I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me

I Feed Her to the Beast (Volume 1)

A cluster of three book covers, for I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me by Jamison Shea. The covers are colorful, featuring two illustrations: one where a Black girl gazes unabashed at the viewer while floating in a river of blood, and another posing in a Gothic hall while blood runs down her face.

Black Swan meets House of Hollow in this villain origin story.

Laure Mesny is a perfectionist with an axe to grind. Despite being constantly overlooked in the elite and cutthroat world of the Parisian ballet, she will do anything to prove that a Black girl can take center stage. To level the playing field, Laure ventures deep into the depths of the Catacombs and strikes a deal with a pulsating river of blood.

The primordial power Laure gains promises influence and adoration, everything she’s dreamed of and worked toward. With retribution on her mind, she surpasses her bitter and privileged peers, leaving broken bodies behind her on her climb to stardom.

But Laure quickly learns she’s not the only monster around, and her vicious desires make her a perfect target for slaughter. As she descends into madness and the mystifying underworld beneath her, she is faced with the ultimate choice: continue to break herself for scraps of validation or succumb to the darkness that wants her exactly as she is—monstrous heart and all. That is, if the god-killer doesn’t catch her first.

From debut author Jamison Shea comes an edge-of-your-seat thriller that lifts a veil on the institutions that profit on exclusion and the toll of giving everything to a world that will never love you back.

Content Warnings

Blood, gore, bones, corpses, ritualistic self-harm (with the purpose of summoning a nonhuman entity), body horror, an instance of body-shaming related to ballet, non-graphic torture, murder, vomit, and a very toxic relationship.

There are also themes around classism, racism, parental neglect, and abandonment that are not graphically depicted but still permeate the work.

Where to Buy

Available wherever books are sold.

Praise for I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me

A hungry novel that smears your teeth with blood and ambition, then asks if you’d be willing to rip them out. Jamison Shea has cemented themself as a force to be reckoned with - and reminds us that when your enemies go low, you can always bury them there."
– Andrew Joseph White, NY Times bestselling author of The Spirit Bears Its Teeth
A sinister, delicious dive into a truly captivating villain origin story. In lyrical prose and a cutting pace, Shea explores the ways power corrupts and the way racist, elitist systems push us to hunger for it. As Laure descended, I descended with her, and when I turned the final page I was starving for more."
– Courtney Gould, award winning author of The Dead & The Dark
Brutal and beautiful, this book will drag you through the bloodied depths of fierce ambition and into a raw, untethered world of chaos, where salvation comes from crossing the line between girl and monster."
– Lyndall Clipstone, author of The World at the Lake's Edge duology and Unholy Terrors
Cut-throat competition and eldritch horrors — of both the human and monstrous kind — collide headfirst in I FEED HER TO THE BEAST AND THE BEAST IS ME. Gloriously haunting and darkly thrilling, Jamison Shea’s words will leave you breathless."
– Aiden Thomas, NYTimes bestselling author of Cemetery Boys and The Sunbearer Trials
A beautifully wrought horror story that has you rooting for the monster in the face of insidious institutions. Shea’s writing is as graceful as the dancers in their book and will leave readers screaming for more blood."
– Trang Thanh Tran, New York Times bestselling author of She is a Haunting