The Book Eaters

Hardcover, 304 pages

English language

Published Nov. 18, 2022 by HarperCollins Publishers.

ISBN:
978-0-00-847944-2
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5 stars (2 reviews)

Truth is found between the stories we're fed and the stories we hunger for.

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 …

8 editions

First favorite book of 2023

5 stars

It's hard to find books with unique approaches to fantasy, so I'm always excited to find a story that's truly original. This is one of them. The story is about a subspecies of humans (maybe)? who eat books instead of food, and they absorb the information in books they eat. Their society reminded me of an extreme evangelical religious cult run by the men. The story is about a young woman who tries to escape the crushing patriarchal society to save her son. I found the characters well developed and the story compelling. There are elements of suspense and mystery, trying to figure out what will happen next and who the main character can really trust. I blew through the book in a couple days. Thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Review of 'The Book Eaters' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This book is a darkly incredible foray into abuse that has trickled down from past generations to the future ones. I couldn’t help but identify with Devon’s struggle to break the cycle with her own son Cai, especially with her lamenting when she fails to live up to the person she wants to be—a role-model she never had, trying to create a better world for her son than the one she grew up in.

This is a contemporary fantasy that takes place in England, but it’s split storyline. While the present-day Devon’s storyline takes place in or near present-day, there’s also another storyline with her younger self in childhood, and the way the two are woven together is absolutely masterfully done. Dark, terrible things happen to Devon bringing her to her present-day quest to save her son, but they aren’t lingered on or described in detail. Instead, the reader is …