“For here was the thing that no fairy tale would ever admit, but that she understood in that moment: love was not inherently good. Certainly, it could inspire goodness. She didn’t argue that. Poets would tell you that love was electricity in your veins that could light a room. That it was a river in your soul to lift you up and carry you away, or a fire inside the heart to keep you warm. Yet electricity could also fry, rivers could drown, and fires could burn; love could be destructive. Punishingly, fatally destructive. And the other thing, the real bloody clincher of it all, was that the good and the bad didn’t get served up equally. If love were a balance of electric lights and electric jolts, two sides of an equally weighted coin, then fair enough. She could deal. 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."

You certainly will not forget The Book Eaters. It is a contemporary, gothic-horror novel that follows single mother Devon who is trying to satiate her son Cai's hunger while on the run. Satiate Cai's hunger, you ask? Yes, Devon is a book eater, which are human-like beings that consume books as food, yet Cai was born a mind reader, one who feeds off of minds and leaves the victims mere shells of their former self. His voracious hunger is only growing by the second, and she needs to find the solution ASAP— a drug that allows mind eaters to eat books. But with the book eater authorities closing in fast, Devon's attempts to grab the drug and run seem slimmer and slimmer.

“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?”

Horror has always been my one true love, specifically gothic. It's the historical genre of my heart, which isn't a surprise to anyone since Frankenstein is my favorite classic. Anyway, 2022 has become a year dedicated to modern, gothic books, and I'm living for every minute of it. The grotesque explanation for how mind eaters eat sent thousands of shivers down my spine, and the few scenes we see it in action? WOW. I'd been intrigued by The Book Eaters since I first heard about it, but I didn't know until I started reading that it would enrapture me so much that I'd finish it in under twenty four hours.

“Hope was a thing you lost when simply trying to imagine better days became so exhausting, overwhelming, and depressing a task, that one opted for despair out of sheer weariness. Giving up brought a kind of peace.”

I think the strongest element to this book—besides the idea itself— is Devon's exploration of motherhood and what that means for her. Devon and all of the other book eater women are rare. It's very unlikely to have a book eater daughter, so they are protected at all costs whenever one is born. But soon enough we realize that this "revered" idea of book eater women is actually the men's way of restricting them into forced impregnation. When I first read Devon's revelation that she'd be sold to the highest bidding man, and after birthing and feeding the child, she'd be sent off to the next highest bidder; I was aghast. My mouth was on the floor, and I was making a noise somewhere between a gasp and a squawk. Not to mention, the moment when Devon is forcibly drugged and taken away from her first child/ daughter Salem... I cried for a long time. This whole book just obliterated my feelings into a chaotic swirl.

“Love doesn’t have a cost. It’s just a choice you make.”

The sweet surprise of this novel involved the sapphic and asexual representation. Devon ends up revealing to her friend Jarrow that she's never been interested in men throughout the course of her marriages and impregnation, and instead, she prefers women. This entire scene is in contrast to Jarrow explaining that he is asexual. I loved this scene because it was an intimate, raw moment between the two, and even in their horrific positions within the clan, they found reprieve in their friendship and this conversation about their identities. It was casual yet powerful—a gem in an otherwise cavernous pit of despair.

“The lesson is in the story, my dear.”

Overall, the book is pretty short in comparison to most fantasies. The end scene is a bit rushed, which is the only reason 0.25 was taken from the full star rating. If anyone is looking to jump into modern, gothic horror, then The Book Eaters is the perfect start.

“There’s a point, you know, where treachery is so complete and unashamed that it becomes statesmanship.”

Thank you to Tor Books for gifting me a finished copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.