Milk Fed A Novel

Horny in the best possible way

sooo weird and horny (i liked it)

Direct. Crude. And strangely alright. I didn't find myself hating or loving this. It took an unexpected turn halfway through the book and I just dont know how to feel about that particular plot point.

yeah ... no

@MorganMPage's review sums this up better than I can: 'a funny, horny, eating disorder novel'. I listened on audio and can also add that I wish the author had opted for a professional narrator.

can you say mommy issues!?!? after the pisces, i had really high expectations for this and unfortunately, it came nowhere near meeting them :( i enjoyed this and broder's writing is great as ever (she really is great!), but the story was kind of flat and repetitive to me. pisces supremacy remains!

i would give this about 4.5 stars. I did think it was hilarious at times but i wasn’t completely in love with the main character Rachel. I do wish this novel was a little shorter because it did feel like it was dragging on at times but i did appreciate the short chapters!

weird but in a good way?

trigger warning for this book: serious eating disorder, body dysmorphia, fatphobia, body shaming, a bit of homophobia and religious bigotry. our mc is rachel, who has unhealthy eating habits and no plans for her life. her mother has serious fatphobia and their relationship is rocky enough to the point when rachel's therapist told rachel to do a communication detox with her mother, she obliged. in the midst of everything, rachel found miriam—a total opposite of rachel. rachel is thin, miriam is gloriously fat. rachel is barely jewish, miriam is a modern orthodox. we follow them as their dynamic escalates, as soon as rachel becomes gradually more obsessed with miriam. premisnya interesting banget tapi... kayaknya broder disini bites more than the story can chew? fokus ceritanya berubah-ubah tanpa penyelesaian yang memuaskan, yang bikin aku jadi less emotionally attached with the whole thing. SAYANG BANGET padahal habis baca the pisces aku rasanya kayak apapun yang broder tulis AKU HARUS BACA tapi ternyata yang ini rada underwhelming..... sedi. kayanya aku bakalan balik baca the pisces aja. :| tapi selain itu sih broder masih mempertahankan gaya nulisnya yang khas banget itu. the completely unapologetically crass way she talks about things that usually indescribable to me tu gila gw pengen jungkir balik aja rasanya ya Allah gusti. though i know a certain special someone who would probably find a lot of herself in this book (and that shed probably enjoy it more than i do) im sad to say that UGHHHhHH i wish this book couldve been better....... all in all still ok i guess ga nyesel si bacanya aku bakal tetep baca ulang buat menyerap cara nulisnya aha.

i’m sure this book is not for everybody, but if it has a specific public that’s definitely me

Weird and funny and sad. Kind of like an otessa moshfegh book but better. I preferred The Pisces though!

Conflicted on this one, I think I love it but the ending left every issue discussed practically unresolved!

Hello what was this ending 😭😭

i have simply never read the smell of shit described as romantic

** spoiler alert ** 2 out of 5 stars. ⭑⭑ Yikes. So I looked at some critical reviews of this book and thought "wow they're being pretty harsh. surely it's not that bad." But no, it really is. I honestly wouldn't recommend this book, even if the premise interests you, because Broder does such a poor job of addressing the intersection of religion, disordered eating, and mommy issues that I don't even think it's worth it to give it a shot. Let's get this over with so I can stop thinking about this book: Rachel is a horribly unlikable protagonist. This would be fine, because sometimes unlikable protags are interesting, but the book doesn't seem to condemn her blatant fetishization of the "love interest", Miriam, nor does it truly delve into her weird mommy issues enough to make it a compelling part of her character. Rachel openly admits to viewing Miriam as a "golem" (as in a golem from Jewish mythology. Both Miriam and Rachel are Jewish) and trying to change Miriam to make her more palatable. The entire book regards Miriam with both disgust and overt sexualization and fetisization. It's not the poor sex scenes or the unnecessarily detailed descriptions of food, but the complete disrespect shown to a fat, queer, Jewish character that could have, when written by a better ally to fat people, or a fat person themself, been really interesting. I think the book was TRYING to show the differences between Rachel and Miriam and their relationships with food, Judaism, and their mothers, but this comparison just shit on Miriam instead of actually making Rachel face her harmful thought patterns and actions. I really wish the core of the book had been Rachel's relationship with her mother instead of the "romance." What resolution did Rachel get with her mom? What growth did they have in their relationship? The no-contact period Rachel enters in at the beginning of the book just eliminates the most interesting conflict that the story had going for it. Anything good about this book? It was a quick read, but part of the reason it was quick was because I felt like I needed to skim over parts that were overly-grotesque in either their sexual content or their fatphobia. Definitely the kind of book you could binge in a day, whether you like it or not, like I did. The writing was fine, I guess. I wanted to get some fro-yo after finishing it. That's about it. Don't waste your time.

It‘s a passionate no from me. Blame it on the audiobook it it makes you feel better. smh Review to come.

Hmm. 'contemporary' is the word that comes to mind - I felt like I wasn't the target audience for Milk Fed (but I also feel like really good books should have something for everyone). I also typically don't read smutty books so I didn't enjoy that here, but I do think it makes sense in the context of a book rooted in navigating so many desires. This book deals with some interesting subjects, with a Jewish, bisexual main character who is navigating different relationships with women in her life. There is a lot of ED content, and I felt like it was used truthfully - that is, there's no grand recovery arc but the events in her life influence her habits and attitude towards food in a realistic and resonant way. Her relationship with Ana (cheeky character naming) was particularly well-written and compelling - the desire for motherly approval and/or merger, the competition, the gauging, the desire to be nothing alike. girlhood fr. I'm not sure what we're meant to be left with and I think some subjects this book tries to explore do not receive the attention they merit (ex: Israel-Palestine conflict is just ? discussed over a dinner conversation? there is a bit of feminism/anger at patriarchy in Hollywood kind of thrown in at the end?) but overall Milk Fed is a quick/easy read that I could see appealing to others.

lesbian jews, the romance story I never knew i needed. threaded with mommy issues and disordered reading. read only if you have a therapist on call

hate to say it but it was a little too weird for me. the ending also felt abrupt so didn’t love it either. also tw: eating disorder

I may be one of the few people who did not read The Pisces before reading Milk Fed, so I experienced Broder's writing for the first time in reading this novel. Rachel, a Reform Jew who struggles with an eating disorder, lives in Los Angeles and works for a talent agency. In the midst of "detoxing" from her mother, she meets Miriam, and Orthodox Jew heiress to a froyo shop. Miriam is fat, and that is almost fetishized by Rachel throughout the novel. They become friends and start hooking up and eating together. Rachel begins to eat nonstop throughout the novel, relearning to love food the way she used to before the words of her mother instilled in her the process of being less. I struggled with an eating disorder in my late teens and early twenties. I still live with disordered thoughts around eating and my weight. So, at first, Milk Fed was both triggering and relatable. I really thought, "This book gets me." But then as the novel progresses, the depiction of Rachel's eating disorder becomes a caricature. That is my least favorite part of the book. Onto the positive, though; the queer romance is good. The junction between religion and being queer and choosing between one or the other is addressed beautifully. The writing is well-done. There is a lot of sex and sexually explicit thoughts. At times, I felt like I was reading a smut novel! But all in all, Milk Fed was good. It spoke to me in a lot of ways, and I suspect it will speak to a lot of queer women, women with eating disorders, women with mothers. Thank you to NetGalley, Melissa Broder, and Scribner for allowing me to read this as an advanced reader copy.

It’s mommy issues o’clock, babes

love it but i get why people would be disappointed/ why it would be different from their expectations, especially with the ending

This is not a book for everyone, either you love it or you hate it. I stand with the 'loved it' of course. What a crazy, dysfunctional story with deeply unlovable characters who remain easy to relate to somehow? The descriptions of the MC's issues were so disconcerting and disgusting but so well written that I was in awe of it all. Do check the trigger warnings for this one, tho.

ED porn meets literal porn lol idk why i picked this up