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I Eat Men Like Air

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A ferocious and compelling mystery-drama for the #MeToo era in the vein of The Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll

With the snow falling fast on a New Hampshire mansion, seven 20-somethings assemble to celebrate an upcoming marriage in a debaucherous weekend that will change their lives irrevocably. The lavish trip to celebrate Will and Jessica’s upcoming nuptials brings together a cast of characters who know each other from Ivy League schools and childhood Upper East Side haunts: Lulu, an LA-based Instagram influencer; Maxie, a former Park Avenue princess, now Midwestern housewife; Yael, an ER doctor from Ohio; Rob, a colorless Wall Street trader; Will, a morality-obsessed lawyer; Jessica, his perfectionist bride-to-be, and Alex Sable, a lawless bon vivant. Alex, son of a billionaire hedge-fund scion, was the sole witness against his classmate in a serial rape trial 15 years ago, which seems to follow Alex wherever he goes.

By Will and Jessica’s wedding day, four months later, Alex Sable would be dead. In that same house, in a bathtub filled with his blood.

Can Tyler, a well-known podcast reporter, pry his way into their closed-door world, and parse through the secrets that connect the seven like a web? As Tyler attempts to find the truth behind the months leading up to Alex Sable's dramatic death, he follows the bridal party - whose lives have spiraled in wildly different directions - through the events that brought them to a fateful night.

Told in dual timelines, the months leading up to the wedding and the investigation thereafter, I Eat Men Like Air is a riveting look at the unraveling of a friend group punctured by violence, and a chilling depiction of the rage that festers when it’s kept secret.

Audiobook

First published January 26, 2023

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972 people want to read

About the author

Alice Berman

1 book15 followers

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5 stars
146 (15%)
4 stars
257 (26%)
3 stars
356 (37%)
2 stars
140 (14%)
1 star
60 (6%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 117 reviews
3 reviews
October 22, 2019
Although I expected to like this story and I do love a good mystery, I just don't think this was a good mystery. I usually do not leave negative reviews, but in this case I just want to leave a warning for the wary reader. most of the feedback at the time of my purchase was overwhelmingly positive. my biggest problem is with the dialogue. the characters are aged 30 but interact with each other like 16 year olds. but there is also too much introspection, if you can call it that, and not enough action or events to keep it remotely exciting. lastly, I can't even relate to these characters. if they existed, they would be some of the most terrible people I had ever met and I can't conceive of this many people of practically identical character consorting with one another. I know it is fiction but I can't believe these people exist. I really hated this book.
Profile Image for Emilie Tharp.
39 reviews17 followers
July 29, 2021
This book should have been something I enjoyed but was just exhausting to read. It was a strange attempt to humanize the super rich by having something that "doesn't happen to pretty rich girls" happen to a pretty rich girl. The friendships were annoying and strangely boring for the class they were in. I typically try to avoid poor reviews but this is a book I read with a perpetual shrug. Maybe this just means I think rich people suck.
Profile Image for Jamie (Books and Ladders).
1,455 reviews210 followers
August 20, 2019
See this review and more on Books and Ladders!

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book and chose to review it. This in no way impacts my opinion.

Wow this was truly something else. I hated everyone and loved everyone at the same time. This is a page-turner that keeps you on your toes until the very end. A "#MeToo" Gossip Girl-esque story that will have you wondering why you hadn't read something like this before. Definitely recommend it!

I'll have a giveaway post up on Books and Ladders tomorrow, but in the meantime pre-order this book!
Profile Image for Hannah Rae.
Author 14 books129 followers
May 8, 2021
None of the characters were likable, so it’s surprising that I liked this. But I did. And I used my detecting skills to figure everything out before I reached the conclusion. Because I’m very good at detecting.
Profile Image for Maria.
293 reviews1 follower
May 6, 2020
Meh. Fine audio. Reminded me of Gossip Girl. But really, the character Rob went to Harvard? Why did the author pick Harvard? They were all idiots. And Rob didn’t know the story of Icarus?
36 reviews
March 14, 2021
This is a book about stupid smart people. There's a good story here, but it's buried under a stinking shit-pile of narcissism, thoroughly unlikeable people, grating repetition, and confusing leaps between timelines. Could use some editing.
Profile Image for Angie.
238 reviews4 followers
February 19, 2023
This was the most disgusting garbage fire I've read in the last year. People know that I only tend to vigorously destroy a novel if I find it disgusting or insulting. Get ready, because here comes one of those reviews!

I'm going to put my many, MANY complaints in a numbered format so I don't hurt your eyes. There will be multiple spoilers, though no direct ones (such as the names of the people involved in the twist at the end).

1. The summary attached to this audiobook was a total lie. You're expected to believe that this will be a mystery about a character that was found dead on the day of a friend's wedding. What was it really about? The murder victim and all the other people in the wedding party being total pieces of garbage for 14 hours leading up to the victim dying. How often was the murder actually focused on in the book? Maybe 10% of the time, only from the view of the character named Tyler and the very, VERY end when the "twist" happens. The other 90% is just a book about everyone being moronic and heartless pieces of crap.

2. The random time jumps are so pointless and confusing. There's a murder victim found, then the victim is alive, then he's dead again and his "suicide" is being investigated, now he's alive and another wedding guest is pregnant, now that pregnant woman isn't pregnant, now her baby is born, now the victim is alive again-! I wanted to fling my phone across the room while trying to keep track of it.

3. There were WAY TOO MANY CHARACTERS. I can't even remember who they all were, and I'm done with the book! There were AT LEAST 20 different character names you had to fully keep track of if you wanted to understand what was going on. About ten of them didn't matter by the end of the book, but you wouldn't know that until it was over.

4. Every single character in this novel was heartless, insanely stupid, or a combination of both. They kept calling each other friends, but all they did was insult and make fun of each other the entire time. You'd think they hated each others' guts with the way they acted and communicated!

5. "I hate you and I'm having an affair with someone in the wedding party!" "It's okay, because I hate you, too. LET'S STILL GET MARRIED ANYWAY!" Um...why?! Why the heck would you still get married to someone if you hate them so much and know it won't work out? There was no motivation for these two people to still want to get married other than "eh, I don't want to get embarrassed by the break-up". What?!

6. One of the women in the wedding party is sexually assaulted by another person in the wedding party and people WALK IN ON IT. What do they do? Push the rapist out of the room and then DON'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. One of the people that saw this happen was the best friend of the rape victim. The victim says she doesn't want to go to the police, but I'll tell you right now, if I caught anybody raping my best friend, I would destroy the abuser. I wouldn't keep it a secret and watch my friend fall apart because of it.

7. This sexual assault is focused on for way too much of the novel. While the victim's feelings about it are believable, I felt like the author dealt with it in disgusting ways most of the time. An example would be, when the victim finds out she's pregnant, another character in the book jokes about why (if she actually was pregnant) she would keep the child of a rapist, because what messed up idiot does that? A friend of mine from the past was the child of rape and her mother had kept her, so I found this incredibly insensitive and disgusting. True, the character that made that comment wasn't meant to be agreed with, but it still wasn't needed for the story. Nothing is said or done to tell the character how horrible they were, and they go on like nothing happened.

8. "Oh no! I have to keep seeing my best friend's rapist because I'm dating his cousin!" How about NOT DATING FAMILY MEMBERS OF THE RAPIST?! You started the relationship after the attack, so this is a problem that is technically your fault. You wouldn't have to see the guy if you weren't dating someone he's related to! And, I'm sorry, but I would never in a million years date someone related to the man that sexually assaulted my best friend, no matter how nice that guy could be.

9. "Let's kill this evil rapist! When? How about five months after it happens on the day before the wedding we're all part of instead of sooner than the event? Should we get the police involved at any point rather than doing something illegal? Heck no! We gotta make this as cliched and stupid as possible!"

10. A chunk of people are involved in the murder, but the bride is not one of them. So...you're just going to screw up this woman's wedding day because you're all self-centered narcissists? One of you is a nurse and one of you is a lawyer, and you're still going to do this without second thoughts? ...Alright. Makes perfect sense to me!

11. Because the murder isn't fully focused on until the twist at the end, we're stuck with the rapist, this disgusting excuse for a character, for the entire novel. It would have been smarter to have flashbacks, but not force him down our throats for the entire story. We knew he was going to die, but I just wanted it to happen already so I didn't have to deal with him anymore. Honestly, every character in this garbage fest could die and I wouldn't have cared one little bit!

12. The amount of references in this book to make it "more relatable" was ridiculous. "This mystery is right out of an Agatha Christie novel!" "He was reading Harry Potter!" "That guy looked like Lord Voldemort!" "He looked like a character from "The Nightmare Before Christmas" movie!" Yeah, we get it. The author needs to think of her own descriptions. And comparing this novel to an Agatha Christie novel? That's just a plain insult to Agatha Christie! I just finished one of her novels before this one and had to roll my eyes.

13. What problem does this author have with the Jewish faith?! The amount of jokes and insults towards Jewish people was disgusting, and I’m not even Jewish!

This list could reach the number 100 and keep going. I'm not kidding. This was a pathetic excuse for a novel and I can't believe I wasted my time on it. What sounded like a good murder mystery turned into me having to listen to the constant complaints of a ton of people I couldn't care less about and being forced to follow an uncomfortable storyline on sexual assault with the rapist himself being the main character. I can handle novels with uncomfortable subjects as long as they're written with care and the knowledge needed to handle them. This, unfortunately, was the complete opposite. If I would have known that the rapist was in the limelight and viewed as a "friend" of all the other characters, I never would have picked this book up.

Don't touch this audiobook. Normally, even if I dislike a book, I still say that you should give it a try if it's something you'd like. This one, though, I will NEVER suggest. I would suggest setting your phone on fire before getting it on Audible. Don't make the same mistake I did.
Profile Image for Dawn  🫶.
455 reviews19 followers
April 18, 2023
4

If you are looking for a book that will surely have you on the edge of your seat wondering who did what and glad the person that died did it, this is the book for you. I honestly was happily surprised with how much I enjoyed this book and how everything fits together. While some of the plot twists were very easy to guess the majority of the time, I was sitting wondering what and when something was going to happen.

I also love how they went back and forth from now to the past to show what happened through the eyes of who was there rather than just sticking with one person and letting them run the whole book.

This book is filled with multiple POVs and a crazy amount of mystery, an honest must-read for fans of the genre!
Profile Image for Liddy Berman.
2 reviews
September 27, 2019
Couldn’t Stop Listening!!

From the moment I started listening, I was totally enthralled by the vividness of Berman’s world. The characters are fascinating and richly-drawn, and the subtle interplay between the group drew me into a thousand different theories and mysteries that I was happy to chart alongside Serial-like true crime podcaster Tyler. A gripping story that kept me guessing til the end! Fellow fans of Agatha Christie will find much to love here!
Profile Image for Belle.
77 reviews4 followers
October 25, 2019
Decent story, albeit predictable and long winded. Too many characters to keep track of. Too many takes on the same story. The end was anticlimactic.
Profile Image for Julie Olver.
44 reviews1 follower
July 2, 2021
Finished this one because I am loathe to abandon a book mid-read, but wow did I hate this book. One dimensional characters, tedious plot, laughable descriptions. The title is lifted from Sylvia Plath's Lady Lazarus poem - read that instead.
Profile Image for Kristen Mirabal .
157 reviews2 followers
Read
December 31, 2021
Not rating this one as I only made it an hour in before deciding life is too short to continue this one.
Profile Image for Alexa.
52 reviews
September 9, 2024
2 🌟

The only reason I have this rated 2 stars is Elizabeth Evans' stellar narration.

The characters are vapid and unlikeable. The plot is predictable and the mystery is solved by 1/3 of the way through for the most part. The time jumps were jarring and at times confusing. The script was as pretentious as the characters. I also really disliked the author's handling of SA within the plot and the surrounding dialogue.
Profile Image for Shan.
198 reviews42 followers
June 11, 2024
Rich character development. A literary masterpiece. Witty & complex characters. I’m not sure why this story received so many low ratings. I listen to it on audible and throughly enjoyed it.
Profile Image for Nupur Netan Sachdeva.
124 reviews6 followers
March 13, 2023
Not every person in the world has existential thoughts and philosophical musings about everything.

This book is just so difficult to get through. There is a view point change every chapter, and yet each narrator’s POV is just so similar that it’s hard to even distinguish who the first person is. And not just in the beginning, or in one part. Every chapter. Every scene. You’re supposedly looking at it from a different character’s perspective. But the voice is eerily similar to the previous! This book is a lesson in why you should not change the POV too often in a story. What is the point of telling me the story from Lulu’s point of view, then Maxi’s, then Alex’s, then Rob’s, then Adam’s, then Yael’s, then Will’s…ugh! It’s exhausting. And more so when they all think and behave like clones of each other! There’s no unique personality or “inner working” that shines through among any of them. Absolutely misses the mark.

Disliked the story. Disliked the characters. Disliked the narration (on audible). And disliked the fact that I wasted so many hours of my life (even though I pushed it to 1.8x speed to finish sooner) on this book.
Profile Image for Marnise.
290 reviews2 followers
May 7, 2025
This book did not give an appropriate trigger warning and honestly I was enjoying it until it turned into spoiled rich ppl are wrapped up in assault and their motivations for moving forward. There was such a level of underlining privilege in how everything was handled. Like I’m sorry if I learn about assault I’m reporting it. Not coming up with this months long journey to get a sliver of revenge back.

I can’t believe the ‘work around’ to reporting assault was ‘let’s just kill Alex’ instead of having a back bone. Also, the fact that everyone basically knows Alex probably was the high school r*pist and doesn’t say crap about it doesn’t sit well with me at all. This whole thing felt very immature and like the excuse that they were rich is ok for how they handled everything. No thank you. I could have done without this whole story line.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Alli.
21 reviews
March 11, 2024
Trigger warning: rape. The beginning was cool, super promising distinct characters but it turned into something difficult to read. I feel like it went from murder mystery to just a really upsetting story not really about a murder mystery. It just feels like it got lost. The author has a weird thing against Jewish people? Lots of characters to keep track of. You predict the ending 40 minutes into reading it. I couldn’t finish it. Characters repeat basically the same monologue over and over again. NOT like gossip girl.
Profile Image for Kirsta.
707 reviews12 followers
November 27, 2019
I will read all of the "#metoo" fiction and non-fiction that comes out but this was a muddled mess. So many aspects of this could have been really great but the characters were so poorly developed and unbelievable. I was having a hard time keeping track of the characters but that was attributable to them all actually just being a couple of tropes, not individual thought out humans with stories to tell.
Profile Image for Brandy.
210 reviews1 follower
January 7, 2023
This story seemed to take forever. Couldn’t hold my interest. Glad they all came together to end the mess that was Alex, but the whole Will and Lael affair was just weird and unnecessary. The back stories didn’t seem to add much value. And the podcast seemed like a flop since he didn’t truly get all the answers thru that.
Wouldn’t recommend.
#audiobook
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
312 reviews8 followers
July 19, 2023
This book desperately needed an editor. Each character went on and on about their thoughts and feelings, however, they said nearly the exact same thing every time. It was boring.

That would normally get a 2 star review from me but I took off another star because of the author's negativity towards religion.
Profile Image for Jacki.
389 reviews18 followers
December 3, 2019
4.5/5

I really enjoyed this book. You wind up hating most of the characters but the story line is so enticing that you become conflicted. The only issue I had with it is that the ending was a little bit of a let down as I was anticipating something far more dramatic.
Profile Image for Deneen.
74 reviews
March 17, 2020
Hands down the most uninteresting book I’ve ever read ... the characters were dry and one dimensional. I finished it only because that is my nature, but honestly a huge waste of my time and esp my money ....
20 reviews
May 19, 2021
Characters are vapid and one-dimensional. Plot drags. I'm giving a two-star rating only because of the Audible narration.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 117 reviews

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