Book of da Month: Eat Your Heart Out by N.J. Gallegos 💝

Here’s an excellent fun horror dark comedy novella called Eat Your Heart Out, which launched in March 2026. The author is N.J. Gallegos, who’s an ER doctor by day turned horror queen author by night.

Her knowledge on all that means this book is packed with razor sharp (pun) insights on medical terminology stuff. Plus, there’s a whole plot on lesbian revenge, obsession, and some brilliantly inspired dark humour.

Losing Your Cool in Eat Your Heart Out

“Rejection… of a magnitude I’d never known existed. I’d shown Mo my very soul, and on seeing it, she turned away, essentially saying, thanks, but no thanks. She’d seen the true me, broken through the erected walls, and if the woman I loved more than anything in the world didn’t want me—what chance did I have?”

The story is narrated by young Jules, a first-year medical student. As she’s going about her studying, she meets the eternally striking Maureen, a hot stuff fellow intern with bags of confidence.

After seemingly hitting it off, Jules wants the relationship to be exclusive. Maureen (“Mo”) doesn’t, wanting instead to play the field and have a bit of fun. This infuriates Jules who is overtaken by obsession and controlling behaviours, with the net result being she really does lose her shit a bit.

That’s the set up of the story, with the 110 pages moving a fast-paced rate. We’ll leave off spoilers on the ending, but the final chapters getting increasingly bloody (in classic horror fashion).

Where Eat Your Heart Out excels is with its dark humour. Across every page, Gallegos packs in little details and asides that will please anyone with a keen sense for the absurd. Our favourite being this moment:

“She tossed her plastic axe aside with nary a noise, and mine followed suit with a loud thunk.”

That line did for us, totally our sense of humour. For context, Jules has been at a house party and met Mo for the first time. As part of her costume for the night, Jules has attended the party with a real axe (whereas Mo has a fake one).

Reading on as Jules’ behaviour deteriorates into comically berserk fashion is very engaging. At one point, angered by Mo hooking up with a guy called Tyler (this SOB is the worst!!!), she chucks a garden gnome into the room they’re in.

“Any semblance of restraint left me. Sneering, I bent and seized the closest object. Its weight felt good, and I liked the heft of it in my grip …

I stepped back, ensuring I was out of view and—with glee dancing through my guts—I chucked the little fucker hard, tearing ass down the street as if I’d been handed the baton in the 4×400 relay. Glass shattered—a symphony to my ears—followed by guttural screaming. I couldn’t tell if the screeches were masculine or feminine, but I imagined it was Tyler losing his shit and wailing like a banshee.”

And then catching up with Tyler in class, his face covered in stiches, leading to this humdinger:

“Tyler glumly meandered over to our table, rubbing his fingertips forlornly against the sutures. ‘Some stupid kids chucked a lawn gnome through my window. Shattered the shit out of it and—well—thirteen stitches later, here I am.’

‘Gnome sweet gnome, am I right?’ I remarked gleefully, unable to keep the shit-eating grin off my face.”

Jules even launches an official project: Operation Get Mo Back.

It reminds us of the things we saw back at university (20 years ago). When everyone is young and doesn’t know any better, people chasing after the best looking men/women on a very superficial front. Zero interest in whether they’re a good personality fit, it’s all about the natural beauty.

There was one housemate of ours in the third year like that, women were hurling themselves at his 10/10ness and even getting into physical fights about it.

Minus any humour, it was just stupid.

Whereas Eat Your Heart Out isn’t stupid at all. It’s very smart, very engaging, and a nice snappy read in novella form. Well worth your time if you want to laugh and judge Jules (and curse the day Tyler was born). Also, there’s a cat called Jeff.

And a Bit About N.J. Gallegos

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyh8n-lf55Y?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&w=723&h=407]

N.J. Gallegos is active on social media, so we’ve been lucky enough to chat with her a bunch of times over on BlueSky. Key things we’ve noted are she’s very smart and funny, which shows off big time in the above interview from April 2026.

She’s got an official author site (N.J. Gallegos) with interviews and the like.

Eat Your Heart Out launched on March 14th, but from her canon there’s also Just Desserts (2024). Oh, and she co-hosts the horror podcast Scream Kings (see random episode below).

A massive horror buff, then, and her work does inhabit a niche genre (LGBTQ+ horror fiction), but we can highly recommend her work for the laughs and sheer inventive craziness.

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