I went to my first book club and it wasn't what I expected...

And book review of Feast While You Can

On Monday 31st of March, I went to my first ever book club. I had finished the month’s pick, which was Feast While You Can by Mikaela Clements and Onjuli Datta, earlier that week and I was mentally preparing for a lot of socialising with new people.

It’d been a while since I put myself out there, but instead of listening to the nagging insecurities in my head, I thought why the hell not?! I invited my friends for moral support and we put it in our calendars, meaning it was official. Ironically, I entered before my friends because I thought they were inside already so despite my nerves, I kept going and in a surprisingly large corner of the pub, there the bookclub was.

I deliberately went in with an open mind: this was a new experience. If I didn’t like it, fine. As long as I give it good go, put myself out there and try to socialise, I told myself I would be proud of me. And if I did: perfect! What I didn’t expect was this:

It reminded me a lot of my creative writing seminars in university, and I couldn’t be happier!

How I had so desperately missed a group of people with different experiences, backgrounds and opinions all talking about one book that we all read. I was blooming with joy. Turns out, this bookclub was exactly what I needed.

Since graduating, I had been hanging with the same group of friends that has gradually shrunk over the couple of years as people move on with their lives. I love my friends, but we consume similar media and have similar opinions on things, which was starting to become more noticeable to be lately. But here: people disagreed with me and I disagreed with them and it was amazing! I felt like I had unlocked a new area in a video game and what I had in front of me was a gold mine.

Although I think pretty much everyone, or at least everyone I spoke to and I made sure to speak to as many people as I could, enjoyed the book. Small town sapphic monster romance with cannibalism with gross and gore and yearning and more yearning and—I have goosebumps just thinking of it.

Every time I think of this book I think of two things:

1. Going to the bookclub.

2. And how well Clements and Datta wrote this sapphic relationship.

It was true and faithful and I now want to read more lesbian romance books but I know it’s going to take a lot to top Angelina’s and Jagvi’s relationship. Call me a freak all you want, but the sex scenes were so fucking sexy and intimate and extremely well written. I cannot emphasise this enough. The writing had me blushing and kicking my feet in public. Let me say that again: in the middle of a noisy café and opposite my friend (who had already finished it and was coming to the bookclub with me), who was revelling in my dramatic reactions to what I reading in public. You know those memes of the BookTok Girlies™ reading their dark romance porn in public? Yeah, that was me. Talk about self report.

With that being said, the book wasn’t perfect—hence the four star rating. I found the opening too slow and the ending too quick. But once, the monster appeared the narrative started rolled at exponential speed. I couldn’t put it down!

So I’m going to the next meeting and we’re reading Orlando by Virginia Woolf! And I’m pretty excited for it! I haven’t read anything by Woolf before (shocking, I know!) so I’m also reading Love Letters by Woolf and Vita Sackville-West (whom Orlando is dedicated to), and introduced by Alison Bechdel. At the moment, I am enjoying Love Letters more, but I am just fourteen pages into Orlando at the time I’m writing this.

Too long, didn’t read:

My goodreads review

---

Thanks for reading!

Love from,

Hannah

(ig, spotify, goodreads, letterboxd)

---

Current favourites:

• Cyberpunk 2077. My partner has been playing this a lot lately so I decided to join in too and oh my god the story and lore and world of Cyberpunk is one of the best I’ve had the honour of spending time in. If you don’t have a PC that can run AAA games, watch Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. It’s set in the same world as the game but follows a thieving crew that go from rags to riches, but soon enough they catch the attention of the corporations who want them dead. Corporations are gods in this world, and they can and will dish out punishment where they seem necessary. I cannot wait for Project Orion, the next game set in the Cyberpunk world.

• Brandon Sanderson’s The Final Empire. I finished this chunky 721 page novel this morning and it is true when they say Sanderson is a modern Tolkien. As much as I want to dive head first into the next book in the series, I need time to sit with this novel, these characters, to digest what I have read and pump out some writing of my own.

• I’ve had ‘ExtraL’ Jennie’s collab with Doechii on repeat for the entirety of March and some of April. At first, I wasn’t too fussed on Jennie’s album but there is something so addictive about this song that will make me mock surprise if this is turns out to be my most listened song of the year.