The Book Eaters

This book was disappointing, I thought it would be cool. Some thoughts (maybe very light spoilers in these thoughts, so beware)

The whole premise - eating books - is weirdly not important. It literally never matters to the plot that they eat books. They could be vampires, or any other supernatural being or literally just a cult and it would have the same or more impact on the plot.

The “mind-eater” concept is essential to the plot....but book eater concept isn't? It should just be about a weird old cult-like human family who occasionally gives birth to a monster (the mind-eaters) and that would be more interesting.

The whole “collector” thing gets mentioned like 3 times and never revisited?

It's like The Handmaids Tale with random fantasy ethics concepts thrown in.

Some of the modern references felt really jammed in and didn't make sense to the plot. I.e.: 1) the asexuality scene seemed out of place, in the way it wa a handled by the characters...because it doesn't make sense that that would matter so much, in a society where people don't get to choose their partners anyway. 2) there is so much talk about Super Mario but then she says she got “killed by a mushroom”? I'm sorry, but has the author never played Super Mario? 3) Somehow these people can't cross borders because they don't have ID....despite being incredibly wealthy...like, teenagers acquire fake IDs every day, this is not logical. 4) idk man there were so many plot holes and awkward illogical moments I can't even remember. 5) when it was useful for the character to know information it was like “oh chill no worries she read about this” but when it was better for the plot for her not to know then she magically had never heard of normal concepts that she definitely would have come across in books... 6) human food is disgusting except...wine and ketchup?

The one thing I really did enjoy was how all the characters were basically the bad guy. Except the journalist.

Ultimately the plot was just really predictable and I didn't care about any of the characters, except her son a little bit.