Sadly, this was a bit of a disappointment. I didn't think the plot or writing was very good. I can't tell if it's meant to be YA or Middlegrade (on TSG it's marked as children's and YA?) because the writing style and pacing feels very juvenile, but the main character is a 14/15yo, and there are a few things in it that I felt push the boundaries of a middlegrade book. Yet the overall plot felt immature.

Another thing that confused me is the time period, it felt like historical fiction (90s), but then they mention phones and texting. There's an author's note at the end and it turns out, the book was originally released in 2001, but this is a new version with tweaks to make it more modern. It says you wouldn't notice even if you've read the original, but it still felt a little off to me, as a new reader.

That being said, I wouldn't NOT recommend this. It just didn't click with me. If my expectations were set in a different way, I might have liked it more. But it happened that I fully expected it to be a book for a much younger audience and I was wrong.

Foe is a bit mid, I can see why some people were disappointed. With that being said, I did enjoy it. It's what some might call "quietly unsettling." This is NOT a horror or thriller, and it doesn't go into much detail with the sci-fi elements either, but if you read between the lines, that's where it gets interesting. I like the writing style, it's a quick read, and after looking up theories/explanations, I'm satisfied with the ending, which felt slightly anti-climactic at first. 

I think this has great movie potential, which is kind of the whole reason why I read it. I'm really excited for the movie adaptation that's coming out on October 6th (2023). I'm a reader but I also love movies, and I know the book is almost always better than the adaptation, but I think there's potential for this movie to be an exception. If not better than the book, let's just hope that it's at least almost as good.

Around a year ago I both read and saw I'm Thinking of Ending Things, which was also written by Iain Reid. That book is much better than Foe in my opinion, and I thought the movie was really good too.
Different, but good in its own ways.

She's not like other girls... She can do magic!

Considering how popular this book is, I'm pretty disappointed. I didn't even have high expectations, but so many people, mutuals and friends; have read this and rated it highly, but I'm not sure what they like about it so much.

I didn't like the writing style. It felt clunky and contrived. For example, the lack of contractions felt like a cheesy way to write historical fiction. I thought the pacing was odd. The jumping back-and-forth in time didn't make sense to me because it felt like it rarely served the plot, it just made things confusing. I thought many of the characters were flat and boring. I didn't care much for the main characters, which became a big issue towards the end, which was the most disappointing part. I just didn't think this was written very well, and I also think it should have been shorter. 

I rarely read books that are over 300 pages, but this book drew me in at the first sentence and kept me interested down to the last sentence of the last page! I thoroughly enjoyed the plot, and the writing style is pretty good too.

I would recommend this to those of you who like sci-fis that aren't heavy handed with technical jargon and dystopians that aren't horrendously dark/graphic.