"Sometimes life can pull a lot out of you... Just squeeze you dry. And if you don't have a way to get back whatever's good and precious to you, it's like losing your soul."

An emotional, touching and heartfelt debut from Anissa Gray. The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls put us right in the middle of family strife and dysfunction - ensnaring our hearts, breaking them and eventually leaving us with a spark of hope for the future.

When we meet Althea and Joe Proctor they are in jail, for embezzelment of charity funds. Heartless scoundrels like these are not the kind of people you would have any pity for. Yet, as with most things in life we come to see that it's not all so black & white, right and wrong - there are shades of gray here. It is in these shades of gray that Gray tells the real story of this family. How did these people get here, to this point where everything has come tumbling down?

This is not a happy story. It is filled with familial dysfunction, secrets, loss, guilt, depression, eating disorders, crime, abuse, infidelity, and attempted suicide. It was definitely hard to read at times but it was also honest and hauntingly written. I found myself rooting for these people. Willing them to find a way to get it together, to allow love into their hearts and finally find some happiness. For just like the characters in this book, isn't that what we are all ravenously hungry for - love, acceptance and happiness?

This is a story that will move you. The characters are complex and the story has many layers. Anissa Gray does an amazing job of peeling back the layers and letting us peek into the very core of her characters so that we understand who they are and how they ended up where they are. She takes the old adage of becoming your parents and turns it on its head, leaving us with hope that negative cycles can be broken.

Thank you Anissa Gray, Penguin Publishing and Edelweiss for an arc of this book.