"I took his hands, and his body slumped into mine, and he whispered a few times, I’m so hungry, I’m so hungry, I’m so hungry. And then, I ate him."Vampire books are definitely my thing. Okay, vampires, in general, are my thing. It's really no secret. They are broody, have strong jawlines, and are just about the only thing that looks delectable in velvet. Plus they bite. What more could I ask for?I'm always on the hunt for a vampire novel that is way outside of the norm. I want something differen...

| | blog | tumblr | letterboxd | |“I feel like giving up, lying down on this wall and closing my eyes and just doing nothing – not bothering to try to fit into the human world, not bothering to make friends and art, not bothering to source blood and feed myself.” Woman, Eating is a great example of a good concept being let down by a rather lacklustre execution…it lacked bite (ba dum tss). “I realised that demon is a subjective term, and the splitting of my identity between devil and god, betw...

What I was promised: a young vampire artist hungry for blood and life, while struggling with her identity and immortalityWhat I got: an underwhelming extended metaphor with a romantic subplot I think the story of the protagonist’s self-loathing vampire mother and human father would have made for a more interesting novel than the one we got. Verdict: unsatisfying. I’m giving it an extra star because it’s a debut.

Depressed Woman literary fiction, except the woman in question happens to be a vampire. I thought this was a really interesting novel, sparsely written, and with a lot of insights on eating and hunger and alienation--but that's exactly it: it never went beyond interesting for me. The ideas were there, but I just never felt in any way emotionally invested in or moved by this story.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the eARC. Can't believe a book about a woman whose a vampire left me down. In Woman, Eating we follow Lydia, Lyd, after she moves to a studio with other artists and starts an internship in, what she considered, a great place. She also gets to met Ben, an... awkward guy that was not interesting but got the attention of our mc, of course.As much as I wanted to love this because of its premise, it felt like something was missing, there were so many mom

WOMAN, EATING by Claire Kohda is a story of a young woman who’s half Japanese, half vampire and it not only met a lot of my expectations, but also made me really hungry! Lydia is making her way in the world for the first time without her vampire mother who’s been put in a home. She’s twenty-three, an art school graduate, new to London, and always hungry. She’s used to a strict diet of pig’s blood, having never once sunk her teeth into human flesh and unable to digest human foods. She wishes she

Like many young people, Lydia is struggling to find her feet. She's an artist who can only afford to sleep on a yoga mat in her studio space, and she's doing an internship where she's forced to defer to rich and spoiled people who don't care about her well-being. But Lydia is also different, because she's a vampire. Her Japanese father died before she was born, and her Malaysian mother turned Lydia into a vampire when she was a baby. Lydia grows into an adult, but her body can never change after...

Incredibly weird and good and probably the best vampire story I've ever read.

Sad girl, but make it Vampire! This book is a hypnotic character study that focuses on hunger, not just for food but also for acceptance. Lydia, our protagonist, is caught between two worlds: vampire versus human, and her cultural backgrounds. She is lost with no clear path ahead of her, attempting to find her place in the world and connect with people but finding it exceedingly difficult. Lydia’s story is incredibly lonely, bleak, and uncertain. I thought the ending was a little abrupt and rush...

Although I was intrigued, enjoyed the characters and the fresh take on vampirism in a Gen Z world I wasn't very satisfied with the way it ended. I felt like it touched on a lot of different discussions yet never fully delved further than surface level sadly.

i found this Unsatisfying, which is, given the premise, ironic. the protagonist's habit of watching 'what i eat in a day' youtube videos feels like a solid analogy for my experience reading; twitchings of curiosity and interest, but mostly frustration at the passivity, the impossibility of feeling or smelling or touching or eating any of it, the arbitrary-feeling window of time in someone else's life where things happen mostly in the cuts & edits, the smooth, impenetrable surface, interface, of

who knew a book about a vampire can make me feel so seen?woman, eating is a book abt our mc, lydia, who is half vampire and has just started living alone without her mother. as a half-vampire from her mom, and half human from her dad’s side, lydia is always hungry. she craves for her human side, to be able to taste food that her dad liked to eat, to know her mixed heritage from her dad who is japanese but she really doesn’t know much about it and also her mom. she craves to know human interactio...

This clever and humorous novel goes some way to answering the many questions one might have about a vampire trying to survive in modern day London; how to exist without breaking the law, dealing with the disintegrating mental health of an elderly parent (also a vampire), and even dental problems. And the answer isn’t as simple as black pudding either. Lydia is an art student new to the city, determined to live life and refusing to exist in the shadows as her forebears have done. Her mother has f...

TITLE: Woman Eating AUTHOR: Claire Khoda PUB DATE: 04.12.2022 Now AvailableREVIEW:Read. This. Book.One of the most unique stories I have read. Woman Eating is about Lydia. She is 23, half Japanese and half Malaysian, and a Vampire, turned by her mother when she was a baby. Lydia is hungry and has an insatiable appetite. She longs for Japanese food, perhaps in order to be human just like her father, and craves for life, for acceptance, for friendships, and so many more! In this character driven s...

Thank you to the publisher for sending me an ARC of this book! I am obsessed with this lonely, sad girl, artist vampire! This is definitely more of a “character study” and it falls into the “literary sad girl” genre that’s all the buzz right now, so make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into.This story reminds me a lot of how I feel watching an A24 film - hypnotized, mildly uncertain, and questionably satisfied by the end. If you like the works of Ottessa Moshfegh or perhaps Sally Roon...

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of Woman, Eating. Let me be clear: this is not your typical vampire novel. No one sparkles here, thank God. There's some blood, a little, but not much. I had some expectations, more of the violent kind, sort of like an Interview with the Vampire, but Woman, Eating was more than that. ** Minor spoilers ahead ** Lydia is a vampire and an artist struggling to find her voice and when she begins an internship at a gallery, she believes she may have finally fo...

eARC provided by Netgalley in exhange for an honest review. Woman, Eating is the book to read if you want an example of completely wasted potential. We follow our protagonist, Lydia, around the city as she begins an art internship under an infamous so-called "art advocate", where she moves into a studio shared by multiple other young artists and cautiously enters a complicated relationship with a boy named Ben. But she's also a vampire, slowly descending into hunger as she struggles to find a

Read my full blog review here!Woman, Eating was great. Both on an allegorical level and a very literal one: Lydia's life as a vampire unable to eat what she wants most—human food—and subsequently denying herself blood can be seen as a not-so-subtle commentary on eating disorders; her mother's whole existence can be replaced with the concept of Lydia's insecurities about herself and her place in society, because her mother is the root of these insecurities and also interchangeable with them, at l...