This book wasn't bad. Or boring. But it kind of disappointed me that the entire concept of the book and mind eaters kind of had no plot relevance? This book was realistically not different at all if the fantasy aspect was taken out and it was a woman fleeing a cult society to save her son. Not bad, but also not why I wanted to read this book.

Also, it kind of didn't go anywhere? She escapes with her son, but she has a whole ass daughter who she needed to abandon to do so, and is like "I'll rescue her later." I feel like making this her second marriage and second child was pointless. It would have been better if it was just her first child that all this happened to, because now the ending feels half-finished. The entire beginning of the book didn't really do much and could have been cut in half to be just her first marriage and child.

And the history of why the book eaters exist felt kind of? Not really explained. "An alien wanted them to collect knowledge so here they are." What? I feel like even just having the explanation be something like there being one being created who made all the others would have fit better. Idk it just felt like almost no explanation would have been better than the one we were given.

This book isn't Bad, per se. But it didn't do anything surprising, I felt, even with an original concept of the book eaters. I like to read a lot of historical fiction on the witch trials and other stuff, and this book, if taken out of the modern setting and made the characters human, would have fit almost to a T of those plots. The blurb was a little misleading, imo.