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

Shell smiled, handing the bouquet over the counter, hoping her cheeks would lift the signal to her eyes, and said, "A dream, thank you. Do you mind me asking—like, sorry—what kind of help do you need?"

The florist laughed, husky, unspooling brown paper into a square. "That's a big question." She laid the flowers down to wrap them.

"I'm unemployed," said Shell, before she could think, and the florist, taking a thumb of tape from a large black dispenser, said, "Oh, the sign," in a voice that made Shell feel as though she'd missed a joke and said something incredibly stupid at once. The florist quickly swaddled the bouquet with the paper and taped it in place. She stood the flowers up on their stems, the bunch finding a stable geometry, flourishing with light petals at the top, bound into a hinge and all the weight low, in the green legs. They both admired them in silence, for a moment, the gold and the blue and the green. The wild and the order.

The florist was taller than Shell and her hair was cropped short. It was dark—perhaps it would have been curly if it had been long, and Shell was very aware then that she was looking at her, properly, trying to decipher why it was that she felt like she knew her. She wore small glasses, but her features were large. Her eyes and her mouth were generous.

"Are you interested?" the florist asked, looking at the bouquet, adjusting it slightly.

"Sorry—what?"

"Interested. In the job. How do you feel about flowers?"

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.