Title: Feed

Author: MT Anderson

Genre: YA Science Fiction

Format: paperback library book

Series: NA

Star Rating: 2 stars

I read this book as part of my YA Not Club group. We were to pick some books from the vault (books that are at least 10 years or older) and see if they held up today. I chose this one since I was told it was dystopian and you all know that I enjoy dystopian quite a bit. Unfortunately, this was a horrible book, and even more unfortunately, this was one of my favorites of my group leader. My lovely leader, if you are reading this, I am so sorry for what I’m about to write. 

First off, I had no idea what the book was even about. The writing and the cringe dialogue were awful and it made the book almost entirely unreadable. I felt like I was talking to a Gen Alpha with their sigma and skibbi toilet language. I get that the author wanted to write how he thought future teenagers would talk but it was just overkill. Seriously, the book might as well have been written in Ancient Greece and I would have understood it better.

The main character was awful. I don't know how old Titus was. The book probably told me but like I mentioned above, I couldn't much understand it. When I finally figured out the plot (kind of, I don’t think I ever truly understood it), I realized it was about Titus being an absolute asshole to his girlfriend. He discovers she’s dying and he’s like this is an inconvenience to me and leaves. I know teenagers are assholes but come now. This was just way over the top. He acted like she was being so clingy. He was worried about how it would look in front of his friends. I don’t know, I haven’t interacted with a lot of teenagers lately but I feel like they would have at least some empathy for this situation.

Honestly, I felt like I was being made fun of the whole time I read this book. The author felt that millennials (this book was published in 2002) were cringe and the way they were obsessed with technology was going to ruin them as a generation. I was so over it. And speaking of technology, I don’t understand how it worked in the book. There wasn’t any sort of explanation at all. Titus’ story just jumps right in and we are just expected to understand how it works. 

Overall, there are a million better older YA dystopian/science fiction books out there. Ones where you can understand what’s going on. Where there isn’t horrible dialogue and nothing makes sense. Ones where there isn’t just a godawful main character who cares about no one about himself. Oh, I forgot to mention. This book has a lot of swearing, especially the F-bomb. The back of the book says it’s for 14 and older but honestly, I wouldn’t let anyone but someone in upper high school read it, if I had to let someone read it. As far as recommendations go, don’t read this book, it’s not good.