Feminist horror appears to be increasingly popular. Film-maker and, now, novelist Lucy Rose finds the genre therapeutic. “I think it’s coming out of the margins… because we’re living through times of deeply concerning political change and people are frightened,” she said in a recent interview. .

Rose’s evocative debut joins a crop of novels featuring cannibals, from Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender Is the Flesh to Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings. In The Lamb, Margot lives with her mother, Ruth, deep in the Cumbrian countryside. Ruth lures strangers she calls “strays” to their dilapidated cottage, drugs them with hemlock, before dismembering and cooking them for dinner. Their lives are disrupted by the arrival of Eden, a young woman who bewitches Ruth. Gradually, Eden replaces Margot in her mother’s affections, increasing her sense of alienation.

Playing with the tropes of folktales and gothic horror, The Lamb could be read as a tragic Bildungsroman – a morality tale about child abuse or an indictment of how we keep and slaughter animals, with human ribs replacing lamb chops.

The story, written from a child’s perspective, explores loneliness, otherness, bullying and queer desire. Its chief concerns are female appetites and women reclaiming their bodies; men are largely absent. Margot barely recalls her father and Ruth’s lover, a local gamekeeper, is dispatched as soon as Eden moves in. Steve, the school bus driver who befriends Margot, is an impotent hero: “To me, he was a church. Calm, wise and quiet. Most wouldn’t realise that because he didn’t look like a church, but he was.”

The writing is occasionally repetitive, perhaps reflecting the fairytale format, but Rose is good at building dread: “Beneath the canopy of the forest, I wandered until the shadows milked my skin – a place far from the beaten path.” The Lamb is a hard tale to shake.

• The Lamb by Lucy Rose is published by W&N (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply