The Eating Woods

The Eating Woods series by Keri Lake is a dark gothic romance set in a cursed forest, blending obsession, folklore, and love that consumes as much as it saves.

The Eating Woods series by Keri Lake is a haunting Dark Romance saga steeped in gothic atmosphere, psychological tension, and folklore-inspired horror. Set around a cursed forest that devours secrets, bodies, and sanity alike, the series explores love at its most dangerous - where obsession, trauma, and desire intertwine beneath the shadow of ancient evil.

At the centre of the series is the Eating Woods itself: a living, malevolent presence that shapes the town bordering it. The forest is not merely a setting, but an active force - watching, waiting, and consuming. Lake uses this supernatural landscape to externalise internal conflict, allowing the woods to mirror the emotional states of the characters trapped within its reach. Fear, longing, and repression bleed into the environment, creating an atmosphere thick with dread.

The romances within the series are unapologetically dark. Love is intense, obsessive, and often bound to danger. Characters are drawn together through trauma, secrecy, and shared wounds, forming connections that are as destructive as they are intoxicating. Lake leans heavily into morally grey relationships, refusing to sanitise power imbalances or emotional dependency. Instead, she interrogates the question: when survival demands connection, how much darkness can love contain?

Psychological horror is woven seamlessly into the romantic narrative. The series explores trauma as inheritance, passed down through families and reinforced by silence. The town’s history is layered with disappearances, lies, and rituals designed to appease the forest, reinforcing the idea that institutions - social, familial, or supernatural - often perpetuate harm under the guise of protection.

Lake’s prose is immersive and sensory, favouring mood over exposition. The woods feel claustrophobic and sentient, pressing in on characters both physically and emotionally. Violence and horror are present but deliberate, serving to heighten emotional stakes rather than overwhelm them. What lingers most is the sense of inevitability - the feeling that the forest always takes what it is owed.

A recurring theme throughout the series is love as consumption. Desire is portrayed as something that devours boundaries, identity, and safety. Characters must decide whether connection is worth the cost, and whether escape is even possible once the woods have marked them. Redemption, when offered, is fragile and incomplete.

The Eating Woods series is ideal for readers who crave Romance that pushes into horror-adjacent territory - gothic, unsettling, and emotionally intense. With its blend of cursed folklore, obsessive relationships, and atmospheric dread, the series stands as a signature example of Keri Lake’s dark storytelling style.

Beautifully disturbing and deeply immersive, The Eating Woods invites readers into a world where love is dangerous, the forest remembers everything, and survival may demand surrender.