What does "you are what you eat" mean when you consume information? This is an incredible book that combines elements of urban fantasy, horror, and feminist literature into one road trip adventure. (We hesitated but ultimately decided that "road trip romance" wasn't quite the trope being utilized here!) Devon is a "book eater," meaning that she consumes books - both literally, and in the sense of a "voracious reader." She assimilates everything she reads into her world view. This is something fascinating when considering that her purpose in life is to birth more book-eaters. Her family has raised her on a diet of fairy tales and calls her a "princess."

The book utilizes a dual timeline structure. We know that Devon is currently on the run from the Families (clans of book eaters who lead a life and participate in a culture separate from humans), and she's looking for a cure for her son, Cai. Cai is a "mind eater," meaning that he doesn't consume books for their information. Instead, as you may have guessed, he eats humans' brains. Like his mother, he assimilates all of the information held in that human's head - but unlike her, he also absorbs their personality.

The Book Eaters examines the dual protectiveness and destructiveness of a mother's love, the way our upbringings inform our entire lives and the strength it takes to break away from them. It's also an adventure that doesn't stop, with twists, turns, betrayals, and more. Check the CW before you start - this isn't a fluffy book by any means. But if you choose to stop, prepare not to put it down until it's over.

This objective review is based on a complimentary copy of the novel.

CW: Forced marriage; forced pregnancy; forced adoption; violence and gore.

Unfortunately this book did not work for me and I did not finish it. It is a great type of fantasy for people who don't want a ton of world building so it is accessible but at the same time I had a hard time planting my feet. I needed a bit more about the world to get my feet under me. And I had a hard time caring about the characters. Without empathy for the characters and a strong plot about book eaters it was a DNF.

This book about a group of six families of human-like creatures who subsist on books was a wild ride from start to finish. It was incredibly fun to read and never dragged.

The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean is by far the strangest book I’ve read in 2022, and I mean that in the best way possible. I was not expecting a story about book-eating creatures to pull a Handmaid’s Tale and push a desperate mother to the edge. It’s a dynamic book, and dare I say there is something for everyone in this dystopian story that evolves into an undercover mission and is topped with a sprinkling of horror.

Book eaters are humanoid creatures living in secret and consuming knowledge from the books they eat. They have established estates where they eat dusty pages and drink ink tea, but the future of the book eaters is bleak. The number of women is dwindling, and they are becoming precious commodities among the families. Devon, the Fairweathers’ prized daughter, is raised on a generous helping of lies. She is told that she is lucky and blessed, yet as she enters her first marriage, a grim reality begins to take shape. As a woman, Devon is controlled, coerced, and at times, beaten into submission. They take her child and force her to have another, but if the first child was perfect, the second is a monster, a mind eater who consumes minds instead of feasting on books. Devon decides she will do anything to protect her second child and that means escaping from the book eaters.

Book eaters live a cult-like existence, and themes of oppression dominate their story. Female book eaters are groomed from the moment they are born, beginning with the type of books they consume. Devon is only served fairy tales and stories of subservient women, while male book eaters are given a much more expansive diet. When the women reach adulthood, they enter several arranged marriages with older men to produce offspring. While the life of a book eater woman may be comfortable and even lavish for some, they are carefully kept in check and anyone who disrupts the delicate system is dealt with in horrifying ways. Women must either get in line or face the consequences. They are purposefully uneducated, separated from their families and children, and thrust into unhappy marriages—all to serve the larger patriarchal system.

The Book Eaters is also about love. Love comes in many forms, some heartwarming and others dark and twisted. Devon experiences very few happy moments in this book, and the root of her struggles is her love for her children. Her dedication as a mother is admirable, but the consequences of her love include a lot of pain and suffering. In Devon’s story, love seems more like a curse, which was an uncomfortable revelation for the reader at times. There were many moments where I wanted Devon to be selfish, only to be horrified by the thought of leaving the children with the book eaters. In the book, Dean explores what it means to love, and how it can bring out the worst in people. She consistently portrays love as a difficult decision that has to be made over and over again, no matter if it hurts.

There is a collection of interesting characters in this story, but I want to call out the fascinating relationship dynamic between Devon and her son, Cai. He may only be five years old, but he is a mini adult. Because he consumes minds, Cai has absorbed the knowledge and mannerisms of several people. He is less Devon’s son and more her partner in crime as they attempt to venture out into the world. It’s both heartbreaking and interesting to see this small boy become consumed by the last person he ate. Devon struggles to find Cai’s victims and fears that she loses him a little bit each time he eats. She loves him dearly but can’t find the strength to watch him feed, and she even has moments where she is afraid of him. However, Devon chooses Cai above all, and their unique relationship was definitely a highlight of this book.

The Book Eaters is a painful story, but there is also a sense of awe to be had for the courageous display of motherhood. I would have loved to explore the character relationships a bit more and have time to sit with some of the darker themes but overall it was a good read. The weird world of book eaters serves as an interesting backdrop and all of the elements make for a unique tale that reminds us that sometimes, good people have to make bad decisions to protect the ones they love.

Rating: The Book Eaters - 7.0/10
-Brandee

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. The thoughts on this story are my own.

Devon is a Book Eater – one of a race of not-quite-human people who consume books to live, absorbing the information as they eat. But her son, Cai, was born with a different, rarer sort of hunger – Cai must devour minds in order to survive. There is a drug that can help him curb that hunger, but it’s difficult to come by because Devon is on the run from the rest of her people.

The story alternates between Devon’s past and her present, and each slowly builds context until we see the full, nightmarish picture of the world and society that Devon has escaped from and the reasons behind the desperation she feels in the here and now. It took me a little time to get into this book, but once I did, I really enjoyed it.

Representation: Lesbian main character and wlw love interest, POC characters, asexual character

CW: infertility, forced marriage, forced pregnancy, domestic abuse, child endangerment

Devon is part of a mysterious race of book eaters, who rely on books for physical sustenance. In alternating chapters, we see Devon as a young woman raised on fairy tales and betrothed for the first time contrasted to years later when Devon has escaped her family and is frantically trying to care for her ravenous, mind-eating son.

This was one of the most innovative conceptions of monsters I've encountered recently, and it's paired with a dark, atmospheric environment. Everyone is a monster, just different kinds. Lots of fun!

While many of my questions about book eaters and their society ultimately went unanswered, making the world seem paperthin at times, it was still an enjoyable read.

Advanced Reader’s Copy provided by NetGalley, Macmillan-Tor/Forge, and Tor Books in exchange for an honest review.

Content warnings (provided by the author): Body horror, gore, explicit violence, domestic abuse, violence against children.

I don't know about you, but ever since I was a child and saw Neverending Story, I've wanted to be able to live inside the books that I read. But in THE BOOK EATERS, we have a species that looks like humans, yet they take sustenance by eating (literally) books... a genetic defect causes some of them to only be able to survive on eating people's minds. In either case, they absorb the story/information/memories from their food and it runs the risk of altering their personalities. Live too long and they begin to lose their minds as they are overwhelmed with the things they have eaten over their lifetime. But this species also has few women and fewer births, their numbers dwindling as the years go by. Women are married off to other families for a few years in hopes of producing a child, only to then have to leave that child forever as they move on to a new marriage and a new family... until they can no longer have children and they are resigned to being the "aunts" in their original family home, raising the left behind children from the wives that have passed through. Until one woman decides to fight back.

This is a brutal book on many levels. While Devon may have grown up eating fairytales (as all women of her species are, making them see themselves as princesses in their own lives), her life is far more a Grimm fairytale than a Disney one. What Devon is forced to do in order to save Cai is ugly and without any good, just, or right choices. I was invested in Dean's story and characters and enjoyed seeing the inside workings of multiple family mansions. Each one so different while all operating under the same stifling rule. It was evident fairly early on that there could be no happy ending, no ending that didn't come with pain and loss - but I still was hoping for the best possible outcome to the very end.

I can see this being a great book club book because there are so many threads that would lead into conversations between people. I think everyone will approach the morality in this book differently and that could be a very engaging experience that will add new layers to this story.

I loved THE BOOK EATERS so, so much. I have often felt like a book eater myself, devouring books in order to enter another world, or perhaps just escape this one. It was interesting to see this concept literalized in a society of secretive, mysterious people who literally use books for sustenance, tasting words and paper and absorbing their knowledge. Sunyi Dean does a fantastic job of bringing this small but highly complex and hierarchical society to life in vivid detail, and crafts a nuanced protagonist in Devon, who has escaped this society and is reluctantly returning to the fold in order to save her son's life. I could not put this down!

This book is original, well-written, and a lovely read! I enjoyed the story a bunch and the entire concept was so well done.

- THE BOOK EATERS is part adventure tale, part gothic mystery, part horror story and I loved it.
- I loved that it not only gave us the gothic manor tropes but also the claustrophobia of being a woman born into an impossibly patriarchal system. Watching Devon try to navigate her love for her children with her need to break free and be her own person was heart wrenching.
- It's not super obvious from the summary, but this book is also queer! There's some nice sapphic longing from Devon, as well as an asexual secondary character.

Imagine if you could eat a book and absorb all of its contents.

As a reader, this would literally be a dream come true. But for Devon, not so much. There are downsides to being a book eater, like growing up in a patriarchal society where women are forced into marriages for breeding purposes.

This is one of the most interesting and unique concepts I've ever seen in a book. I just wanted more more more information about book eaters. I loved the descriptions of what books tasted like and how sometimes adding ketchup makes eating maps taste better. I wanted MORE worldbuilding.

The story itself is okay. It kind of reminded me of [book:Gallant|58064046], very Gothic with lots of big manors, oppressive families and overbearing men telling little girls what to do. If you like that kind of thing, or if you've ever wanted to eat a book, I recommend giving this a try.

The Book Eaters was my most anticipated fantasy of the year as somebody who rarely reads from the genre, and I'm sad to say I found it aggressively average despite the intriguing title.

I enjoyed how accessible the story was: this was an urban fantasy, meaning our modern world is still the backdrop, but with a magical layer weaved into it. Since I don't read fantasy often, this is pretty much the only way I can get through fantasy books, and at no point was I confused about the magical system and society. The author also did a great job of separating each character with distinct personalities and scenes, so I was never confused about which character was which, which is the other major drawback I have from many fantasy stories.

However, I had a really hard time getting into the story and caring about the characters. While I found the main character to be really compelling, I also found that due to the lack of meaningful interactions she has with other characters, especially positive interactions, I was bored with her story and thought it got a bit repetitive. I would have liked, for example, more relationship building between her and Hester, as well as her cousin (? I can't remember exactly who he was) that gave her the gameboy. I found what listed relationship development scenes the main character had with others to be so compelling, and I wanted more from that to keep my interest.

I was also a bit underwhelmed by the social commentary that actually comes out of the novel. The idea of people who can consume and memorize books and /minds/ via eating was so interesting, and I expected lots of layered commentary to come with it, but found the book lacked it. I think, while the author did give some commentary, the sociological aspect of the book had a lot of untapped potential which was disappointing.

Actual rating 3.5 stars. Thank you to Macmillan/Tor and NetGalley for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

As much as I wanted to like this book based on the premise, I definitely struggled a little bit with reading it. I wanted this book to be more about book (and mind) eating, but it was ultimately about family politics and the power that love has, both for good and for bad. An interesting read nonetheless though.

Love doesn’t have a cost. It is just a choice you make, the way you choose to keep breathing or keep living. It is not about worth and it’s not about price. Those concepts don’t apply.

Devon Fairweather is a book eater, a human-like creature who feeds on books and knowledge to survive. Devon Fairweather is a princess, one of the very rare women among The Families, the book-eater clans. But, above all, Devon Fairweather is a mother who will do everything and anything to keep her son, Cai, safe from the Families as Cai is a mind eater, someone who feeds on brains to survive. The men in power want to chain him like a monster for their own benefit and there is no way Devon will allow that. She herself has been restrained by the doctrinaire rules of The Families her entire life—her son will be free, or she will die trying.

In The Book Eaters, we follow the past and present of Devon Fairweather and the perilous journey she had to embark in first to survive as a woman in a man-dominated tyranny and then to snatch her son from the claws of the cult-like society of the book eaters. Sunyi Dean’s debut novel is nothing but outstanding.

Fast-paced, insightful, and inventive, The Book Eaters is definitely a work to keep an eye on. Nowadays, due to the immense number of novels released into the world every day, it is becoming increasingly difficult to come across fresh stories that keep you at the edge of your seat. This one is one of those fresh stories. The twist on the vampire tradition, the poignant social criticism, and the beautiful concept of book-eating are a wonderful combination of the familiar and the unknown that just keeps you guessing over and over again. Information is given to the reader beautifully—in small doses that, even if satiating, will just trap you and make you read just one more page, one more chapter.

It is also important to mention the wonderful blend that the author makes of narration, real fiction—each chapter that is set in the past is introduced with a real book quote, closely linked to what is happening in the novel, such as The Princess Bride, The Scarlet Letter or Rapunzel—and excerpts from a journalistic academic research on book eaters that just reads unbelievably real. Of course, for a work about book eaters, the omnipresence of literature is no surprise, but it is very much appreciated, and the blending of fact and fiction is a true delight. In a way, it adds an extra layer to the overall lore that surrounds the novel, enriching each and every page and giving a whole new meaning to each chapter for the reader to discover.

One could not finish this review without noting that another great point in the narration is that the novel almost reads as an action movie in a way. For the most part it has a certain reminiscence to one of those 1990s/2000s movie where the female lead just kicks ass and has no trouble rescuing herself and those she loves from a patriarchal society, like Underworld or even Resident Evil. Like the main characters from those movies, Devon never takes her eye out of her goal: to protect her son. To be a good mother. To find the cure that will help her and her son be free from the torment of having to torture humans for sustenance. And to cure her own scars.

If this review piqued your appetite, dear reader, please go ahead and consider having this wonderful novel for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. A dash of danger, a pinch of motherly love, a handful of well-rounded and gripping queer characters, and a tablespoon of literary goodness is what you will taste in this delicious concoction. Bon appétit!

Wow, this book has a lot to it but I mean that in the best way. It has urban fantasy, oppressed women going through it, family politics, supernatural and mystery elements. If that all sounds intriguing to you, I urge you to pick this book up without reading the synopsis! I truly think this book is best enjoyed if you go in blind. Not only is it truly riveting but it moves you in a way that I can't really describe. Trust me on this one, pick up The Book Eaters and let me know what you think when you do!

This is a stunningly strange book, unlike anything I've read before. I loved Devon Fairweather, the book eater princess, and her journey. The Book Eaters definitely requires attention but is well worth the journey.

I'm not sure I've read a book quite like this before, and it is surely going to be niggling at my brain for a while. The Book Eaters alternates the history of the Six Families with present-day struggles, all within the same world that feels like it could be real. Sunyi Dean writes with such an engaging style, drawing readers in so tangibly that it's hard to put the book down.

HIGHLIGHTS
~maps taste better with ketchup
~Gameboys make me emotional now
~princesses have teeth
~mothers who burn the world down for their kids are A++
~I wanna be a book eater too (sans the sexism!)

“Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.” ~Francis Bacon

Never has that quote seemed so apt as when reading this utterly marvelous tale of people who eat books!

The book eaters are a human-adjacent species who…literally eat books. They have special book-teeth and everything! Different genres and prose styles have different flavours (which is the kind of tiny detail I adore) and a book eater can perfectly remember every word of every book they’ve ever eaten. This means, of course, that over the course of their life they amass a ridiculously huge amount of knowledge.

…Or, it should. But book eaters are patriarchal, sexist dicks, so female book eaters are kept on a diet of fairytales and fluff-fiction to keep them ignorant and docile. Because there aren’t many book eaters around, and they’re not very fertile, and girl children are much rarer than boys. So it’s pretty important that the women accept the fact that they’re ‘leased’ out for short-term marriages in the hopes of them having as many (preferably female) children as possible. If they were ever to realise they had more options than being sheltered princesses in towers, well…things might go badly.

Devon is an ex-princess. When we first meet her, she’s on the run with her five-year-old son Cai – who isn’t a book eater, but a mind eater, something the collected book eater Families consider monstrous and dangerous. Mind eaters are supposed to be handed over to the Knights, the all-male order who negotiate and keep track of marriages between the Families, but fuck that. Devon is not giving up her son…even if he is a monster. Her one hope is to track down the remnants of a fallen Family and get her hands on the drug they once produced – the drug that lets mind eaters live as normal book eaters.

More or less, anyway.

Dean’s writing is sharp and tight and gleaming, gorgeously smooth in a way that makes the book impossible to put down. Which I’m very glad of, because I was a little taken aback when I first started reading; The Book Eaters is not the magical, more fanciful tale I was kind of expecting from the premise people who eat books. This book is sharp book-teeth behind an agreeable smile; it’s a look of rage hidden by long hair and a bowed head; it’s what is left behind when illusions are shattered and the scales torn from your eyes.

It’s what happens when you push a mother past helplessness and into the dark, desperate, dangerous space beyond it.

It is not what I expected, and to be honest, if it had been written by anyone else I might have put The Book Eaters away to come back to later – it’s been a while since I’ve been able to enjoy stories that feature sexism and rage-inducing men and people I like being stuck in horrible situations. I’ve been wanting a lot more escapism, lately.

But it wasn’t written by anyone else, it was written by Sunyi Dean, and I wasn’t being hyperbolic when I said it’s unputdownable. Whenever I picked up The Book Eaters I lost hours of time as her prose swept me away into Devon’s world and made me forget about everything else. There are writers who can make you feral for a story and its characters, and Dean is definitely one of them; I had to keep reading to find out what Devon was planning, to make sure she and Cai would be okay, to be there for whatever happened next.

And wow did I not see it coming! Dean doesn’t save the twists for the final moment; I swear I got whiplash at the big reveal a third of the way through, and the whole book was like that, unpredictable as anything, keeping me on my toes and glued to the pages. The Book Eaters is much more than a completely unique premise; it’s fierce and clever and pointed and tricksy, constantly surprising, without a single wasted word. Every sentence is exactly as it needs to be, every scene and chapter is completely necessary, every line distilled down to its ultimate potency. And by that I don’t mean that The Book Eaters is solely plot-driven – the secondary timeline of the book, showing us Devon’s past, is all about her developing as a character and a person; there are many moments of introspection, and scenes that are all about emotion, not action.

What I mean is that Dean nails the balance of plot and – and heart; that elusive thing we write fanfic to get our fill of, because so many stories don’t give it to us as part of canon. The human moments, the in-between moments, the moments that do not directly move the plot forward but make the plot matter. The magic that transforms a character on the page into a person whose story we need to know.

Is there a name for that? Because whatever it is, Dean gets it, understands it, and gives it to us; not so much that it would diffuse the power of the overarching story, but exactly the right amount to magnify the power of the story.

If we were all book eaters, and could devour our copies of Devon’s story right down to the endpapers, The Book Eaters would be a Michelin-star dish.

Devon grows up surrounded living in a manor house on the Yorkshire Moors with her family; they are always focused on tradition, on appearances, on the Family above all.

Being part of her family comes with its own responsibilities. Boys will grow up to be patriarchs or leaders, they'll train to become the Knights who carefully manage marriages between book eaters to prevent inbreeding. Girls are a rarer commodity among the book eaters, precious. With only six girls between the Families, every one is expected to do her duty producing two children from two different husbands to help propagate the species.

Raised as a princess, eating fairytales and cautionary tales like every female book eater, Devon knows her role from a young age as clearly as she knows she craves different stories to eat. It isn't the life she wants but, for a book eater girl, it's the only life there is.

Prepared to do her part until her childbearing years end with the early menopause endemic to their species, Devon plans to stay detached and bide her time until she's free. But nothing goes according to plan once she holds her child.

Book eaters have never been known for their creativity but when her son is born not as a book eater but as a much more dangerous--and much more expendable--mind eater, Devon is determined to do everything she can to imagine a new ending for both of them in The Book Eaters (2022) by Sunyi Dean.

The Book Eaters is Dean's debut novel. The audiobook, as narrated by Katie Erich, brings Devon's Yorkshire tyke to life.

Devon's Family is of Romanian descent, most characters are assumed white. Devon's sexuality as a lesbian--and another character's asexuality--becomes central to the plot as Devon questions her narrowly defined role within the constraints of book eater society.

With its focus on bodily autonomy and personal freedom, The Book Eaters is surprisingly prescient. Dean does not shy away from scenes of assault on the night of Devon's first "wedding" nor from disconcerting depictions of what exactly happens when a mind eater feeds making for a timely but often unpleasant narrative.

In a society of creatures who are stronger and more dangerous than humans, Devon and other characters are forced into difficult choices for their survival. This focus leads to a fast paced story interspersed with ethical quandaries of who can qualify as a hero or a villain and, more relevantly, who is worth saving.

The Book Eaters is a grim adventure with abundantly original world building; a story about the lengths we'll go to protect family--found and otherwise.

Possible Pairings: Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake, The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco, Half Bad by Sally Green, The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins, Only a Monster by Vanessa Len, This Savage Song by V. E. Schwab

Devon is a book eater which is exactly what it sounds like. She’s one of only a few women in book eater society (known as The Family) which means she’s used in arranged marriages and forced to have children to keep the species alive. She’s on the run with her son who is an even more rare “mind eater” who needs to feed off human minds instead of books.

Sunyi Dean is an excellent writer who gives so much heart and depth to her characters. The world she created is amazingly creative and detailed. The plot expertly alternates between timelines to slowly reveal the truth of Devon’s situation. Good for fans of Neil Gaiman and dark fantasy. Read content warnings, though, if you're not up for a dark book that involves gore and violence and forced pregnancies.