Nat's book log 2026 <3

[Nataweeee]

This will (hopefully) be my first full year of dedicated reading and I have so much stuff I'm excited to check out! Hope its a good year for everyone ❤️

 

01. Hungerstone (Kat Dunn, 2024) (audio) ★★★

[Nataweeee]

#1. Hungerstone (Kat Dunn, 2024)

 

Wanted to like this a lot more than I did. On paper there's a ton of appealing stuff about it, being a queer feminist reimagining of a classic vampire story with an anti-capitalist slant but unfortunately the anti-capitalism isn't much more than window dressing and the queerness is just used as a literary device. That's not really the problem though, the problem is that any time the book wants you to draw parallels or make connections or anything like that the character will just tell you and once I noticed this was becoming a trend I got pretty annoyed with it. It just gives you nothing to consider at any point aside from "what happen next?". Admittedly, this is ideal for an audiobook as I did have my focus split between this and work though and I definitely didn't feel like I missed anything lol. Another thing is that it overuses the word "hunger/hungry" to the point that it feels ridiculous. Like the conceit is comparing the vampiric hunger to a woman's need for freedom from the constraints of a shitty marriage/the patriarchal social structure which is clear and easy to follow and good but it touches on it a lot and then they also tie the character's eating disorder into this and maybe its just because I listened to the whole thing over two long nights but god you just end up hearing that word over and over and over again. That's a small gripe but it wouldn't have felt so ever-present if there were moments of profundity or emotional resonance and even though it does try these moments just don't hit. The closest we get to that is a good crowd-pleaser ending that even though it kind of feels like the only possible ending they do a good job of making you think they might go a different direction and there's some good catharsis in it. This probably sounds like an exceedingly negative review but I don't think this a bad book I think it just has different goals from what I want from it. Its focus is very much on being a functional, well-structured story where all the dots are connected and it succeeds in this for sure but its just not the type of writing that moves the needle for me.

 

6/10