From “one of the best new voices in horror fiction” (Brian Keene, Bram Stoker Award–winning author), this darkly satirical supernatural thriller follows a would-be influencer whose dreams of online fame spiral into nightmare territory when she encounters a mysterious and dangerous social media platform—perfect for fans of Grady Hendrix and Joe Hill.
When a video depicting the brutal murder of a former classmate leaks online, Kylie Bennington’s—whose dreams of becoming a successful influencer remain frustratingly elusive—curiosity gets the better of her, leading to the discovery of an off-the-grid social media app called MonoLife. As it turns out, there are certain cryptic rules in the user agreement that must be adhered to, such as interacting with other users at least twice daily or risk losing it all…and never, ever speaking of MonoLife’s existence to non-users or risk dire consequences.
For this is a platform that primarily rewards the worst in human behavior, and which begins chipping away at Kylie’s sanity across post after post for an ever-increasing audience of immoral fans. Now Kylie’s going to find out just how far she’s willing to go on her unyielding rise to the top—even if that means coming face-to-face with the frightening and ruthless forces behind MonoLife, who see all from deep within the shadows…
Wow, this book made me feel old. Most days I don't think I feel any older than I did when I was a teenager (mentally, at least, physically is an entirely different story), and then I read this book from the point of view of an immature nineteen-year-old social media influencer, and whoo boy – I feel like I could be Kylie's great-great-great grandmother. I mean, I'm sure there are much more hip forty-somethings out there, especially when it comes to social media (I have Goodreads and a Facebook account that I avoid using as much as possible and that's about it), but sweet baby kittens on a cracker, I am definitely not nineteen anymore.
But, anyway, this book. I loved the first … two-thirds of it? Maybe even the first three-quarters? MonoLife is creepy and the people who use it are creepy, and it's unsettling to watch Kylie get deeper and deeper into it despite all of the (big, huge, obvious) red flags. There's not a single likeable character to be found – everyone is selfish and image-obsessed and they're generally just awful people – but somehow it's still almost unputdownable? It's like a slow-motion train wreck and you can't wait to see what Kylie does next in her quest to gain followers, even though you know it's going to be something terrible.
The last third (quarter?) of the book, however, has a totally different feel than the rest of it. Things go completely off the rails and there's a lot of gore and the characters get even more awful. Some of it is kind of fever-dream-y and there are psychopaths doing psychopath things, and I just don't even know what to make of most of it. Gore isn't usually my thing and while I would have preferred that the story hadn't morphed into a blood-soaked, ego-fueled slasher story at the end, I suppose it was entertaining enough.
As far as trigger warnings go, well, there's a lot of them because this is a horror novel. But do be aware that there's some animal cruelty and death. A dog dies in a rather horrible manner, and then it's mentioned repeatedly throughout the book and the pup doesn't exactly get a peaceful eternal slumber. 😫 There's also a very brief mention of some kitten-related violence, but there are no details and you don't actually “see” it happen.
My overall rating: 3.67 stars, rounded up. Feeders is disturbing and weird and certainly not for the squeamish, but the premise is unique and I loved its foray into the dark side of social media. If you can handle violence and gore and self-absorbed teenagers behaving (very, very, very) badly, it's definitely worth a read.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for providing me with an advance copy of this book to review. Its expected publication date is May 20, 2025.
Feeders looks at what happens when influencer fame comes with a heavy cost. When Kylie Bennington hears about a viral video that shows the brutal murder of one of her classmates, Kylie can't help but want to check it out. But seeking out the video leads her to a troubling social media app called MonoLife. To participate in MonoLife, one must sign the user agreement, which includes some troubling rules. And as Kylie falls deeper and deeper into the world of MonoLife, she discovers just how far she's willing to go for internet fame.
commentary on society's desensitization violence and the need for constant disgusting and vile videos? a commentary on social media and influencers? Maybe both? I thought there would be some discovery about the app, but maybe if we had been in the head of another character. one who didn't crave and need the constant attention that comes with being online.
kylie did NOT care. She wanted that lifestyle badly, and when she got it, she didn't care about looking any deeper. She’s insane and desperate. her obsession with katy perry should have been the first sign this girl was not mentally well. (sorry to all kitty kats or whatever y'all are called).
Overall - this was good. not bad but not the greatest. The writing was a little flat in area's but in general it wasn't bad. The story was enough to hold me till I reached the end. I’m not sure how I feel?? because it felt like another plot change without any lead up. so many plot holes. excessive violence and gore (and animal death!!) so please check trigger warnings before diving in.
Kylie is a community college student who sees becoming an influencer as her path out of a tragically boring existence. The only issue? Her content isn’t exactly going viral. Then she discovers MonoLife. It’s an invite-only social network with hidden layers. On MonoLife, there are no rules. Videos of the most depraved violence, shocking sex acts, and cruel pranks rule the platform without a moderator in sight. Kylie’s willing to do what it takes to make it as a MonoLife influencer. But the forces behind the app are even darker than she could have imagined.
This is a whip-smart social satire and I absolutely loved it. It’s also NOT for the faint of heart. Consider this your content warning for, well, literally everything. But if you’re a horror fan, I can’t recommend this one enough. Kylie is an absolute maniac and it’s fun being inside her head. And there was one twist that absolutely shocked me!
A wild tale of narcissism fueled by an addiction to social media, Feeders serves as both a page turning horror thriller and a cautionary tale. If you thought the apps on your phone had sinister undertones, wait until you dive into the madness of MonoLife. Think Mean Girls, only with a penchant for murder and mayhem, all in the name of the almighty views and likes. Sound familiar? I know a book has me hooked when it's the last thing I read before falling asleep, and the first thing I grab when I wake up. A fun, nasty ride down the influencer rabbit hole!
there should be a rule that anyone writing about gen z, needs to consult an actual gen z person about how we actually talk. this book was far too long and could do without the katy perry references. extremely unnecessary and takes away from the plot. as does the unnecessary detail about the clothing. it isnt just brand and price. its brand, price, material, functionality, specifics down to the threading. so wordy and clunky. this could’ve been so good, but it fell flat for me. i chose to read this arc based on its description alone. if you need a low stakes horror to pass the time, then maybe.
Concept was kinda cool, but about half way through I felt like the point had been made and nothing very interesting was added by the end. A few good gasp moments. Worth a read to some, but def not a reread for me
Take some Tremblay ambiguity and a little LaRocca “I don’t care if you find these characters redeemable” and you’ve got the basic ingredients for Matt Serafini’s Feeders. Serafini made his name on the indie scene, and though I have all the respect in the world for indie books, Feeders feels like the author leveled-up. The momentum is unrelenting, never a dull moment, even at almost 400 pages, and there are several scenes that really go there, making even a seasoned horror reader squirm. That said, they rarely, if ever, feel gratuitous. We’ve seen stories that embrace the evil of social media before, but Serafini somehow injects it with a fresh quality-think Eggers’ The Circle with some Hellraiser mixed in-while also diving deep into pop culture worship and obsession with/desensitization to violence. It’s a lot, but it never lags. Don’t miss it.
Social media has become a burgeoning subgenre of horror, no surprise given its influence on every other facet of our lives. But most of the internet-themed horror books I’ve read have fallen short for me.
The standouts for me are Eliza Clark’s Penance (which takes place largely offline) and Calvin Kasulke’s Several People Are Typing (which is more existential speculative fiction than horror but is still close to the genre and which, in contrast to Clark’s novel, takes place *entirely* online).
They didn’t just sound like wanna-be episodes of Black Mirror. This novel, definitely in the Black Mirror wanna-be camp. At this point, we all know about the dark side of social media; if all you have say about it is that there’s a dark side to social media… try again. Add to the fact that this book was at least a third too long and extremely overwritten, and it was a struggle.
The characters in this book range from awful to hideous, from petty to psychopathic, and the protagonist is the worst of all. That’s fine; it’s no crime to be a bad person in fiction. What I do have a problem with in fiction, however, is being boring. An extremely average, mundane character can be made interesting by an author, but in this novel even the characters’ most extreme and horrific actions weren’t managing to hold my attention by the end.
Also, the protagonist is literally out here serial killing and yet the most evil thing about her is how many times she references Katy Perry.
Reading FEEDERS is the figurative equivalent of going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, or of riding an out-of-control bullet train racing toward derailment! Unstoppable race toward destruction as we witness a young life falling apart and scrabbling desperately to hang on. The entirety of the novel I pondered whether events were actually occurring, whether there was some kind of outre input [mind control? Hypnotic manipulation? Supernatural interference? A government covert experiment--shades of FIRESTARTER?] Or was our unreliable, often unlikable, and only rarely eliciting-of-empathy, protagonist, actually experiencing psychic decompensation [breakdown of both the mind and the soul]? Author Matt Serafini does an efficient job of making both protagonist and reader truly fear "losing one's mind and grasp of (what-really-is?) reality."
Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for an ARC of Feeders.
This was easily the weirdest book I've read all year and I LOVE weird, but this just didn't hit the mark. I was really hoping for a solid horror story but this ended up just being 90% gratuitous gore for shock value and 10% creepy details that actually benefited the storyline. Probably the scariest part of the book was how old AF reading from the viewpoint of a 19 year old social media obsessed teen made me feel 😅 I need to go wash my brain now.
The hatred I felt for every single character was unreal. I understand that was the point, but it made it difficult for me to get through the book. I genuinely did not care what happened to these people.
A few minor things I could complain about, but ultimately this kept me hooked from nearly the start. It was a fantastic book about ambition, friendship, and of course, social media. It was a lot of fun. A rare book that kept me guessing.
‘Some account called @jaspersbrain is wondering where all the tits are.’
Seething. Original. Brilliant.
The beloved birth child of Katy Perry and American Psycho.
In a world where follower counts matter more than empathy and grief is to be monetized, here we have a horror story for the ages. Mindless scrolling, faceless comments, self absorbed college kids, a new app.
Blurring the lines of “hey guys!” and utter depravity. This book is true horror. It is everything wrong with society. A moral compass gone askew amongst likes and algorithms. It’s dripping with originality. All those haunted house books, then theres this.
‘One arm thats too long for its body drifts up to the front of where its face would be. Kylie squints, catches it waving. Whatever, she sighs, so lame.’
So this book does get my automatic 1 star because of my rule about depiction of, and especially vivid depictions of animal cruelty in fiction. You might be a genius writer and have some sort of excellent plot or story, but since I write the review I make the rule for it. This book also doesn’t work for me. Culture-wise, phenomenon-wise, influencers and that sort of thing, getting them or becoming one, caring at all, fashionableness, I’m just not in that age bracket. (I’m very proud of mine, thanks for asking. Don’t feel missed out or old) Ok so in this book our main character is Kylie. We do not know her age at the exact beginning and I highlight that to highlight some hidden creepy themes I thought the book might be hiding, which, of course, could have added to the horror. You could guess she is a teenager and, her teenage friend Erin post pictures to get likes, and the likes and comments come from older men who, shall we say, are perverts. There are other disturbing mind snapshots as well for sensationalist, horror value, example, the teens think about the Parkland Massacre and wish they could be survivors of something similar to bring them fame and attention. Even in the book, there are more rational teenagers, so these are of course not pictures of the mind of your normal teenager, even of today with all the influencer and social media phenomena. So, assuming 18 is the standard coming-of-age age in the whole world, I started wondering if these girls might be minors and this could also be a theme of this book? Luckily not. We learn they are just starting college. Now even before the plot gets to the new app or the murder, we can already know Kylie has mental health issues. Not even getting to social media, she was thinking of committing suicide over a boy. I also think it is fair to guess Kylie’s community is not rich America, but difficult to estimate how poor exactly? Maybe sort of middle class. Her mom works long hours, so she’s alone a lot. She is also so young that she doesn’t understand the pure huge gulf between, for example, Katy Perry and herself, in that she really believes she can somehow relate to a rich celebrity through her music. Or is that just me? Because I know half the process songs go through to get put out there and for air-play, most music by big names is illusionary plastic, and is often just written for the album or attention. Very little is heart-felt. I mean, if you literally have billions of Dollars, your sad songs are probably not too real or authentic. I will grant you grief and death, but romantic love I am unwilling to even give you, since you move onto the next party and person on your arm so quickly. Plus the money and everything with it obviously shields you from normal people problems. Anyway, like all teenagers mostly, Kylie is obsessed especially with one musician or band. Now we get to the social media bit. I was wanting to write that Kylie is vacuous, vapid and shallow and jealous, so unlikeable from the beginning, but this is what made me pause. I did not grow up as a teenager under social media. How do those of us like me know or not whether we’d obsess about how many followers we had, or get jealous if people we knew had many more? And, of course we had them, but very few and only on TV, we didn’t have the craze of influencers our age, let alone our friends or us ever being one. On that subject, anyone remember Candice Hillebrand every afternoon on KTV after school? Or the other ones on Yo Tv? I forget their names. So if you have read the book description you know Kylie joins a secret social networking app. It then becomes the more sinister horror bit. Now here is the most stupid problem with this book. If you are a human with ubuntu, you realize soon enough that Kylie is totally unlikeable. So you are then left with a totally shit book because, you’re literally about a tenth of the way through the book and you like or care about absolutely nothing and no one. A horror book shouldn’t do that? The plot gets silly. The app in the story is rather nothing too special, rather crappy. Just a social media that isn’t censored and just brutal, cruel, disgusting shocking crap, the only difference between it and real-life social networks is that Monolife rewards and makes people achieve higher status by them performing worse and worse cruelties,but nothing that makes the book unique. For example a canabal woman. I’m sure in real life on hidden internet even vids of that can be circulating. He think he is unique, his devices and horror, it just isn’t, so the plot is not even fascinating. A normal survivor crime novel or real-life reality TV much better. Maybe imagine something like the dark web being open to idiots in our real world. If they could, you can bet that the people who censor everything else would try censor the dark web if they knew about it. Moms For Liberty and such would really try. The real world with social media and sensorship much more imaginative. Just really unimpressive with it and the story. Just cartoonish nasty rubbish, so the author’s point about social media also falls rather flat. Characters and everything just totally silly. I will say though that the book has good word paintings and descriptive scenes. Ridiculous when paranormal character and event comes into play, I never have time for books with such nonsense. We can comment that the author shows us the harm social media causes and the lengths users then go for attention-seeking and affirmation, also cults and so on, but do we already not see this in real-life anyway? I will say though, I don’t think it is as bad as the author thinks. I mean, many teenagers just need education about dopamine and being responsible users of social media and screen-time. What scares me often much more are the old people in their 60s and 70s who become addicts to social media and also do not understand how much fake content and news can be so professionally generated. How do you think all this Q’Anon is going on? Plus we have keyboard warriors who are basically dying of boredom, so they use their time to find outrage and oppress the younger people in vulnerable groups, example wanting books banned and organizing to prevent and take away rights of often YOUNG and distressed Lgbt people. That is some real harm coming from social media in real life that is not noticed by many. The narrator is very good. The book? Honestly it is mostly absolutely a shit boring story. Not interesting. You won’t miss out if you don’t give it a read. Disappointing as well. Wish could just tell you ending plot so could really persuade you not to waste your time. The book description is more interesting than the story. Book melo-drama bad soap opera. The more I think about it, the more d-rate the book felt for me. Even it’s supposed satire and commentary about social media culture is really rather unsophisticated tackling this theme.
This book is an attempt at commentary about social media influencers that was utterly lacking, completely shallow, and incredibly misogynistic.
First off, it was entirely too long - around 400 pages total. Cut the number of pages by at least half and it may have been salvageable. Most of those 400 pages were filled with gratuitous violence - seems like it was intended to be commentary about "social media influencers will do anything for engagement," yet that message got lost in the sheer amount of violence and complete lack of nuance.
It was also a bold move for a man (derogatory) to write about a woman engaged in such violence. Yes, women are definitely all over the social media influencer world and will often "do anything" to be on top... but "anything" looks like backstabbing other influencers, stealing content, encouraging followers to trash other influencers, manipulating people into giving them money, playing the victim, etc. Would a woman murder someone to get her way? Maybe. But, more often than not, women act out of self defense. Violence for the sake of violence is a man's world. Men harrass women on a daily basis. Men assault women on a daily basis. Men murder women on a daily basis. But the men in this story are all victims with a woman as the perpetrator. (The men are not good people, mind you... but they are still the victims in the story.) Had this been written by a woman (which... let's be real, it wouldn't have), perhaps it would have been more digestible. But because it was written by a man, it came across as "women are so meeeean which is why we need men's rights." Barf.
Next off, the author has apparently never met a Gen Z-er, because the language/slang was questionable, Gen Z is largely off instagram (they're on tiktok), and being obsessed with fucking Katy Perry??? What Gen Z-er is obsessed with Katy Perry?? Answer: none.
Honestly, the constant Katy Perry references and detailed brand name clothing, accessories, and make-up descriptions (and the gratuitous violence) seem like a blatant attempt to mimic the satirical nature of American Psycho - but this book fails at the satirical vibe. Instead, it's heavy-handed and forced and reads like a boomer complaining about the youths. :::insert "Old Man Yells at Cloud" Simpsons headline here:::
It also just didn't work as a story - the tone comes across as "serious horror" but the actions of the characters are fucking ridiculous. None of the characters was likeable - which is fine for a horror novel, but typically unlikable characters are still fun to read. These characters were not just unlikable, they were uninteresting. The MC kept flipflopping back and forth between being liking/not liking her best friend to the point where it seems like the author couldn't decide if he wanted her to be sympathetic or not.
Then there's the supernatural element. The (failed) attempt at social commentary about the evils of social media falls totally flat because now, instead of people doing horrible things purely for views, you have people doing horrible things for views but also out of fear for their lives. It removes the accountability and renders the commentary pointless.
Overall, this book fails at what it's trying to do. It wants to be sharp and insightful but isn't adding anything to the conversation that hasn't already been said - certainly nothing that hasn't already been said by women and people of color.
One star because I managed to finish it, but I'm being generous.
Okay, I am only giving this book four stars because it was so disturbing at times that I had to put it down to clear my head. I am an avid horror reader and very few of them have disturbed me like this book. I am not going to do a synopsis for this book because I want you to read the book and be totally shocked like I was.
First 3/4 was very entertaining, very reminiscent of a gen z American Psycho right down to the material descriptions but the last 1/4 becomes far too much and loses the original bite it had when the world was more grounded. But it got me out of a reading slump so that’s pretty great.
Eh. I had the impulse to DNF pretty early on, but I stuck it out because I had some curiosity about the horror. Unfortunately, I do think I should have put it down because I did end up pretty bored. I think this book is way too long for what it is and while I can see what it was trying to do, I don’t think it was ultimately successful. Books like these are so hard because by the time they are written, edited, and published, they are already out of date and feel pretty stale. I found a lot of this one pretty corny and while some of the horror was fun, it wasn’t enough to make the journey worth it.
I do think a horror novel about a social media cult is a good hook, but this one has the dial cranked up too high on a sort of middle aged disapproval that borders on the voyeurism it’s trying to skewer. It gets so hyper-violent that it becomes boring (and don’t “that’s the point!!!” at me, I get it) and I really do think it could have trimmed a good third of the length.
Some of the jokes did land (I chuckled at some of the reels jokes) and one of the big reveals did get me, but not my cup of tea by the end. Also, wow, I don’t think I’ve ever met a Katy Perry fan in real life and that was a real weird character choice.
I think this absolutely insane look at the obsession with social media has made me realize I’ve hit unc status.
Kylie wants to make it to the top of the social media food chain, and she will do whatever it takes, whatever opportunities arise. So when a classmate introduces her to a new sketchy app that promises views and adoring fans, she gets right onto it. Trading out a normal life for one filled with morbid “pranks “ and hookups, she dives further and further down the rabbit hole. How far will she go for likes??
The reason why I felt so old whilst listening to this is because I don’t remember community college being as chaotic as it is in Kylie’s life. It wasn’t like high school part 2, no-one really talked much and everyone had jobs!! Maybe the kids are just living life as they should nowadays (haha yeah right) or this community college was just a weird anomaly.
What an absolute waste of time. There should be a system where we can get a refund for time wasted on shitty books.
The best way to describe the premise of this book is The Purge x OnlyFans x The Dark Web made a social media platform.
It follows Kylie Bennington, a gen z'er obsessed with becoming a social media influencer but always feeling like she can't catch her break while living in the shadow of her successful best friend Erin, who is a big influencer. A viral video is spread of one of their classmates brutally murdering another classmate. They realize this video was for an unknown platform that can only be accessed through people who know people kind of thing. Both girls get it, but it comes with conditions such as they need to log in at least twice a day and they can't talk about or share the app with non-users. At first the app seemed very basic and non engaging, but Kylie stuck with it obsessed with trying to make it big on at least one app. She soon figures out there are different tiers within the app allowing more access to different features according to the number of followers you have. In order to gain traction in this platform, users need to post and share inhumane things.
Kylie also develops this weird growth at the base of her spine that physically hurts her when she's not active in the app. She's also visited by this demonic entity thing that wears a swim mask and threatens her safety if she doesn't follow the rules or is active on the app - his name is Mister Strangles (points for creativity *sarcasm*).
Kylie posts a whole bunch of gruesome things and sells her soul to this app all in the name of clout. All while keeping her success hidden from Erin as a way to get petty revenge for always being in her shadow. She makes it big enough that she's invited to an annual retreat for top performers only and brings Erin as her +1 to rub it in her face. (Spoiler) Erin figured out the app long ago and grew to be twice the size of Kylie's account. She is an even higher performer than Kylie and it turns out she sold her soul to some demonic power and was out there killing people via witchcraft.
My biggest issue with this book is that it never clarified any of the lore. The author hinted at details but never gave enough to fully put together a proper picture of what the app was actually. He wrote in a vigilante character trying to whistle blow this entire operation, he even tried to warn Kylie, but instead of delving into the details of his findings they killed him off immediately. All I could figure out was it was an ancient entity (alien or demon?), the church knew about it? It feeds off the destruction and chaos caused by the users, and each user has one of these entities following them like a charge to ensure they follow the rules and to unalive them if they stray.
The author put so much detail into mundane things that it felt like reading an ad most of the time. There would be full paragraphs describing every single product or piece of clothing Kylie was using. I wish he'd put this level of detail and effort into expanding the world.
The Katy Perry references were the absolute worst. It was completely unnecessary and frankly really annoying to read as a neutral KP fan.
It's without a doubt Kylie was meant to be written as an unlikable character, but I felt like she was written to be an underdog as well. It's like the author wanted to write an anti-hero but wrote this horrible person instead who you are rooting for to fail.
I don't know what he was trying to do with this book. The concept sounds really good and there was so much potential missed with this opportunity. The author could have written a very clever social commentary about how social media takes over our lives/ personalities and maybe some comment about getting caught up in cloud and our online persona we forget how to be human.
The ending of this book is again, very vague and not clear at all. Kylie goes on a killing spree at this retreat killing Erin and all the other top performers of this app. The CEO of the company has “chosen her” (for what?!) and revealed himself to be one of those alien/ demon things. She seems to be the only one with the growth on her back. After killing everyone and of course live streaming it, she gives herself over to Mister Strangles, who then proceeds to bite her growth and absorb her? She ends up becoming one of them, her physical appearance now taken form of her social media persona as she continues to live in “the real world” as an influencer. But her “human” self is trapped inside this new body crying and regretting everything.
in conclusion, if it wasn't obvious I hated this book lol save yourselves and read something else.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Unfortunately, Matt Serafini's Feeders is way too over-the-top and gratuitous for my tastes. At times, it reads almost like bizarro horror, though it takes itself far too seriously to be a true example of that genre.
Ultimately, Feeders is a story about how all-consuming social media is.
Our protagonist is Kylie, a 19-year-old college student who wants to be a popular influencer. While looking into a snuff video featuring a classmate's murder, Kylie discovers Monolife, the dark web version of Facebook, which immediately starts manipulating her into committing violent crimes for likes.
Not a bad premise at all if you ask me.
Unfortunately, my biggest complaint here is that Feeders is VERY heavy-handed and lacks nuance. It doesn't really have anything new or unique or original to say about the negative effects of social media. Instead, it just puts that negativity on display to whine about, as if written by a Boomer who has their panties in a bunch about how Big Bad Social Media is ruining the youth of today. Ugh.
And it doesn't matter that I, a Millennial, for the most part, agree with that sentiment, there's just something about Feeders that isn't quite right.
I think it's the tone. It's far too stark and serious for the absolute bonkers, off the rails, nonsensical actions and thoughts of the characters.
There's also a supernatural element that really didn't make a whole lot of sense to me and felt like it was trying too hard to be Slenderman. And yeah, Slenderman was scary back when people didn't know most of the internet is fake. But here? It was just plain goofy.
Tbh, Feeders probably would have been better if half its length had been trimmed out of it. This book just goes on and on and on and on, getting more and more ridiculous with every page. And every character is a mean, selfish asshole who gets more and more mean and selfish and assholey with every page.
By the halfway mark, I wanted it over. I don't know why I kept reading.
Oh, and wtf with all the Katy Perry references?? Like, first of all... pick a more relevant and tolerable pop singer for a 19yo to be obsessed with please and thanks. Second of all... how old is the author?? Is this book supposed to be sent in current times, or 2008?? I actually couldn't tell.
Lastly, the Katy Perry references in this book had more nuance than its social commentary and I just kind of feel like that is an attack on my intelligence as a reader.
So I'm rating this one 2.5 out of 5 stars. I don't think I'll make an effort to read more from the author.
This one might have somewhat broken my brain a touch. I truly thought this was YA, so I was very confused by Nick Cutter being the cover blurb (he generally writes more twisty and gory stuff). I was pleasantly surprised to find Feeders is a slasher on steroids in a blender??? The kills are so fun, but Jesus biscuits everyone was truly so horrible and there was an animal death and the ending I just had no idea what was going on. This book is almost like if a train ride were also a bonfire as you blazed your way down the track- it was so lively of a read despite the fact that hardly anything made sense by the end.
decently interesting premise but not that great of an execution. way too many references to katy perry. like genuinely over 20. i think the author thinks it’s like quirky and funny? and i hate to say babes but it’s just not. she’s not relevant and it sounds dated which is crazy because this book JUST came out. SPOILER but unironically when the main character kills the detective she screams “STILL A TAYLOR SWIFT GIRL NOW?” is this a joke to you? i actually kind of liked some of the gory extreme horror parts but that was mainly it. i also liked that the main character was unlikable but in a purposeful way
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
I mean...I didn't like the characters, but I don't really think you're supposed to.
It's definitely extra. The characters get more and more out there and some of what happens kind of defies belief. At least I hope people wouldn't go to such extents.
Definitely some biting character on influence culture and a story that moves in fast and violent way.