Published: August 2, 2022
Pages: 298
ISBN: ISBN13 9781250810182
About the Book:
Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book’s content after eating it. To them, spy novels are a peppery snack; romance novels are sweet and delicious. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries.
Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon—like all other book eater women—is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairy tales and cautionary stories.
But real life doesn’t always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger—not for books, but for human minds.
Rating:
2.75 / 5 ✨
Review:
As someone who doesn’t read the synopsis or reviews of the book before she reads, I was really surprised when the characters actually does eat books. It reminded me immediately of that episode in Doraemon where he gave Nobita some bread to press on every page of the book or his notes that he has to review then eat the bread and by doing that he will absorb the writings so that he could pass his exams.
I found the idea of creatures existing alongside humanity where they have a different kind of appetite incredibly interesting. In the book, Amarinder Patel was a journalist and he explained the book eaters as some mythological creature, which makes sense as to why (as a journalist) he wants to know more about them. Imagine if you could actually eat books and drink ink tea.
I very much enjoyed the first quarter of this novel. The beginning was quite depressing. The women were subjected to pregnancy whether they want it or not. And later on, they are also forced to leave their children to the biological father with the mother not being allowed to visit. And the cycle continues where the woman is given to another man to impregnate. This is due to their dwindling numbers which reminded me greatly of The Handmaid’s Tale.
But after the chaos that happened in the train, I lost interest in the story. I find that there were several loopholes and moments where I questioned how on earth did they even survive after all the things that has been happening. It seems like things were poorly planned i.e. the escape at 7 pm?? Talking freely inside the mansion?? I get that they experienced several bumps and wounds on their escape but honestly though, if you look at it, they were still able to escape quite smoothly albeit them being chased by several knights.
I couldn’t stomach it when Ramsey gave a young child to Cai so that he could feed and ‘reset’. And when Killock ate that caged man and acted as if he was chosen by Lord to deliver good news to their kind. My god.
It also seemed as if the book just suddenly ended. They saw Jarrow and Victoria and that was it. The intro was long, you get to the climax, and the climax ended. That’s it. The end. It left a lot to be desired and I’m thinking maybe Sunyi Deen’s writing a second book for this.
Anyway, thank you so much Fully Booked for giving me a copy! I really appreciate it. 💛📚
Favorite lines from the book:
“None of us are truly good,” the vicar said, at last. He put a hand on her shoulder, so gently, so kindly, and she almost threw up on the spot. “All we can do is live by the light we are given.”
“Some of us don’t have any light,” Devon said. “How are we supposed to live, then?
We can only live by the light we’re given, and some of us are given no light at all. What else can we do except learn to see in the dark?
That wasn’t how it worked, though. Some love was just the bad, all the time: an endless parade of electrified bones and drowned lungs and hearts that burned to a cinder inside the cage of your chest.
And so she looked down at her son and loved him with the kind of twisted, complex feeling that came from having never wanted him in the first place; she loved him with bitterness, and she loved him with resignation. She loved him though she knew no good could ever come from such a bond.
Unravel the Story 