The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean follows the life of Devon Fairweather, a female book eater. She grew up in a reclusive clan of such creatures, where her life is ruled by Patriarchs and Knights, and she is the princess, where female book eaters like her are rare. She has a son whom she would tear the world apart for, but he was born with a twisted sort of hunger---not for stories and tales, but for human minds.

The concept of "a race of people who devour books in the most literal sense" is such an interesting concept. Become the thing you consume, whether it be book or mind. Dean carries out this concept in a way that had me intrigued from start to finish. I love Devon as a character---an unfeminine and strong mother, who wants nothing more in the world than watch her children grow up in a world where they are free from the Family.

Sometimes I questioned whether we could consider Devon a monster. She's not human, and yet she's the most human when she hesitates on feeding her son. She could be a self-proclaimed vigilante, giving her son scum to feed on, but she doesn't want Cai to see the world so darkly. So she makes a choice: only good and kind people (or people she deemed good and kind enough) She represses the guilt, because she's aware she has no right to do this to kind people. Her sense of morality and conflict is not monstrous, because most people would put their children first, in the end.

4 stars, because I kind of wanted to see more of this world and also the romance could have been more developed. Maybe small tidbits of the "legend" of book eaters. What of the book eaters in other parts of the world? How far can we push a book eater's creativity? What did book eaters eat before the book came to be? Why does Cai have eczema when book eaters aren't supposed to suffer from human diseases?