Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

I wish I had read this sooner.

This book was fantastic. The first book where I really felt the characters bisexuality. I think massive content warnings around eating disorders are needed but I related to the protagonist so much. This isn't a book I will recommend to everyone, theres no denying its weird, but I loved it.

I really enjoyed Milk Fed! I loved the narrator/ protagonist and all her flaws, and her witty prose. Hypnotising and witty, and laugh out loud funny at times!

I can see why a lot of people are loving this book - it's messy and blunt and relatable in a lot of places. It ultimately just wasn't really for me!

Thank you for the ebook.
This was my first Melissa Broder book so I had no idea what I was getting my self into.
I absolutely loved this book?? And it exceeded my expectations. I requested this one because that title was...intriguing. and I'm so glad I did because damn this book was hilarious. Broder has a sharp sense of humor that made me laugh out loud a couple times. This book is def not for everyone. I've recommended it to a few people and they either love it and are completely obsessed with or abso hate it and curse me for recommending it.
This book also deals with eating disorders. Do check the trigger warning if you do read it.

I enjoyed Broder's previous novel, The Pisces, so I was looking forward to reading this book - and it didn't disappoint.

Rachel is a character starved of pleasure. Not just sexually but also from food, affection, spirituality and life in general. I appreciated how quickly this abysmal nature of her everyday life was all established so that we could get onto all the gorgeousness that followed.

Miriam is the kind of sheltered character that I usually wouldn't find interesting. Yet, there was something so engagingly unfiltered about her. It was as if she had been protected from all the social messaging that caused Rachel's struggles. Miriam felt deliciously present and alive on the page, or at least through our narrators' adoring eyes.

I've read many erotic novels, but this is the first one I've come across that's been so body positive. I feel like it unlocked a new part of my brain to the lusciousness of fleshy bodies and suddenly awoke a desire in me to be force-fed ice cream by a thick-thighed domme.

I adore how Broder injects eroticism into some quite oddball scenarios. It's all quite tantalisingly off-the-wall, which means I am so excited to see what she does next!

This is definitely a book I will remember and certainly it won't be for everyone!

It's about, food, love, religion and lots of sex!
Our protagonist is a calorie counting lapsed Jew who has an obsession with frozen yogurt . A very interesting character , likeable yet annoying at the same time and is on a journey of self love. She meets Miriam an orthodox Jew who works in her local yogurt shop and develops a relationship with her. All sounds a bizarre concept for a book but Broder's writing makes it a compulsive addictive read.

Several sensitive issues are covered so if you are triggered by eating disorders, religious issues or lesbian sex then take note.

The writing is sharp, witty and very clever . The only negative for me was that the latter half was maybe a bit too graphic and I would have liked to have known more about Rachel's background as we saw snippets of her relationship with her mother and I was dying to know more !

3.5 stars. I've found myself thinking about this book a lot since I finished reading it. I had a similar experience with Broder's previous book, The Pisces, which I really disliked, but did finish (I am a serial DNF'er and am not shy about putting down books I am not enjoying, so I was compelled by it despite that).

I found Milk Fed a tighter and more interesting read. Rachel is a quick, funny and very human narrator. Broder has a real talent for creating three dimensional characters and I was with Rachel every step of the way. Her flaws, her motivations and her actions were all natural and believable. The descriptions of her eating disorder and her relationship with food are graphic, no doubt, but entirely in character.

There were points where I couldn't put this book down. The writing is excellent; pacy, funny, emotional and a good mix of plot and character. Broder is definitely on my must-read authors list - even if I'm not a massive fan of some of the contents of her novels, she certainly knows how to get under your skin and make you think.

I was really looking forward to reading this after reading The Pisces last year. The Pisces was weird, but funny and enjoyable, so I was expecting this to be similar. I ended up being really disappointed.

It started off ok, and I did enjoy the first couple of chapters, but it just descended into repetitive sex scenes, and I just didn't get what was supposed to be "scathingly funny". I feel like I read a completely different book to the person who described it as "fiercely imaginative"!

I really enjoyed this novel and it was unlike anything I’d read before. I loved the tone of voice and the two central characters are so sympathetic and well drawn. It’s a fairly quirky romance and a genuinely sensual novel. I would add a content warning for anyone who has struggled with food issues - it’s very focused on this topic and there are some very descriptive sections about both bingeing and starving which are really well rendered but hard to read. Highly recommended and thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Melissa Broder isn’t for everyone, but she is definitely for me. I devoured her previous books and was excited to get a review copy for Milk Fed. Broder knows how to write about such difficult topics while staying sexy, comical, and thought-provoking. This novel is filled with food, sex, and religion.

“Did anyone genuinely like anything? Most art was bad. I preferred the work of dead people. At least the dead weren’t on Twitter.”

Please stop here if you get triggered with eating disorders. We follow Rachel, who we are instantly shown to have a bad relationship with food and her mother. She has a daily ritual at a fro-yo shop where she fills her cup just to the brim with plain yogurt. One day, a new girl at the shop assists her and convinces her to get toppings, causing Rachel to binge and become obsessed with the new girl’s lifestyle. Rachel is hungry to find motherly love since her own mother has never shown her the unconditional love she seeks.

“Maybe that’s all that prayer was anyway—a cosmic google. In that case, any iPhone could be a synagogue.”

I loved the bisexuality representation and I always relate to Broder’s writing having spent the majority of my twenties living in Los Angeles. The dating culture Melissa writes isn’t that unrealistic. If you are a fan of Ottessa Moshfegh or Daisy Buchanan, then you will love Milk Fed!

Thank you to Bloomsbury Circus and Netgalley for the arc! This title was released March 4, 2021.

Melissa Broder is a writer to watch - and I say that as someone who hated her last novel (The Pisces).

Her narrative style and thematic choices aren't unique, and yet her voice is incredibly niche. Her linguistic foray in to the psyche and social interaction is both incisive and acerbic.

I think there's more substance to this novel than there was to The Pisces, there's multiple thematic strands carefully woven together. I would have to disagree with some other reviews saying there's insufficient trigger warnings, I think all these issues are very transparent in the synopsis. As to the comment on the narrator's fat phobia...I don't understand what they were expecting from a narrator with an eating disorder? Do characters have to have disorders in polite language now?

I'm not going to recap what's already in the synopsis, and the story is there to be read. My only comments to those interested would be that Melissa Broder is a contemporary writer to expand your palette with. Readers who enjoyed Otessa Moshfegh's "My Year of Rest & Relaxation", or Halle Butler's "The New Me" might enjoy this, the narrative is similar but has a zestier quality, while the plot is more uplifting.

Melissa Broder is a singular writer. She is brilliant at getting into the minds of her characters and exploring the deep, dark hidden thoughts that we would rather keep secret. Milk Fed really gets into the psyche of the main character. Rachel is a clever, funny woman working on the outskirts of the Hollywood entertainment industry, she is also dealing with an eating disorder and a toxic relationship with her hyper critical mother. In Milk Fed we see Rachel struggling with her issues as she begins a relationship that could potentially provide the nourishment she's been looking for.
I read this book in a couple of sittings. I found the story compelling, funny, troubling and emotional. Broder explores themes of female relationships with a really fresh point of view. Ultimately the book turns into a love story as Rachel allows herself to let go. Milk Fed definitely won't be for everyone. There are some really explicit scenes and some of the descriptions of eating disorders could be triggering. That being said, I would recommend this to anyone who's looking for a challenging, unusual and darkly funny read.

"The word golem, in English, means shapeless mass. But in Hebrew, it means unfinished substance."

The golem is one of the central motifs of this novel, and in some ways, the book itself is an "unfinished substance" as well - but not in a bad way. It's left open-ended and nebulous, but that's the idea - in life, there aren't any endings (except death, which would have gone against the optimistic flair of the novel), but ever-constant change and development - and Rachel, the protagonist of this book, has certainly changed for the better.

The title is possibly the most well-chosen title I've seen in a long time. As it suggests, this is a novel about being mothered. What it definitely isn't, is a novel about mothers. It's a novel about seeking that primal, maternal comfort from anyone and anything you can when the woman who birthed and raised you is only ever a source of poison.

As a novel in the "literary fiction" sort of category, it's certainly not for everyone. What it is, however, is a love letter. A love letter to food, to eroticism and sapphic love, to Judaism, and ultimately, to yourself.

Milk Fed covers some incredibly sensitive topics such as eating disorders, religion and sex. The first couple of chapters I read I felt incredibly awkward, your thrown straight into the deep end of Rachel's life, which is generally quite uncomfortable. Rachel doesn't feel at all comfortable in her skin so why should you, as a reader, feel the same? What made me the most uncomfortable though is that it made me very self aware whilst reading, raising questions such as 'Could the topics such as eating disorders be harmful if read by someone in a stage of recovery or otherwise?', 'Is it written in a sensitive way?' and 'Could I see myself recommending this book to friends?' I put my copy down after the first two chapters because I wasn't sure how I felt. When I picked it back up the following day however, I couldn't put it down.

Despite the sensitive and maybe quite difficult topics, Broder's writing is raw, poignant and totally believable. It's jarring, somewhat upsetting, and yet charming. I think the topics are handled well, but I also don't feel like I have the experience to comment properly on the topic.

Content warnings for eating disorders and possibly complicated mother-daughter relationships.

Having read some reviews of The Pisces, I now really want to get my hands on a copy of that too.

Thanks to NetGalley, Bloomsbury Circus and Melissa Broder for an eArc of this novel in exchange for an honest review!

Having very much enjoyed Melissa Broder’s personal essay collection So Sad Today, I was delighted when she moved into fiction with her excellent debut novel The Pisces. Milk Fed, her follow-up, is also right up my street.

It focuses on Rachel, who has a problematic relationship with food. She puts more work into counting calories and depriving herself of the enjoyment of eating her favourite foods than she puts into her job at a talent agency. This all changes when she meets Miriam, the new server at her preferred frozen yoghurt shop, who begins to change Rachel’s outlook on food, sex, faith and life itself.

This novel is funny, erotic and very entertaining. Broder is fast becoming one of those authors whose work I devour. I can’t wait until her next book!

Any book that mentions food and sex in the synopsis is a winner in my eyes. I haven't read anything by Melissa Broder before but I loved the raw and honest writing style and descriptions. The characters were great and the relationships between them felt so real. This book tackles a difficult subject, eating disorders, plus a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship.

The main character Rachel is obsessed with dieting and calorie-counting and maintains a strict routine when it comes to her food. Her therapist suggests a 90-day detox from her mother and during this period she meets Miriam, who works at Rachel's favourite fro-yo place. Miriam begins to tempt Rachel will unhealthy toppings and always fills the tub higher than her strict routine allows. Rachel begins to fall for her and we follow their relationship as Rachel tackles the issues she has in her life.

The book started off strong it did trickled off a little bit for me (hence the rating) but the descriptions and humour will certainly stick around with me for a long time. I absolutely flew through it.

Milk Fed is the story of Rachel, who calorie counts to the point of obsession as directed by her mother. When her therapist recommends a 'communication detox' from her mum, and Rachel meets Miriam who is intent on feeding her, she discovers the power and joy that food can bring.

This book was so different to anything I've read recently and I really enjoyed reading it. The best part was definitely the sharp, acerbic wit that Broder writes with, I found myself giggling at random intervals quite often. I also loved her exploration of the connections between food, pleasure, happiness, sexuality, religion and family; all of this was done really well and with nuance.

The only downside for me is that I found it a little too graphic in places but I think in some ways this was part of the package with such sharp, witty writing.

I really loved this book. The writing is rich and lyrical and sharp, and it stuck with me for days afterwards. Erotic and visceral and beautiful and sad, with different explorations of the ideas of love and nurture and sustenance. Really gorgeously done and yet so raw.

In a lot of ways, Milk Fed is similar to Melissa Broder's previous novel, The Pisces. It's about a woman who feels as if her desires overwhelm her, a mental breakdown leads her to a person that allows her to reclaim her desire through sex. While this didn't sweep me off my feet like The Pisces, it's an entrancing exploration of motherhood, daughterhood, sex, sexuality, food, and religion. Plus, it's really really funny.