Ingest Me by Lesley Camphouse: [Extreme Horror Book Review]
Ingest Me Plot
Ingest Me is a nasty little of extreme horror novella about a teenager driven by pure hatred of his family and radicalised by incel forums. In the novel, Tristan is an entitled little goblin who grows to resent women after becoming jealous of his baby sister – the child of his mother’s new ‘Chad’ boyfriend.
Because Tristan is extremely brave, he starts secretly mixing pieces of himself into his family’s food: hair, nails, and … other things … You could most likely guess what these things are and be right.
If that premise sounds grotesque, that’s because it is. Ingest Me leans hard into the tropes of extreme horror, using Tristan’s pathetic resentment and escalating acts of self-mutilation as shock value. The resulting extreme horror novella is deliberately unpleasant. Yet it is also strangely compelling in how far it pushes its central idea.
Book Review
Whilst Ingest Me is often labelled splatterpunk, I’m not convinced it completely fits the bill. For one thing, the story begins with a kind of fragile equilibrium that is later disrupted: Tristan’s father dies, his mother finds a new partner, and Tristan grows increasingly jealous of the new baby, Evie. Classic splatterpunk tends to start with a world that is already broken—one where a happy ending was never really an option, and things can only spiral further downward.
Secondly, there’s very little that feels ‘punk’ about Tristan himself. Rather than rebelling against a system, he essentially drifts into an online cult, parroting the rhetoric of incel forums. He directs his anger at people who have done little to deserve it. In that sense, he isn’t a rebel so much as a follower – another sheep absorbed into a toxic ideology. Splatterpunk applauds transgression – but cult membership is not it – despite the vileness in this case.
Yes, this is extreme horror—there is splatter (of all kinds), but no punk. Sure, you could argue that the world is messed up for allowing such online spaces to exist in the first place. Yet the story is not framed around that idea. If anything, the narrative is red-pilled rather than black-pilled (in Splatterpunk, everything is futile).
Lesley Camphouse’s novella reads almost like something from the brain of Marquis De Sade. It provides shock after shock – without a philosophical treatise. The scenario elicits disgust on both a physical and a moral level. But morbid curiosity hooks you and pushes you to turn the next page. Ingest Me is engrossing and entertaining.
Personally, I felt the twist of Ingest Me was a little contrived. I would never like to be accused of spoiling a story, so I will simply say this could have been improved by going in a different direction – or at least tightened. But I still enjoyed the book as a whole.
If you feel like you would enjoy this book, I also recommend checking out our no-spoilers review of 100% Match, another extreme horror that has manosphere themes. If you would like to find out more about the best splatterpunk novels of the ’90s, you can also check out our list.
Verdict (TLDR)
Ingest Me by Lesley Camphouse is a grotesque but compelling piece of extreme horror. While the twist feels slightly contrived, the novella succeeds through sheer audacity and morbid curiosity. Fans of extreme horror will enjoy this short, sharp shock! Splatometer rating: 3/5.
