k wow — what do I even say? Thank you netGalley for the arc of this upcoming horror release -- I went into this book completely blind which made this one of the most unique reading experiences I've ever had.

My gut says 5 stars. I’m going to think on it, but I’m certainly in the 4.5–5 range.

I think this book is a true work of art and expertly crafted, but simultaneously, I hated the dark feeling that accompanied me while reading this and am relieved it’s over. Its gruesome details were a little hard to bear sometimes, but that is the point. And true art often makes one uncomfortable.
This is an absolutely disgusting, vile (complimentary) depiction of female rage and suffering and retaliation.
But also — it is so much more. This book is unexpectedly so tender and relatable, while also completely outrageous. There is mother-daughter bonding through rageful cannibalism, yes, but there are all these tender little moments that contain multitudes. Interwoven are themes of girlhood & adolescence, grief, otherness, generational trauma, humility, and the value of family and sibling bonds.

I found Veronica’s character arc to be a very relatable depiction of the loss of innocence and the misery that accompanies it when transitioning from childhood into adulthood. She’s completely awkward and curious and angry, and her wide span of passionate emotions reminded me of what it’s like to be a 14-year-old girl — and how difficult and confusing it is to be a 14-year-old girl. Being a younger sister to an older brother with a similar age gap made her all the more relatable to me — her awe and admiration for her older brother, Tommy, the feelings that they are an island apart from their parents, maybe even apart from each other — so very real and known to me.

I think a reread of this book with annotation supplies would be particularly enlightening on its craft, foreshadowing, and broader social commentary.

Oh man, this was a good story!

I love the cover, I love how creepy it is and I love how the plot played out.

At first glance, this book seemed to be marketed as more of a horror than it initially turned out to be but instead it was closer to a tender coming of age story with just a crunchy core of cannibalism

The child of Vietnamese immigrants, Ronny works through the difficulties of high school life while grappling with tragedies and her own struggle of trying to fit in amongst her peers. Her parents are distant and she struggles to make connections and find acceptance. She deals with this all while, following an unspeakably horrible night at a party, she realizes that she's developing an urge to consume human flesh.

I don't particularly enjoy coming of age stories, but I cannot say that this one was poorly executed for what it was. There's layers and metaphors that paint an unflinching tale of the struggles a young woman is faced with at that ripe age. All that compounded with the tough fact of being a second generation immigrant with distant parents in the rural Midwest. This is a sad grief filled story that can easily pull on the heartstrings.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for this ARC opportunity, all opinions are my own

A story with a bite. Literally.

If anyone wanted to know what it was like to be nagged at by my parents, aunts, and uncles, here it is. Great scenes that felt like they were ripped out of my own Vietnamese-American upbringing.

Gotta let the bite sink its teeth in the skin real deep. Then the story takes off.
Teen angst, trauma, and cannibalism!
All visceral.

Perfect for summer. And PLEASEEE do it for the gorgeous cover...as I did hehe

(Actual: 3.75⭐, rounded up) I don't even like Horror LOL, but this has been my year of reading outside my comfort zone! Somewhat surprisingly though, I have recently noticed a trend in books lately (primarily written by women & are of stories that are women-led) that focus/draw parallels with cannibalism 💀 Which isn't a bad thing! Just an interesting thing to notice, haha 😆 Anyway~~ regardless of that, I really liked this book! I admittedly couldn't help but compare it to both GIRL DINNER and THE LAMB, unfortunately, but even so, I think WHAT HUNGER is just as unique as those two reads and definitely stands out all on its own. I love the cultural representation featured here, and I felt like this book had just the right balance of horror, humor, and heart. Definitely would rec out to my fellow readers!

This book was a pleasant surprise! I have read Catherine's other novel, Nice Girls, and just didn't care for it, but I loved this one! It really drew me in and kept me engaged. I loved the different aspects of the book and I thought they were weaved together nicely- the feminine rage, navigating grief, the sexual assault, generational trauma, and the coming-of-age journey. I will definitely be looking forward to her next book!

I love some feminine rage books.

This one was great.

Veronica is very young and looks up to her big brother who tends to fight with their parents. One day he is in a car accident and doesn’t make it. Veronica has to navigate life full of grief and not having her protective brother in her corner.

This was emotional, well written and unputdownable.

I didn’t see where the cw were on this book. But my god. It needs some.

(CW: death of a child, on page sa, cannibalism, gore, racism)

Thanks to netgalley and Simon and Schuster for an eARC

If Bat Eater left you with a book hangover and you’re looking to fill that void, this would be my recommendation! (Similar vibes, very different story).

I love a good family drama, but I never knew how much I needed one with a horror twist. This was really well written and super engrossing. I couldn’t put it down!

I especially loved how the author successfully intertwined so many different themes. There were themes of grief, family drama, coming of age, female rage, teenage angst and more.

I had been drawn to this book ever since I saw the cover for it floating around a few months back. I wasn't aware of the plot yet but it was a cover that immediately caught my eye. There is something about the fingers squeezing the berry that screams female rage in a way that I'm not sure how to explain but that Catherine Dang explains perfectly. Maybe rage isn't even the right word but simply female existence. Human existence when you belong to a group of people often alienated. What Hunger follows our titular character, Ronny Nguyen, during a summer before high school as she navigates the conflicts of being a teenage girl and the conflicts that exist within her family dynamic. As summer is coming to an end, tragedy turns Ronny into someone she doesn't recognize...but someone she quite enjoys. This book was brilliant and I'll definitely be purchasing a copy for myself once it is published.

Have you ever read something and thought “wtf did I just read?”. Well this is that for me, and that’s all I will say. LOL. Read it if you dare.

thanks to @netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for my VERY honest review.

#WhatHunger #Booksonaburger #bookstagram #booksbooksbooks

This book was incredible! A little terrifying and disgusting but in the best way, and the descriptive imagery only made it better. I liked that it wasn't just a gratuitous horror novel, but there were components that really only could've been conveyed through the body horror. I loved Ronny, she was so funny and true to herself, and it's weird because despite her being only a freshman in high school, she had so much emotional maturity and I actually really liked the age gap between her and myself. Such a gripping book with so many relatable themes, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if this becomes a literary classic.

3.75 stars

I feel like we’ve been getting a lot of cannibal coming-of-age stories lately! This novel dealt with themes of isolation, grief, assault, generational trauma, and family. I overall had a good time with this work and found the characters to be unlikeable but compelling. I do wish it had been about 50-100 pages longer to further explore where we left things off and the revelations that came in the final few pages. The eating scenes were visceral and well described — I would have loved to have more of them!

Okay I loved this! It was well-paced and incorporated themes of girlhood, war, and trauma really effectively. I think this is a really great book for people who love books about women's wrongs!

I enjoyed this book! I think there are some aspects that just didn't fully connect with and wish were more expanded on. Overall enjoyed it!

This book manages to explore and connect grief, female rage, family dynamics, food, and cannibalism - and it does it so well. I laughed, I cried, I cringed… The book went in a direction I wasn’t expecting and I was on the edge of my seat! The writing style drew me in and I didn’t want to put this book down. Loved it so much!

I'll be honest: a few years ago I read this author's previous novel (which didn't please many readers) and I loved it, so I was eagerly excited and curious to see what this author would do next. Maybe my expectations were too high, because sadly they weren't met.
I did liek the main character and their struggles, but other than that I particularly didn't care for anything else. The plot sounded much better in the synopsis I read than the execution itself.
It didn't impress me, it didn't scare me, it didn't appeal to me, after all.
But I do believe it's just me. Other readers might enjoy this book much better than I did.

I love feminine rage. This was the perfect blend of self-discovery, navigating grief and trauma, and generational appetites. This was a pleasant surprise! Just when i thought i knew where it was going, it went in an even better direction

🖤 What Hunger by Catherine Dang 🖤
Huge thank you to @simonbooks @simonandschuster & @netgalley for the arc copy!

Okay listen… this book?? THIS BOOK. It swallowed me whole. From the very beginning I could feel that slow, creeping tension—and once I realized we were diving headfirst into rage, grief, shame, and womanhood, I was strapped in.

Catherine Dang does something here that I don’t see often—and when I do, it doesn’t always land. But this one? It nailed the messy, complex, all-consuming feeling of being a woman who’s just… had enough. This book felt like a love letter to female rage, and I was so here for it. 🔥

What hit even harder for me though? The way this story blended cannibalism, coming of age, and the immigrant experience in such a raw and unsettling but powerful way. As someone who grew up in an unhealthy immigrant household, this book spoke to parts of me I don’t always see on the page. I was the black sheep. I didn’t sit pretty and quiet—I spoke my truth, took up space, and claimed my respect. Just like the characters in this book did. 👏

And the writing?? Chilling in the best way. It wasn’t trying to be flashy, it was intentional. Smart. Quietly brutal. You know that eerie feeling when you’re in a room that feels too quiet? That’s the vibe—and I loved every second of it.

This isn’t your average twisty thriller. It’s moody, psychological, heavy in all the right ways, and somehow still had me flying through the pages because I just had to know how it all unraveled. I closed it and was like… oh. okay. yeah I need a minute. 😮‍💨

I wasn’t sure what to expect seeing this compared to both Jennifer’s Body and Little Fires Everywhere, but I was certainly curious. The Jennifer’s Body aspect is fairly obvious; a teenage girl finding the hunger to survive and take revenge on the men who stripped her of her dignity through devouring flesh.
The Little Fires Everywhere influence is a bit more subtle, but it’s there if you know where to look; the generational trauma that connects mother and daughter, the struggles a family faces in the wake of tragedy, and the unspoken secrets that hold us all together.

Hunger is the core theme that ties all of this together. Veronica Nyugen’s story heavily revolves around it. The daughter of Vietnamese immigrant parents, her culture is largely shared with her through the meals her mother prepares. As a survivor of tragedy and the theft of her autonomy, she discovers that a meal can cure more than one kind of hunger. Meat means survival, and her newfound hunger must be satiated.
The author delivers mouthwatering descriptions of the dishes prepared throughout the book, interrupted by Ronny’s graphic fantasies of her mounting hunger.
Catherine Dang delivers a true coming-of-age story filled with enough gore and feminine rage to leave horror fans satisfied, while also touching on the deep family connections that make us who we are.
I absolutely devoured this book and I can’t wait to gift this to my friends when it releases!

*Thank you to Catherine Dang, Simon & Schuster, and NetGalley for providing me with a free advanced e-book of What Hunger in exchange for honest review.*

Thank you to Simon & Schuster for this digital ARC! Oh boy, I really need to stop reading horror late at night before bed lol. I absolutely devoured (ha) this novel. Despite the setting being rather slow, this book felt extremely fast-paced and laced with action that made it difficult to put down. Easy to read (despite the subject material) I very quickly was a fan of Veronica, relating heavily to her negative feelings towards men (and particularly about wanting them to fear HER for once) as a teenager. I loved her gentle dynamic with her brother juxtaposed with the violence other men, even her Ba, projected around her. The evolution of the other female relationships in her life, mainly her aunt and her mom, felt way paced and right. I did not give this book 5 stars because something felt inconclusive to me about the ending. I feel that revealing Tommy's relationship with Will (possibly queer relationship?) was odd, and didn't do much for Ronny or for finding closure in the grief with her brother. It also didn't supply me with the intended punch that Tommy had a life outside of Ronny. That hanging thread bothered me a bit, especially because I felt it didn't need to be written in at all. Overall, book was a great read and I would definitely recommend!