This was a new and intriguing concept that immediately caught my attention but as much as I wanted to love it, the back-and-forth of timelines in the story kept throwing me off and prevented me from fully immersing myself. The characters were, despite not being human, wonderfully human in their flaws and it was refreshing to read about the more morally grey heroine who would do anything for her child/children

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for granting me an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

DNF’d at 31%

There was so much potential here but ultimately it all just fell flat for me.

I was very intrigued by the premise. People who live in remote manor houses and eat books instead of food to survive and absorb the stories and knowledge contained within.

It’s a dual timeline narrative and Devon, a book eater, is the main POV (in the third of the book I read). I was super interested in the past timeline when Devon was growing up and ingesting books she shouldn’t be. The world is fascinating in this part but then we jump eighty years into the future to the present day with Devon living in Newcastle upon Tyne and trying to find humans for her mind-eater son to feed upon. There are Dragons and Knights who I believe are types of book eater but it's not terribly clear who they are or why they’re after Devon and her son. I found the present day timeline dull. Not much happens and it really drags on. The prose is fine but there’s a lot of telling here. Also, as a Newcastle local, the minor inaccuracies really bothered me. I’m probably being a tad unfair here but it ended up being the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.

I'm setting this book aside for now as a DNF, but it's one I'd like to revisit one day. i absolutely loved the world and the concept, but it's a little unrelentingly bleak for me at the moment.

I was fascinated by the idea of a society within society that feed of books but this is more than it appears. It’s a dark fantasy, part a retelling of the vampire myth and part a treatise on women’s reproductive rights.

The book eaters are made up of six families with an strange origin myth around somebody called the collector. Within each family female children are rare and this creates a fertility problem especially as the book eater women can only have two and occasionally three pregnancies in their lifetime. Another problem is that some of the babies born are mind eaters rather than book eaters and they are the true vampires, often killing and always incapacitating their victims and absorbing their minds into their own. The order of knights created from problem sons, with the role of supervising the marriages and controlling the mind eaters was an interesting creation.

I found it a little hard to suspend disbelief as the book eaters would have died out long before with figures that are given in this book. Also the level of technological skill available to the knights seems improbable.

Told in two converging timelines one contemporary and the other charting the course of Devon’s life, both from a close third-person perspective. In the contemporary timeline, Devon and her mind eater son Cai are on the run from the families and surviving in the human world.

One of the key themes is the sacrifices a mother will make for her children. It also tackles the trauma of forced marriage and at times feels very much like the Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood especially as the mothers are forced to abandon their children on their third birthday.

The character development was skilful. Devon and all the supporting cast felt real and although the family patriarchs felt a stereotypical that never mattered. The main antagonist Ramsey, Devon’s brother was complex and interesting.

The pacing was excellent and there was a steady build of tension throughout the narrative. The ending felt a bit anticlimactic but I like how some elements were left open for a possible sequel.

Review due for publication on Thursday Dec 15 2022

I've often wondered what books would taste like if you could actually eat them, and now I know! It only makes sense that romance is sweet and mysteries are spicy! If only I could taste them all.

Devon is a part of a family clan for whom books are food and she and her brother grew up on a diet of adventure and fantasy. Though the book starts out as a bit of a fairy tale, it soon descends into darkness as Devon grows up and loses her daughter. Later on her son is born with a rare disorder where instead of eating books, he eats human minds. Devon must fight to help her son and save her own world.

A fun, YA horror about a boy and his mother. I really enjoyed the writing and the fast pace of this book. The plot was fantastic, and the characters were really interesting and I had a good time with this one. It was a good time to pick this up during a cosy winter night.

Thanks for the arc for review to Netgalley!

This book is one of the best I've read this year! Highly imaginative, original and intense, the story is about love and sacrifice, the complexity of motherhood, but, mostly, a strong denouncing against patriarchy in all its forms. With a powerful and stubborn heroine, a magnificent worldbuilding, secrets, lies and mostly books, The book eater is unmissable|

There is a secretive race of people in contemporary England, a race which consumes books, absorbing the knowledge contained within. In the UK there are The Families spread across the country, and due to a combination of low birth rates with rareness of female offspring the Families are dying.
This is the story of Devon Fairweather, treated like a princess in her remote Family based in Yorkshire – pampered and precious but who soon discover the realities of the rigid arranged marriage system.
The story alternates between the present day and the past illuminating Devon’s life and providing insight into the Families. Book Eater women have at most two pregnancies and each one is via arranged marriage to a different Family in the hope to avoid inbreeding. The marriages are strictly contractual and once a child is conceived and brought to term the mother stays with the child for three years and is then moved on to her next marriage or retired to the ranks of Aunties.
Devon rebels against this, loving her first daughter Salem fiercely but having to surrender her. Her second child Cai is a problem – he is a mind eater who feeds on the essence of human brains to survive absorbing that persons knowledge and leaving an empty husk. Cai would be condemned to death or a life of servitude as a dragon and that is something that Devon cannot allow. Especially as the drug called Redemption which allows a mind eater to eat books is now out of circulation.
Devon escapes her marriage, fleeing with Cai helped by an ally and begins her search for the Family who created Redemption. The journey finds new friends, old alliances and betrayal to make a compelling story.
My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for access to this ARC as always much appreciated. All views are my own.

The concept of the book really intrigued me, however the story was completely the opposite of what I expected.
I never truly cared for the characters and the story didn’t even depend on them being book eaters, it could have been replaced by any other fantasy idea.

I really wanted to look this book. The premise sounded fantastic—a group of otherworldly beings, possibly aliens, live alongside us and survive by eating books and absorbing the heart of the book. It should have been fantastic. And yet…

It took me a while to pin down why I didn’t love this book. Firstly, it’s growing harder and harder for me to enjoy fantasy books where women are automatically treated as inferior. I no longer accept this as a staple of the genre. And secondly: the premise of the book is so wide-arching, it felt at odds with the plot being so focused on a small cast of characters. I kept wanting to see more than what I was given.

However, I really enjoyed the writer’s style and voice, and will definitely try the next book.

This book brings a whole other meaning to devouring reading material. It's a deliciously dark blend of fantasy, science fiction, horror and thriller that makes you question who's good and who's bad. Sometimes the shifting timelines made it a bit confusing and there were parts where I wanted more detail. Overall though, pretty good.

I really wanted to love this book, but I just couldn't. The book is extremely well written and the world that Sunyi Dean has created is truly fabulous, I hope she writes more set in this alternate version of our world, but I could not connect to the characters. It is truly heart breaking to want to love a book and not get what you wanted from it by the end. The big climax at the end felt extremely rushed and felt as though it had very little stakes, though that might have been due to my lack of connection with the characters. The romance that appeared at the end of the book was also a little jarring, especially from the 'love interest's' side. Would I recommend this book? Despite what I have said, yes. I would recommend it. There is a book here that I feel like some people will love, but more importantly, there is a very talented author here who I think with the right tweaks could become a fantastic fantasy author.

General Thoughts: Perfectly average book with a lot of room for growth and improvement. Interesting world, hope to see more of it.

I really enjoyed this and was excited to read it.
My only problem was I wanted more of it - I felt the atmosphere of the story and the writing didn’t match the plot or characters established.

I’d be excited for further stories in the same world but with different narrators. I also would have enjoyed more chapters from the different povs we got.

A unique story about vampires, and definitely something new for the genre.

i really want to love this but there is something about the story's focus that doesn't really inspire me. i guess i went into it thinking it would be more about fantasy than themes of motherhood.

Once upon a time, there was a Princess who gave birth to monster, who everyone feared. But the Princess loved her monstrous offspring and would do anything to protect it, even become a monster herself.
The Book Eaters is, I feel, best summed up by Olivie Blake's cover quote: a "gritty, gothic anti-fairytale" that's perfect for the Halloween/Autumn/Winter season!
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for review.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I was pleasantly surprised with this book. I went in not really knowing anything about it and I thoroughly enjoyed the concept of this. I thought it was such an interesting idea and I really enjoyed the journey I went on. I liked that it was two different time lines and I liked that it was very obvious when it flicked between the two. I got really invested in some of the characters and when things were happening that negatively impacted them I just wanted to step in and give them a hug. Overall I really liked this and I'm interested in reading more by the author.

Living on the fringes of society, hidden from humanity, six Book Eater families remain in England. Children are rare, and females even rarer, so their numbers have dwindled and breeding is managed in a very regimented manner, with arranged marriages between the families. When Devon Fairweather’s second child Cai is born a Mind Eater, who consumes the minds of humans instead of books and stories, she flees with him before he can be turned into a weapon or destroyed. However, unless Devon can find a cure for his hunger, Cai must feed on the humans they live among, or starve.

The Book Eaters is quite dark with themes of what is essentially rape and kidnapping, served in the guise of arranged breeding. The plot is pretty action-packed and is told in both the present day as Devon tries to get hold of some Redemption for her son, and also events through Devon’s life that bring her up to this point.

I didn’t particularly like Devon as a character, but she had been through a lot and I could see why she was the way she was (and I did enjoy the double-agent elements of her plan) and I really enjoyed the relationship between her and Cai. My favourite character by far was Jarrow which, if you read the book, I’m sure you’ll understand.

I liked the fantasy element of Book Eaters consuming books and absorbing the knowledge within and I thought this was well done and branched off well into the mutation of Mind Eaters. However, I did feel that this aspect of the novel was drawn on and explained a bit too much and a bit too often – like the author knew they’d come up with a novel idea and wanted to really hammer it in – while the plot and character development were a bit neglected. Basically, it was good, but it could have been better.

this was such a gripping premise right from the beginning, and I was hooked from the start. the world building was amazing: it follows a group of people from a family known as the book eaters, who, just like the name suggests, eat books for sustenance. it’s such an interesting concept that really appealed to my adhd book nerd brain: you eat books to learn new things. dictionaries and textbooks are sort of like your vitamins and main nutrients you need to have growing up, even when they aren’t particularly enjoyable. ngl still sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me, I’d eat a 2000 page tome if it meant memorising my textbooks without having to read them:‘) trashy magazines are the equivalent of junk food, etc. but the main character’s son, for some reason, cannot eat books…he eats the brains of humans and absorbs their personalities and experiences. which is so creepy because the kid is like five but talks and acts like an old man, but it’s so heartbreaking too, because you know he doesn’t want to and the main character doesn’t want him to, but the only way he can survive is either eating a live human every so often or getting this magic potion thing that she makes it her life’s objective to acquire. this novel explores motherhood beautifully, and I wouldn’t recommend it for young readers because the subject material isn’t very…relatable for teenagers? it’s mainly about a mother willing to do anything for the safety of her son, and it explores it so beautifully and rips your heart out, but it did start to drag for me towards the middle and I couldn’t finish. the lore is so carefully constructed and you care so much for these characters, but I personally thought it got a little too action heavy for me around the 45% mark. oh, and it’s sapphic:) so yeah, definitely not for everyone, but this was a solid debut and I’ll definitely be following the author with whatever she does next:) thank you to netgalley for providing me an e-arc of this in exchange for an honest review

I think this was one of my most expected book of this year but I found it a mixed bag.
A very original concept, it starts very strong and the world building was fascinating. Somehow I felt that the plot was less intriguing even if it's good.
I will try and read it again as I think it could be one of those me-not-the-book case
3.5 upped to 4
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

Absolutely amazing read! Such a captivating read! Amazing cover art that was super eye catching would definitely recommend to all!