A mother and daughter feast on weary travelers who stumble upon their woodland cottage. A high school freshman develops a hunger for flesh after a boy takes it too far at a party. A college sophomore and adjunct professor join a sorority whose secret wellness trend is — you guessed it — cannibalism.
These are scenes from what has become one of this year’s most mainstream tropes in fiction: people eating people. What’s more? Women are driving the trend.
It’s been a big year for cannibalism. In February, the Showtime series “Yellowjackets” aired its third season, continuing the saga of a stranded high school girls’ soccer team that spirals into a cannibalistic cult. That same month, British author Lucy Rose released her folkloric mother-daughter novel “The Lamb.”
In May, Caitlin Starling published “The Starving Saints,” a tale of medieval women who are driven to cannibalistic madness by the arrival of four “saints.” The summer brought news that Monika Kim’s 2024 cannibal serial killer novel “The Eyes Are the Best Part” had been picked up for film adaptation, shortly before the release of Catherine Dang’s “What Hunger.” Most recently, in October, New York Times bestselling author Olivie Blake dished up her cannibal sorority novel “Girl Dinner.”
Blake, who primarily grew up in Pleasanton, California and now lives in Los Angeles, is best known for her debut novel “The Atlas Six.” She wrapped up her “Girl Dinner” book tour in the United Kingdom in November, where she said many readers commented on how cannibalism is “so hot” right now. But Blake “would argue it was so hot two or three years ago, and only now are people noticing it for some reason.”
In “Girl Dinner,” the House is the most prestigious sorority on campus, with beautiful, high-achieving members and distinguished alumnae. Nina, a college sophomore craving power and status, decides to join; and Sloane, an adjunct professor navigating the frustrations of marriage and motherhood, agrees to be its faculty adviser.
But the House has a sinister secret. Once a semester, its members murder and eat a man of their choosing. Consuming the flesh gives the girls unparalleled beauty, revitalized strength and a future guaranteed wealth and success.
At its core, the novel is about (power) hungry women reclaiming their agency in a patriarchal world. Yet, at the same time, it’s a critique of the failures of “girlboss feminism” — of its tendency to turn women against each other and privilege one successful woman over the many.
Blake got the idea for “Girl Dinner” after observing trends both online and in literature. On TikTok, the novel’s namesake “girl dinner” trend involved women posting videos of low-effort meals composed of random snack foods — think French fries, grapes and peanut butter. Blake was also fascinated by “trad wives” circulating the Internet — female influencers promoting traditional gender roles and a housewife aesthetic, with videos that often involve preparing food.
At the same time, Blake had also read a number of novels featuring cannibalism. Each time, she stumbled upon them by accident.
“In 2023, there were a lot of surprise cannibalism books,” Blake said, citing — spoiler! — Ling Ling Huang’s “Natural Beauty,” Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi’s “The Centre” and Delilah S. Dawson’s “Bloom.” “At least six times, I was like, ‘Oh, this is cannibalism, isn’t it?’”
Those books, along with social media trends, got Blake thinking about the relationship between women and food.
“We’re not really allowed to freely consume,” yet food is “also the thing that defines the ‘goodness’ of our womanhood,” Blake said. She explained how women are often associated with the hearth and expected to nurture others. That’s why Blake thinks cannibalism, and especially “feminine-authored cannibalism,” are so effective.
Blake isn’t the only one to explore feminist issues through cannibalism this year. In “What Hunger” by Catherine Dang, Veronica, a high school freshman, develops a craving for raw meat — and human flesh — after a classmate rapes her at her first party.
The cannibalism in “What Hunger” doesn’t come from a place of spectacle, Dang said. Told from a Vietnamese American perspective, the novel explores not only sexual assault, but survival more broadly — especially in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. It was inspired by an urban legend Dang’s mother heard in refugee camps about a shipwrecked Vietnamese refugee who killed and ate his fellow castaways to survive.
“My mom’s urban legend was not something she had just heard out of nowhere. Like, this stuff had actually happened out at sea. People were pushed to the brink of desperation,” Dang said. “I think there’s a very primal aspect of survival that I think ‘What Hunger’ covers.”
Fans of cannibal fiction share their enthusiasm for the trend on TikTok. Danielle Garcia-Karr, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin who researches representations of monstrosity in Latinx speculative fiction, posts about the role of cannibalism and other gothic themes as cultural critiques.
“ I wanna be super clear. [Cannibalism is] not a part of my research,” Garcia-Karr said. “I just have such an interest in this and I keep wanting to write about it. And my advisors are like, ‘You need to focus! Focus on your dissertation!’”
Garcia-Karr is a big fan of “Yellowjackets,” “The Lamb” and Agustina Bazterrica’s 2017 novel “Tender Is the Flesh,” set in a dystopian world where people breed humans for their meat in slaughterhouses after a disease makes animals lethal to eat. They have many more cannibal stories on their to-be-read list.
Garcia-Karr thinks it’s worth noting that the spike in feminist cannibal literature comes right on the tail of the #MeToo movement. “Because a lot of it has to do with women’s bodies, and having control of a woman’s body, and who gets to violate it, and how,” Garcia-Karr said.
But some fans say the trend is becoming overdone, and that cannibalism has lost its bite. Bailey Bigott, a TikTok influencer, is one of them. She thinks overmarketing is the main culprit.
“If you know to expect something and you are being told to look forward to something, it’s just not going to be as taboo,” Bigott said. But that doesn’t mean cannibalism can’t be done right. Thematic meaning, not just aesthetic, is key. She cited “The Devils” by Joe Abercrombie as a prime example.
“There’s a moment of cannibalism at the end of that book that I found to be really shocking, because nothing had told me to expect it,” Bigott said. “It was treated with a kind of thematic weight that I think it deserved, and it was much more effective.”
So where is this trend headed? The consensus seems to be that horror will continue to engage with taboos. Blake thinks incest is up next, and Bigott suggested necrophilia. Blake also thinks “femgore,” a horror subgenre focused on women enacting violence and body horror, will increase.
But that doesn’t mean cannibalism is going away anytime soon. There are lots of upcoming cannibal stories on the menu for 2026. These include the final season of “Yellowjackets” and at least three new novels: “Greedy”by Callie Kazumi, “Trad Wife”by Saratoga Schaefer and “Nothing Tastes as Good”by Luke Dumas. Until then, there are plenty of cannibal stories you can sink your teeth into.
