This was a wild ride. The first half went kind of slow for me and it took a bit to get interesting but then the second half just did not stop being interesting. I really liked it overall. Thank you for the advanced reader copy!

a revenge horror story inspired by a Vietnamese urban legend that the authors mum told her during lockdown. Ronny, a teenage girl grappling with grief and growing up, is attacked by a boy at a party and bites his ear off. For the next few days, she regrets spitting it out and wishes she'd savoured it, and is overcome with a desire for more flesh. Although I really enjoyed this, it was described as being for fans of Jennifers Body but didn't quite hit there, but I loved how the author explored female rage, grief, trauma and family dynamics all with a side of cannibalism🩸

This book was stunning. There are so many layers to Ronny's story, Dang manages to write a tender, flawed and relatable 14 year old girl school girl just trying to navigate being a teenager and her own grief after family tragedy and her own personal tragedy shortly after. Ronny is both every teenage girl and the terrifying vengeful girl some of us definitely wanted to be. And nobody knows.

What hunger is a beautiful coming of age story, a love letter to Vietnamese food and an exploration of being the child of immigrants. And then it is also a rage filled, cannabilistic, body horror, revenge novel and those two sides don't cancel each other out at all, in fact Dang blurs the lines between cannibal and foodie scarily well.

I loved Ronny as a character. I did wonder how Dang was going to wrap this one up and not for one second did I see that ending coming. It was perfect. I would definitely read a sequel and frankly would happily read anything else Catherine Dang comes out with.

This felt like a surprisingly bland book given the subject matter: body horror, female rage, the traumatic story of Vietnamese parents now living in America, grief and violence. The writing didn't engage me and felt flat, even through highly emotional scenes, and the figuring of female rage as hunger is beginning to feel like a trope now with the number of recent books I've read that utilize it. I don't think this will linger in my memory.

What Hunger follows Ronny Nguyen who reads trashy magazines and romance books. her older brother Tommy is the perfect son and the favourite for their immigrant parents. He is going to be the first in their family to go to college but tragedy strikes and Ronny’s world changes. Her sense of self is destroyed and she starts to get an insatiable hunger for flesh.

This was enjoyable and I would recommend this for fans of female rage fiction books. The writing of this wasn’t great for me as it felt a little unpolished/undeveloped. I liked the social commentary on this particularly the commentary on being an immigrant family in America. The rest of it was just fine but ultimately a little forgettable. I would recommend this but I think I needed Ronny to be a little older for the story to really work for me