Scan barcode
A review by lumie
The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
0.5
So I hated this book. I very seriously thought about DNFing and only didn't because I'm a masochist apparently (and unfortunately had bought the hardbook cover).
More than anything I felt cheated by it. Its marketing was all about this gothic, Victorian-esq, dark academia tale of these book eaters creatures, and instead we got a dollar store version of the Handmaid's Tale, whose themes of misogyny, motherhood and cult-like (alien?!) families are shoehorn in without being consistent with what little world building there was.
Where the Book Eaters as a concept was completely underexplored, non-sensical and pointless to the actual plot of the story.
Where it couldn't decide what time period it was in, and so the mention of leather jackets and motorbikes and the video game jokes just felt completely anachronistic to the grand Victorian mansion houses, particularly with the dual timeline forcingly switching us between the past and present (and what a bore that was).
The world building was shallow, the characters boring and underdeveloped, the romance forced, the writing average at best, the plot mediocre, the concept WASTED. A huge disappointment.
More than anything I felt cheated by it. Its marketing was all about this gothic, Victorian-esq, dark academia tale of these book eaters creatures, and instead we got a dollar store version of the Handmaid's Tale, whose themes of misogyny, motherhood and cult-like (alien?!) families are shoehorn in without being consistent with what little world building there was.
Where the Book Eaters as a concept was completely underexplored, non-sensical and pointless to the actual plot of the story.
Where it couldn't decide what time period it was in, and so the mention of leather jackets and motorbikes and the video game jokes just felt completely anachronistic to the grand Victorian mansion houses, particularly with the dual timeline forcingly switching us between the past and present (and what a bore that was).
The world building was shallow, the characters boring and underdeveloped, the romance forced, the writing average at best, the plot mediocre, the concept WASTED. A huge disappointment.