um. needless to say i. have no idea how to feel about this. 

the characters were…… ok. rachel was perfectly tolerable. her mummy issues were so batshit insane. freud would’ve loved this book. i think miriam was fine. i do think due to the MC’s own internal biases miriam often read as a caricature of a fat person, in where it felt like miriam had almost no identity outside of being fat (and jewish). as a plus sized person it felt wrong. not to say the author is fatphobic, just that it made me feel deeply uncomfortable. 

know what else made me uncomfortable? all the food talk. ok yes i understand the crux of this book is literally about food. but cmon comparing the fat character to bread was eyebrow raising. sure i understand miriam being happy and plus sized is the heart of this book and the heart of rachel’s character development, but i can’t say reading about how MC thinks miriam is a fat piggy who scoffs down everything in sight and omg fat character haha she has food in between her tits was fun. at some point i felt the connection between the lust for the miriam and the lust for food to be off putting. i do have a feeling there is some motif or something that is trying to be conveyed through that comparison between food and miriam but i fear it never got there in the end. and neither did the theme of judaism. at first i felt icky about it because i didn’t realise the author was jewish, but once i found that out it defo didn’t feel as… fetishised? flanderised? either way i think that was the best tackled theme. but even then i say that and i don’t know what the hell the golem or the dreams were meant to symbolise on a deeper level. maybe im just dumb. and yet again i feel like that about the mummy issues too. what happened in the end i get, but what was the meaning? is it a good or bad thing? has rachel overcome her mummy issues or the complete opposite? i can’t tell if this is a me issue or the book is written like this, but either way that’s how i felt so 🤷 

i don’t really know what else to say because there’s not really much to this book. most of this can be broken down into: sex, food, judaism, sex, more sex, lots of food, a little bit of disordered eating, sex sex sex, judaism, food, etc. like really it feels like there isn’t much else to comment on.

i mean ill say i didn’t like the relationship between miriam and rachel. it felt unrealistic and forced, where their relationship only became what it was because the book called for it. i defo felt the yearning from rachel’s side, but even then it felt so shallow and materialistic, i couldn’t fully buy into it.

the ending was meh. the last chapter was meh. the whole thing with jace was meh. i kinda didn’t give a shit because just as things started to get juicy there the book just ends. so i was left sitting there going “Oh” in disappointment.

either way, this book has fully changed how i look at those yoghurt self-serve places. for the better or worse? you decide