Swallowed by Meg Smitherman

I loved THRUM by this author, so when I found out she was writing another science-fiction horror romance, I was all over that like white on rice. SWALLOWED has a similar, eerily claustrophobic premise: a team of scientists go to an Earth-like planet to see if its conditions are compatible for human life. But something outside their camp lurks, and Jill, the botanist, can't help but wonder if it's the same thing that was responsible for the death of her mother's team on the first expedition all those years before she was born..

Meg Smitherman has a beautiful, poetic writing style and she does a great job of writing body horror that is genuinely terrifying without being overly graphic (which is a tough line to not cross). I also think her sex scenes are decent, which is always a must with smut. SWALLOWED is spicier than THRUM but I still liked THRUM better because I think it had a better atmosphere and pacing. SWALLOWED was very slow to start and while some of this is to set the stage and establish the characters, it ended up making the book feel a little unevenly paced and-- I'm so sorry-- boring.

The second half of the book nearly made up for the first. Excellent twists, genuine horror, and some fun reveals about the heroine's morally grey nature. I don't think I'd read this again but I'll definitely be recommending it to people looking for botanical horror, and I can't wait to see what she writes next.

3 to 3.5 out of 5 stars