Publication: March 10 2015
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Pages: 304 pages
Source: Christmas Gift (thanks Dad!)
Genre: Young Adult, Adult, Fiction, Horror, Fantasy, Paranormal
Bookish Song: Maneater by Nelly Furtado
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤⛤
The first thing that made me want to read this book was it’s gorgeous cover, the second was it’s description. From the description alone I knew I was going to love this book. To sum up, this book is about sixteen-year-old Maren Yearly who has a tiny bit of a problem, she’s a cannibal. As an infant she ate her babysitter when her mother was out and ever since she’s been a literal maneater, moving all across the United States after she does “the bad thing” (a.k.a. eats someone) with her mother so the two will not be caught and put in jail. The day after her sixteenth birthday, Maren’s mother leaves as she is unable to cope with moving around the country and being a mother to a daughter who can eat someone at any given moment. Maren goes searching for her father, who left before she was born, to find out why she eats people and who she is along the way.
I don’t know if I can write a review for how amazing this book is. I found it to be a very quick read because I was so invested in Maren’s story. I loved the switch between her journey to find her father and her memories of her past victims. I could really feel that Maren was traumatized and disgusted for what she had done, and I enjoyed the subtle parallels between Maren’s killings and female sexuality/promiscuity. SPOILERS: I would have liked it if this point was explored more, and it did get a bit muddied with the introduction of other Eaters and how each Eater has their own trigger (for lack of a better word) that causes them to eat a person, but it was still a good parallel.
I also enjoyed seeing Maren’s development from a girl overly attached and lost without her mother to an independent teenager trying to find her way and survive in the world. And being set in the mid-ninties was also a neat choice by DeAngelis. While I was very very little in 1998, the setting of the novel, their were a few pop culture references like Pokemon and Spice Girls that made me nostalgic.
One of the funniest things about this novel is that DeAngelis is a vegan and I have no idea what prompted her to write a book about a cannibal sixteen-year-old but she did a damn good job.
Bones and All is a delicious read that will leave you hungry for more by DeAngelis!
What? You didn’t think you’d get away from my food puns did you?
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