Collected's TWELVE BOOKS OF CHRISTMAS 2025 | The Lamb - Lucy Rose

COLLECTED LOVES... Never have we read a book so poignantly poetic and beautiful yet so deeply brutal and disturbing. Following the uniquely intimate mother-daughter relationship of Ruth and Margot, Lucy Rose tackles love and desire, hunger and appetite - both indluged and suppressed - with wit and integrity. This book is folky, sapphic and haunting - a twisted tale set in the depths of Cumbria that has contemporary cult classic written all over it.

---

A FOLK TALE. A HORROR STORY. A LOVE STORY. AN ENCHANTMENT.

Margot and Mama have lived by the forest since Margot can remember. When Margot isn't at school, they spend quiet days together in their cottage, waiting for strangers to knock on their door. Strays, Mama calls them. Mama loves the strays. She feeds them wine, keeps them warm. Then she satisfies her burning appetite by picking apart their bodies.

But Mama's want is stronger than her hunger sometimes, and when a white-toothed stray named Eden turns up in the heart of a snowstorm, little Margot must confront the shifting dynamics of her family, untangle her own desires and make a bid for freedom.

With this tender coming-of-age tale, debut novelist Lucy Rose explores how women swallow their anger, desire and animal instincts - and wrings the relationship between mother and daughter until blood drips from it.