and monster become increasingly difficult to trust.
The Void itself may be my favorite part of the novel. Schlote-Bonne fills it with creatures that become more and more disturbing the farther down Petra travels. Some are almost whimsical compared with what comes later, but the deeper levels contain creatures that manipulate bodies, reanimate the dead, distort perception, or combine human and animal features in ways that are difficult to forget. There are oozing wounds, severe injuries, misplaced body parts, insect-like features on human faces, and creatures whose anatomy seems to violate every rule a body should follow.
Having read Schlote-Bonne’s Such Lovely Skin, I was particularly struck by how differently the two novels affected me physically. Such Lovely Skin gave me the recognizable adrenaline of fear: the raised hackles, the tension, the feeling that something terrible might be lurking just outside my field of vision. What Feeds Below produced a different response. Its horror is visceral. I winced. I felt uncomfortable. More than once, I reconsidered the wisdom of eating while I read.
I don’t consider that a criticism. Quite the opposite. Horror that can provoke a bodily response in a reader is doing something powerful, and Schlote-Bonne seems especially adept at finding different routes to that response. The grotesque elements of What Feeds Below are memorable because of their specificity. The horror is not simply that something is dangerous; it is that something looks, moves, or exists in a way that violates what the human body is supposed to be.
That instability extends to the novel’s relationships as well. What Feeds Below repeatedly complicates the distinction between the familiar and the monstrous, particularly as Petra begins questioning who and what she can trust. The novel eventually delivers a revelation that completely changed my understanding of one of its central relationships. I had not predicted it, nor had I even developed the vague suspicion that often precedes a twist. Looking back, though, the reveal makes earlier moments take on entirely different meanings.
The revelation also forces the reader to reconsider Jade’s recklessness throughout the novel. What initially reads as a personality difference between two dive partners – Petra cautious, Jade eager to push farther – takes on a much darker meaning once Petra understands what Jade has actually been trying to accomplish. That recontextualization makes the twist especially effective because it does not simply add a new piece of information; it changes the meaning of behavior the reader has already seen.
What makes that twist especially effective is that the betrayal is emotional as much as it is horrific. Petra’s rare relationships are a source of safety in a world defined by danger, so discovering that familiarity does not necessarily mean protection cuts deeper than a simple monster reveal. By the time Petra is trying to escape the Void, survival means confronting not only the physical horrors around her but also the possibility that someone she trusted never viewed their relationship the way Petra did.
I am still not entirely sure I understood every implication of the ending, but that uncertainty did little to diminish my enjoyment of the novel. If anything, I finished What Feeds Below wanting to revisit parts of the story with the knowledge I had gained by the end. Schlote-Bonne creates a world that is strange enough to be fascinating, grotesque enough to be genuinely unsettling, and familiar enough to make its emotional stakes matter.
What Feeds Below is exciting, surprising, and sometimes stomach-turning. For readers who enjoy YA horror, imaginative worldbuilding, body horror, and books willing to get genuinely gross, there is a lot here to love. I certainly did.
Jenna LaBollita is a Pennsylvania librarian, book reviewer, and lifelong reader with a love for everything from horror and speculative fiction to romance and contemporary literature. She is passionate about libraries, library advocacy, and the ways books create connection and community. Her poetry has appeared in an anthology, and she is currently working on her first novel.
