Milk Fed

Milk Fed was another book that my old book club chose as our book of the month. I am not sure if I am just so hard to please but I wasn’t a fan of this book either (surprise surprise). Luckily, our book club discussions showed that I wasn’t alone in this. For me, this book had a lot more potential than it cared to make use of. It really could’ve been so much better. And it really doesn’t help that it had such an eye-catching, pretty cover either. When I first picked it up, I thought I was going to read a book about eating disorders but instead, it read more like a porno. 

This bit might be a bit controversial but I hated how short the chapters were. I am not asking for tens and hundreds of pages long chapters but a maximum of two pages per chapter felt really disruptive. It certainly got me finishing the book faster but I would rather read a book slowly and get myself really into it rather than swimming through the pages. And the chapters that ended on the right page meant that the next page would always be blank so that the new chapters would always land on a right page. So the book was even shorter than it seemed. This book had so many layers of really important topics such as having an eating disorder, self-love, religion, mummy issues, being homosexual in a religious household, and so on. Cutting the chapters so short felt like it also had an effect on how deeply these different layers were explored. I would’ve liked to know more about Rachel’s relationship with her mum as her mum seems to be the root of most of her issues. But with Rachel’s therapist’s recommendation, the contact with her mum was immediately cut and Rachel also stopped seeing her therapist around this time too. So, no “let’s dive into your childhood” kind of material were to be found.

I had the impression that Miriam was going to be the “tool” in Rachel’s journey to fixing her eating disorder. In a way, this was kinda there but not really. It was more like Rachel’s eating disorder was the “tool” here to get the opportunity to talk about Miriam throughout the whole book. There were hints of Rachel being influenced by how happy Miriam was in her body but this quickly turned into a sexual hunger for Miriam replacing a food hunger. And while I am usually okay with reading about sexual scenes, the ones in this book were overly graphic and they went on for forever. This was also a common feeling amongst our discussions. Putting so much focus on these parts made the book a lot more pornographic. 

Whilst getting a one star from me, Milk Fed managed to average a 3.58 star rating on Goodreads for god knows why. I wish this book didn’t just leave everything on the surface level and went deeper, but oh well. At least it was a quick read. :/