Notes from the Shelf

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The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean is a 298-page horror novel. This is the book blurb: Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book’s content after eating it. To them, spy novels are a peppery snack; romance novels are sweet and delicious. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries.

Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon—like all other book eater women—is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairy tales and cautionary stories.

But real life doesn’t always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger—not for books, but for human minds.

I thought this book was so fun and original and also super creepy. I really feel for Devon trying to keep her son safe from The Family. She was raised in isolation as a princess, feeding almost exclusively on fairy tales, I think so she doesn’t have any radical ideas, and then she’s required to have two children for the good of The Family. She does her duty of course, and she’s not meant to be attached to the children, but when her son is born as a mind eater, she knows he’s doomed to die, and she surprisingly feels the need to keep him safe, so they go on the run, maybe for the rest of their lives. Even though they’re monsters and there are definitely monstrous moments in the book, Devon was very relatable.

I also found it interesting that they can eat any writing and remember it all. As far as monster go, I hadn’t run into that type before, so I thought it was unique. I did want to know more about how they were created and why they’re required to consume knowledge through book eating, but that wasn’t really addressed in the book.

Overall, though, I give The Book Eaters 5 stars.

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