Owl Abridged
Book Eaters Cover
Book Review,  Fantasy,  Horror

The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean

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 fairytales 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.

– Dark, atmospheric urban fantasy
– Dual timelines
– LGBT rep
Content warning: violence, abuse, gore

Happy book birthday to The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean! I started this one yesterday wanting to get at least halfway through before it released today but ended up just reading through the whole thing! I love the premise of literally consuming books and absorbing their contents as opposed to reading them. It’s a fun and unique idea, but the book itself is a dark and unsettling tale. We touch on themes of love, oppression, motherhood, and explore the idea that power rests with those who control the narratives of our lives. I loved the epigraphs from well known fairytales sprinkled in the chapters and overall just really enjoyed the story.