A review by serendipitysbooks
How to Be Eaten by Maria Adelmann

dark mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

 Four modern day incarnations of fairytale figures and a reality tv star meet in a New York support group to discuss and hopefully recover from their trauma. Sounds like the set up for a joke but it’s actually the premise of How To Be Eaten. The book has lots of smart things to say about the way women are treated, used and judged by society, and in about the invidious nature of social media and so called reality tv. Most of all it called into question the complicity of the public, the audience who are fascinated by certain news stories and reality shows, who love a happy ending but never wonder what lies beyond it, and who join in the online public discourse and never think about its impact on those being discussed. I wanted to love this but sadly it just didn’t really click for me. Something was off with the meshing of the fairy tale  characters and the contemporary realistic setting.
 
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