The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean
I expected this book to mostly take place on a sweeping estate situated on the Yorkshire moors, learning about these clans of unusual people who absorb information as well as sustenance from words on the page. Parts of the book did take place on said misty moors, but I did not anticipate an action-packed game of cat and mouse set on the streets of contemporary England, the insidious machinations of clan rivalries, an underground rebellion, a mother making gruesome sacrifices for her son, and a sapphic romance to boot.
Devon is born a book eater, and we meet her as an adult. She has one child–a son born with very different, very taboo dietary needs (which is saying a lot for people who eat books), making him an undesirable to her family and people. Devon will do anything to protect her kid, even if it means going against the only community she knows. Now, she’s on a mission without the protection of home and clan, exposed to a world she knows little about, but was home safe after all? Drifting between past and present, Devon reckons with a girlhood where, while limited, she was treated as special and exceptional, and a coming of age that exposed her family’s chilling expectations around womanhood.
The Book Eaters took me in so many different directions and presented me with a compelling protagonist testing the limits of her loyalties and grasping at agency. I expected a quietly brooding story, but this was quite the page turner. I also loved watching a relationship develop between complete opposites Devon and Hester, the mystery woman who enters her life.