Nina The Wandering Reader's Reviews > Woman, Eating

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 could eat the foods her father used to eat—sushi, ramen, sashimi. In fact, one of the things she loves about fully human people is how their food makes up a part of who they are. And so when she’s not binge-watching episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she’s hours deep into YouTube videos of people eating food. She wonders if being a vampire inherently makes her a bad person and there’s a cute boy she likes but also wants to eat. Basically she’s got it rough in spite of her immortality and eternal youth.

I picked up this book hoping Lydia would be predatory and vicious (because I love my bloodshed) but instead, she’s awkward, yearning, lonely, insightful, and sweet. I just wanted to hug her. This is a book about a young woman’s desire and appetite, about race and self-love, about wanting to belong while feeling stuck in the middle.

Pick this one up if you’re looking for books that give an appreciation for food and art, or if you’re on the search for paranormal fiction centering a mixed-race vampire written by an Asian author!