“That’s when I realized that, as adults look at children, they don’t really see them. They see a body without a mind. Something that does what it’s told. Something that will only understand when it’s older.”

“The snow is beautiful and glittering, especially if it goes untouched. It is magic in some ways. It gives hope. But it is easily spoilt by selfish footsteps that crunch into it. Those who relish putting their footprints down into fresh snow are the worst of us. Then, when the snow freezes over, everything beneath it dies. It either ices over or turns to sludge. That is what motherhood is like. Treacherous and disappointing.”

Lucy Rose’s debut novel The Lamb (2025) absolutely blew me away. It’s an astounding piece of work. Somewhere between folk horror and a modern dark fairy tale, Rose’s novel tells the story of a young girl and her mother who are both cannibals and feed off strangers who go missing in the woods near their house. This is immediately a brilliant premise for a horror novel. What that doesn’t tell you is Rose’s exquisite use of language, and her beautifully drawn characters. It also doesn’t tell you that this is a deeply moving coming of age (or, rather, not coming of age) story, one that is a profoundly moving reflection on what family means and in particular a heart-breaking dissection of the mother/daughter relationship that will move you to tears. Like all the best horror, The Lamb repurposes fairy tale motifs in a grotesque and inventive fashion to explore the corners of our neuroses. Like all the best art, The Lamb makes its reader empathize and understand an uncomfortable viewpoint, and extracts from the unfamiliar the universal. It may only be February, but I cannot imagine The Lamb not being on my list of favourite reads from this year, and if it has much competition then we’re in for an incredible year for literature.

The Lamb is told from the perspective of Margot, a young girl who lives alone with her mother Ruth. They live in a small house by a forest, where Ruth lures strays – people who are lost – to kill and eat them. Margot attends a local school, but she is under strict instructions from her mother not to befriend the other children, or do anything that might draw attention to herself and her family. She listens to her mother’s stories of her first kill, and dreams of the day when she will first take her own life. Mother and daughter lead their quiet if grisly life until one day a beautiful stray called Eden turns up in the middle of a snowstorm. Ruth hungers for Eden in an entirely different way, and Margot’s world is thrown off course when the two women fall in love. Eden makes herself at home with ease in Ruth’s murderous life, bringing a level of planning and forethought to their killings that Ruth is incapable of by herself. But Margot has befriended the benevolent old bus driver who drives her to school, and a girl named Abbie at school, a girl whose father her family have killed and eaten. She is beginning to see strays as people, and as she heads towards her teenage years, to harbour guilt and doubt. Soon Margot will have to choose between her family and a new life for herself, just as Ruth will have to choose between her intoxicating lover Eden and her daughter. 

The Lamb is told entirely through Margot, and it is immediately clear that Rose is a master of voice. Throughout she has masterful control of how she’s telling this story. Margot’s voice is wonderfully compelling. She is in some ways old for her age, because of the abuse she’s suffered at the hands of her mother, and the horrors she’s seen and participated in. She has been denied a normal childhood. However at the same time, she’s still a child, with the naivety and innocence that comes with it. Rose brilliantly strikes this balance. There is undeniably something horribly creepy about a child who talks so casually about murder and cannibalism, and the way that she sees both as a way to bond with her emotionally unavailable mother. But at the same time, Margot, unlike Ruth and Eden who the reader realizes are rotten to the core, has a core of humanity that she explores over the course of the novel with her growing empathy and realization that murder is wrong and the way she’s been brought up is deeply fucked up. We come to care for Margot and root for her redemption.

Although the novel is confined to Margot’s perspective, Rose manages to give her supporting characters an impressive amount of depth. Eden and Ruth are horrible and increasingly frightening as the narrative progresses and we realize just how monstrous they are. But the bus driver who realizes that something’s up with Margot’s home situation and takes her under his wing and tries to protect her is a wonderful character, as is Abbie, who Margot slowly falls in love with over the course of the novel. The Lamb may have the singular focus of its young protagonist, but with a few scenes Rose is able to convey the depth and fully lived lives of her supporting characters. 

It’s difficult to talk about The Lamb without spoiling its utterly jaw-dropping ending, which I absolutely refuse to do. It’s fucking brilliant. It’s brutal and moving at the same time, and the reader should not be denied the pleasure of experiencing it for themselves. But the novel’s harrowing final act is the hinge upon which the entire novel turns. It makes sense of The Lamb’s title. The novel become a meditation on fraught mother/daughter relationships, selfishness and sacrifice. Ruth is a mother who is not particularly maternal, which of course is not a sin in and of itself. It’s unreasonable to assume all women are maternal, yet our society frequently does, and makes mothers who aren’t “naturally” maternal feel monstrousness. Of course, if you respond to these taboo feelings by abusing your child and murdering and eating people that does rather make you a monster. Ruth frequently accuses Margot of being selfish, for how Margot turning Ruth into a mother has warped and ruined her life. But as Ruth and Margot get forced into increasingly opposing roles, it becomes clear that it is Margot who is the responsible and selfless one in this relationship, leading to a remarkable act of selflessness in the end. By pushing these two characters to their very limits and beyond, Rose exposes their true nature to the reader, in a powerful and uncompromising ending that a lesser writer could not have pulled off.

The Lamb is a remarkable work of art, particularly coming from a debut novelist. It is powerful and assured. It is meticulously constructed by a master of the craft. And it is both horrifying and moving, and full of narrative surprises. Rose has written an all-time horror classic, one we will be talking about for decades to come. I can’t wait to see what she does next. 

The Lamb is available now – you can order your copy HERE