Woman, Eating is gnarly and beautiful. What an absolute delight to read. I cannot believe that this is a debut!

Yearning for love and blood, half-human/half-vampire Lydia installs her aging mother in a Margate care home, to take up an internship at a London art gallery known as The Otter.

Woman Eating speaks of loneliness and wanting to fit in, mixed ethnicity, powerlessness, the predatory male, and elitism in the art world.

Kohda leaves much unsaid, as well as a few loose ends. Overall, however, this is a refreshing take on the vampire genre, and an atmospheric debut.

This is an interesting work, and a refreshing take on a vampire story. Lydia has many traits of a typical millennial, with an added twist - she’s a vampire. She’s a complicated character, all at once sympathetic, yet knowing the extent of how far she might have to go for her next meal sketches that sympathy with shades of grey. I felt the supporting characters were less fleshed out than they could have been, but the story is very much Lydia’s so that’s not a huge issue. The urge to belong somewhere and find a place in the world that is hers resonates universally, even if we’re not all vampires! I found some parts quite slow moving, particularly the scenes where Lydia is alone in the studio and I would have liked more resolution for the storyline involving her mother. Overall, I liked this book and think it’s a compelling take on the genre.

There's a lot of potential in this book but it's like you are starting an excellent dish and the - PUF - it disappear.
I felt there were plenty of ideas that were underdeveloped and my attention waned after a bit.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

This book was so interesting and beautifully written and i little gross. The starvation of the main character seeped through the pages. Really enjoyed this book would recommend to snyone looking for a contemporary vampire story.

Like many other women of her age in the big city Lydia has problems - moving house, making friendships. finding a decent relationship, launching a career,coping with placing her elderly mother in a nursing home, sourcing fresh pigs blood..

I was excited to pick this book up as it held so much promise and initially i enjoyed the fact that this was a vampire novel unlike any other I had read previously. It felt very Moshfegian and depressed woman literary fiction which is totally up my street. However it lacked any real substance and left me feeling disappointed. I would have liked to have seen more of an exploration of Lyd's relationship with her mother and her own search for identity but everything felt so surface level.I found the ending completely out of the blue and nothing had been leading to it which left the end of the reading experience feeling very jarred.

Unfortunately the intriguing premise and fresh perspective on the vampiric tradition was poorly executed with no sense of direction and distracted from what could have been a promising debut.

I was really intrigued by the premise - biracial, half-human, half-vampire finding her way in the world - and I was drawn in by the first third. I found it hard to sustain interest in the central character by midway. 20 somethings may connect more with this.

Over the last decade or so, pop culture has been over-saturated to the brim with vampires. I honestly think we’ve been served every possible iteration of vampire that could possibly be. Or I did. Then I read Woman, Eating.

Woman, Eating follows our protagonist Lydia as she copes with moving to London, living independently for the first time and trying to thrive at her internship. Lydia is also a vampire and has the added stress of trying to source pigs blood.

Claire Kohda does an amazing job at writing a really intelligent reinvention of the vampire story whilst also making it feel authentic and, in a way, relatable.

Lydia is manoeuvring through relatable problems and is going through similar things that most people in their 20’s go through - her issues are just exacerbated by her need to find blood. Throughout the book, Kohda excellently subverts the usual notion of vampires being these mythical and powerful creatures by presenting Lydia to us as this powerless, almost helpless, being. I actually found myself wanting her to murder people, just so her pain and desperation would end.

My only issue with this book was the underdevelopment of certain plot lines and characters. Throughout the book, we’re introduced to a few different characters but none ever feel like more than just a name. We also finish the book with several plot strands just left hanging in the air - the last 50 pages felt a little rushed, as if Kohda only had time to quickly wrap a few things up.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and it was definitely worthy of the hype I’d been seeing these last few books. I’d definitely recommend- especially if you’re in the mood for something a bit different.

I was very excited to read this, a modern and unique take on the vampire trope that was a real favourite for me (and I suspect many others!) as a teen. This isn’t vampiric in the sense of gore and horror, 23 year old Lydia is more concerned with fitting in than frightening and her half vampire side does not stop her being vulnerable to other types of predator. She’s a very empathetic and surprisingly relatable half vampire!

In addition to being half human/vampire Lydia is also of mixed racial heritage. The novel tells of her journey forging a new life for herself in London having moved away from Margate and her vampire mother, working at an art Internship and making new social connections.

Beyond the traditional “finding herself”, Lydia has the duality of seemingly rejecting and suppressing her vampire half and wanting to explore and embrace her human half through her art connection to her human artist father.

Whilst her situation and difficulties are rather unique (sourcing pigs blood in London), the themes of feeling insufficient, secretive about our darker underbelly, frustration with parents and wanting to be accepted are pretty universal.

I particularly enjoyed the arty context/backdrop and the descriptions of Japanese/Korean food Lydia wishes she could eat and really fancy a gallery visit now! Thanks so much to the author, publisher and NetGalley for sending me a review copy.

Thank you to Virago for sending me an eARC of this wonderful and weird book!

I love a depressed-woman-navigating-her-early-twenties main character and I love novels that involve some sort of art school setting and this book combines those two things with a VAMPIRE main character? Sign me up!

Our protagonist Lydia is an exhausted daughter, a struggling artist, a loner, and oh yeah, a vampire. But most of all she’s hungry. Hungry for blood, sure, but also hungry to live as a human, particularly yearning for Japanese and Malaysian food that would help her connect to her heritage on her ‘human side’, that she cannot eat.

“I wish I could feel the connection to the earth and to other people that food lets humans feel.”

Throughout the novel Lyd constantly battles with her identity as a woman, as a half-human, as a vampire, worsened by her mother’s deteriorating mental state. She simultaneously longs for solitude and for friendship. She is ambitious, wanting a career in the arts, but she is also worried about the fact she will live forever, and what will she do for all that time? I loved how this book presented a different perspective to usual vampire novels. There’s gore and chaos and disturbing scenes, but there’s also a lot of introspection.

I really, really enjoyed this. Kohda writes fantastically - even long scenes in which Lyd is just laying around in her flat, exhausted from hunger, rolling around on the floor watching YouTube videos, somehow stayed captivating. My only complaint is that I just wish we found out more about the other characters, particularly her mother - an immortal vampire stuck in a hospice is a fantastic premise!

4.5 stars

I've read a lot of books that claim to be a reinvention of the vampire myth and then turn out to be not very creative variations on a theme. This novel is not one of those – it's clever and bold and visceral, and it really does reinvent the vampire. Lydia stopped ageing when she reached adulthood, having been 'turned' by her mother as a child. She has grown up on a diet of pig's blood, her body unable to digest human food and her mother so ashamed by their 'monstrous' nature that she won't allow them to indulge in blood from any other creatures. Now her mother is in an old people's home, her mind apparently failing although her body is still strong, and Lydia is alone, trying to begin her career as an artist and come to terms with her own nature. It's beautifully and simply written, with a focus on the body and the space it takes up – and it gives us one of the best protagonists I've read in a very long time.

I will be completely honest: I started reading "Woman, Eating" by Claire Kohda not quite remembering what the novel was supposed to be about. Not being an avid reader of vampire literature, I would've expected to dislike Kohda's work. To my surprise, I found it not only entertaining, but also quite moving.

The story of the main character, Lydia, begins in a very difficult moment of her young life: she's just placed her mother in an assisted living facility because of an onset of dementia. Without her mother, she needs to become very independent, especially in terms of feeding herself. As readers, we follow Lydia when she's trying to balance her longing for connection with other beings and her precaution not to get too close, instilled in her by the self-hating mother.

Claire Kohda utilises the vampire trope to tell the story about loneliness, lost connections with one's roots and searching for one's identity and purpose. Lyd, for example, wonders what informed her mother's decision to turn her into a vampire, fantasising that perhaps it was a selfish act of having someone to take care of her.

Food and eating rituals are an important part of "Woman, Eating". It almost seems like Kohda wants us to think what does it mean to be fully satiated, not only in terms of a physical, but also an emotional hunger. I was especially mesmerised with the descriptions of memories and feelings transferred from other beings to Lyd, once she's consumed their blood. There weren't many, but I found them touching and even poetic.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars rounded up.

On the whole, I enjoyed this. I requested to read this because the blurb sounded intriguingly absurd. However, the story itself doesn't read absurdly at all, and touches on a lot of serious topics such as depression, grief, abuse, finding one's identity and general coming of age. I liked the main character and the way the book was written. However, some of the plot elements and issues touched upon felt a bit rushed, the story overall a bit stunted, and I would have loved to read a slightly longer book where the different issues were more developed.

I started reading this blind (I mean obviously I’d read the blurb before I requested it from NetGalley) but I couldn’t remember what it was about before I started. I let the story unfold naturally and I was quite surprised at what turned out to be a contemporary and very unique take on vampires.

Lydia is a vampire but the focus for me was more on her sense of alienation and self acceptance. She’s been brought up by her mother to hate the “demon” aspect of her nature and suffocate it as much as possible. Having finally broken free of her mothers control and influence, she struggles to find her sense of self and to find a way to navigate the outside world and human connection, whilst containing her all encompassing hunger.

It is quite interesting. The pace is a bit slow and there isn’t much of a plot. It’s mostly a lot of introspection and awkward interactions with people she struggles not to eat. It’s a little strange but still quite enjoyable if you like self analysis and character development more than plot in a book.
3.5/5 stars.

A vampire story for Gen-Z which hit on themes of generational trauma and the sharing of culture through food. There's a possible eating disorder analogy here, and possibly an autistic reading too, since the vampire has a restrictive diet through biological necessity, which reminded me of ARFID. It also touched on factory farming and animal welfare in agriculture so there's potentially a vegan reading in here too. The prose was reasonably good and the style mirrored some of the themes and characterisation well.

While the above is incredibly interesting, this isn't a particularly fun read and there's very little humour to be found. Lydia (our vampire) is fairly well characterised, but the other characters are not. It was difficult for me to be emotionally invested as a reader.

There's not much plot and I found the ending to be obvious as there wasn't anywhere else for the character to go. I'll look out for Kohda's future work, I think there's potential here.

This is a different take on a modern vampire story. It really focuses on desire, starvation, hopelessness, a sense of resentful duty. It was really not a happy or romantic book. Quite dark and difficult to read because it really transported me into the life of Lyd, the main character. But her very existence just seemed so unpleasant and joyless. Lyd just seems lost and very unhappy with her life. I've heard a lot of hype so was curious. I have to admit I was a bit disappointed that it felt like it had a lot of potential but then just stayed quite grey. I'm sure others will fall in love with it, but it just wasn't for me I'm afraid.

A young artist in London suffers from ennui, a pretty unpleasant internship with a side order of sexual harassment and worries about her mother’s illness. Oh, and she’s a vampire without a source of fresh blood. I felt sorry for her, but she wasn’t very dynamic or engaging.

3.5 stars rounded up.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

A great little read! Really fun but also emotionally touching. I absolutely loved the prose of this, really witty without being overbearing, it reminded me a lot of How To Kill Your Family.

I love literary twists on genre fiction and tropes and I hope we get even more literary vampires on the heels of this.

A young woman, Lydia, rents studio space in an artist collective. She is a performance artist, but is also attracted to the natural darkness of the space. Having just moved her youthful-looking but mentally impaired mother into a care home in their home town in Kent, she has just moved to south London for an internship at a well-known gallery. She spends a lot of time watching cooking videos on YouTube, dishes relating to her Malaysian/Japanese cultural heritage. But catering for her own diet runs into problems when it becomes clear that there is no pigs' blood to be had in London... She starts her internship, which turns out to be quite unlike anything she expected; fends off the unwanted attentions of the gallery director; is disturbed by her growing attraction to Ben, the artist who manages the studio spaces; and tries to distance herself from thinking about her mother in the care home and the disordered sense of self she has been brought up to have. And all the while she grows hungrier...

This is the most unusual vampire novel I have ever read, and I've read quite a few. The writing style and the narrative are very different from a standard vampire novel - much more reminiscent of Sally Rooney's muddled youth and contemporary literary writing generally than the likes of, say, Anne Rice. In fact, I would say that the fact the protagonist is a vampire is almost incidental aside from being an unusual and effective trope to deal with themes such as the uncertainties of early adulthood, disordered eating, coming to terms with the realities of sex and sexual desire (both healthy and abusive), and learning to accept oneself.

It is not a long read, and is well-written and original in conceit. However it did leave me a bit cold, in the way that Sally Rooney does - Lydia is quite a passive protagonist and her days and her life pass by in a disjointed and frankly rather uninteresting manner which served to distance her from me, the reader. I found this a novel to admire rather than love.

A take on vampire literature which I have never read the likes of before - and I'm so glad someone finally wrote it.

For a long time whenever approaching a book about vampires, specifically a vampire in the body of a young woman, I have been cautious that it would consist simply of 'I want to drink human blood!', and 'Oh no! I want to drink my human boyfriend's blood!'. For this reason, I was overjoyed that this intricate and emotionally wealthy book did not fall down the classic vampire trope rabbit hole, as tempting as it may have been to do so it remained firmly original and sharp throughout. Whilst the idea of 'I want to drink human blood!' does still ring true, it is not turned into a caricature - nor is it particularly overly gruesome. It is instead a deep longing, a suppressed craving, something that throughout following Lydia, the central character and vampire in question, in her day to day life, trying to function in London's society. With prose in a similar fashion to the strong, beguiling and twisting thought processes of standard narration heavy contemporary fiction, this book is elevated by its seamless inclusion of vampiric elements into the tale of a believable and sincere protagonist, who I found myself sympathising with as she recounts her life.

Kohda shoots the worn-out vampire plot line back to us with an intriguing response - what if vampires craved humanity not just in the sense of drinking blood, but the essence of being human in itself?