Starvation – 4 Star Book Review

I was invited to review Starvation by the author and provided with a complimentary ebook copy. Thank you! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

CW: Eating disorders (obviously), hospital scenes, sick kids, car accident, death of a minor

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About the Book

Starvation
by Molly Fennig

Published 17 November 2020
Immortal Works

Genre: YA Contemporary
Page Count: 214
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

John Green meets Laurie Halse Anderson in this award-winning, “haunting,” and “incredibly real” book that “holds you there until the very last sentence”.

16-year-old Wes McCoy is not the favorite child.

He does not have a wrestling scholarship to Stanford nor does he live up to the family legacy as an athlete, unlike his brother, Jason. But when Jason dies in a car accident on the way to the state high school wrestling championship, Wes turns to food to give him the control over his life he didn’t have before– the kind of success he never tasted.

Wes must take back control from his eating disorder as he learns more about himself and the mystery surrounding Jason’s accident, before he loses his life and those closest to him.

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My Review

My Rating: 4 Stars
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First and foremost, I tip my hat to Molly for tackling the difficult and taboo topic of eating disorders (ED) in such a raw, honest, graphic, but still sensitive way, and more importantly, for making the main character suffering with an ED male. Thank you for flipping the stereotypes and exposing the other half of the ugly underbelly of eating disorders. Yes, it affects boys and men too!

I have not personally battled with any form of ED, nor has anyone in my immediate circles, so I can’t comment on how accurate this book was. I can say as someone who deals with other mental health issues, as someone who has studied psychology, and as someone who’s consumed other media that centers on ED, it FEELS accurate. I related quite closely to the more general mental health stuff: the anxiety, the resistance to accepting help in the lows, the stigma and lack of understanding from family, the fear of potentially going in for an involuntary hold or treatment. All of that rang true. From what I know of EDs through study and from how I’ve seen it presented in other media, this feels a little more genuine than some other examples that come to mind.

In terms of YA category writing in general, stepping back from genre and topic, the writing is spot on. Wesley and the other teen characters feel like genuine teens and their parents feel like adults and parents. The reading level is appropriate for high school. This book’s official synopsis makes a comparison to John Green’s writing and I can see where that comes from in the way these characters talk and the way they see the world.

The reason this book was a 4 for me and not a 5 is the timeline. This book jumps around between past and present, and I found it a little disorienting. Chapters jumping back to the past are labelled “before,” but honestly my brain skipped over that half the time. I came out of this book unsure who was in the hospital when/at the same time and when Wes starts to get sick in relation to the hospitalization of other important characters. It’s very clear (and even stated in the synopsis) that Jason in hospital is before Wes at his worst, and there’s a big plot point reason that makes me think Caila was in hospital around the same time as Jason, but I genuinely have no idea if Caila was still in/back in hospital at Wes’ worst.

I think this is an important book for anyone who needs to hear a raw, honest account of the ED struggle, especially if they are/know a teenage boy in that position.

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