3.75 stars. Such an interesting book and great writing style! Also the plot is really just there to tell a deeper story into grief, rage, self discovery, and family dynamics.

What Hunger
Catherine Dang

In What Hunger, we follow Veronica. We meet up with her in the early days of summer. In the beginning, everything is as it should be. By the end, Veronica will be unrecognizable. Something happens this summer that will change her life forever.

In the aftermath, within grief, she transforms from someone to something. No longer meant to be prey, she becomes the hunter. The metamorphosis is striking, especially to Veronica.

We follow along as she adjusts to her new self, this new hunger, this new way of feeding herself.


WHAT HUNGER is for me, about growth, change, and metamorphosis. What does it mean when those who are closest to you imagine you a certain way that you have inevitably outgrown? It’s about grieving the death of the many prior versions of yourself.


The caterpillar becomes the butterfly.

Thanks to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for the advanced copy!

WHAT HUNGER is out today!

WHAT HUNGER…⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you @simonandschuster #simonbooksbuddy for the gifted copy!

What Hunger
Catherine Dang @dangitcat
Publishing Date: August 12, 2025

I am so thankful for the buddy read that pushed me to prioritize this book. What a unique and special one this was. This book manages to tackle so many things and perfectly balances it all.

🥩 Grief and trauma and its aftermath.
🥩 Life as a child of immigrants - discrimination, prejudice, micro aggressions.
🥩 Life as a female and the inherent dangers this poses.
🥩 Teenage angst and pain and emotion.
🥩 Family dynamics, parent-child relationships, the lives our parents lived before they lived for us.
🥩 Horror in all its gory glory.

This book is about pain and resilience. It’s about how unfair and cruel life can be and how helpless this can make us feel. It’s about redemption and revenge. And it shines a beautiful spotlight on feminine rage in the most visceral way.

Dang’s writing and prose were really beautiful. This book had me riding a rollercoaster of emotions, while also craving a steak 😏

🥩 I would advise checking trigger warnings for this one if you have sensitivities.

Thank you so very much to author Catherine Dang, Simon & Schuster, and NetGalley for offering me this free eARC in exchange for an honest review. This title will have a special place in my my heart, as it was the first ARC offered to me by a publisher.

What Hunger follows Ronny Nguyen, the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants with a past they won't speak of, and a little sister to her very cool college-age older brother. As a family with 4 members and 2 different upbringing, one of the few cultural aspects that they have in common with each other is their love of food. Between their hunger, tastes (American vs Vietnamese), memories, and edible peace offerings, eating is what binds this family together. When tragedy and violence strikes one after another, a certain hunger is awakened in our freshly teenaged Ronny.

This novel starts off like many other coming-of-age stories out there. Girl disagrees with parents/lifestyle. Girl gets ready to transition from middle school to high school. Girl likes boy. Girl tries to break out of the expectations of her parents. Girl explores her true identity, with all ending in a happily ever after. However, in this case, Dang throws us as the reader for a loop. While some of these key plot devices happen, some don't, and some happen in most unhinged ways. In all honesty, I forgot what was said in this novel's summary, which worked in my favor as I was treated to plot twist after plot twist and was delightfully surprised by the decisions our main character, Ronny, made.

This story explores serious topics such as cannibalism, sexual assault, generational trauma, identity, survival, and being an American teenage girl of immigrants. I ate this novel up in one sitting, and that is likely due to the author's writing. She was able to really get into the headspace of a traumatized teenage girl that has been "othered" by everyone around her.

Catherine Dang really succeeded in making me feel for Ronny, and all that she is subjected to throughout this story. She is so young, she's just a girl, and I just can't help but root for her, no matter what she does. It was fascinating to see her spiral, and to peer into her trauma response addled head. I loved that despite her uniquely dark mindset, she found it in her to stand up for what is right even in the face of danger. She has more in common with her family than she thinks, just like many other 1st generation and 2nd generation Asian Americans families. All would be revealed if only families communicate about their pasts for the futures of their children.

By the end of this story, Dang has me hungry for more of her writing. I look forward to seeing her flourish in whatever she writes next. Thank you.

Coming of age, overcome by rage.

What Hunger, the latest from author Catherine Dang (Nice Girls), takes the raw energy of adolescence and does more than give it voice — What Hunger wails, shrieks, and howls with wild abandon. Female rage, as portrayed in this novel, is not characterized with a quivering lip but by nails ripping into quivering guts (metaphorically and quite literally, in some instances). To just call What Hunger a horror is a gross oversimplification.

This novel arrives at precisely the right moment, clawing at meditations on the agency of women, across generations, and coming-of-age in the shadow of the horrors survived by refugees. What Hunger’s fiery nature, political positioning, and visceral prose are tempered with a core of solemnity. Loss, pain, and the nightmares we inherit from our parents are just as much a part of growing up as awakening to our desires.

The dull ache of trauma bleeds into an all-consuming craving for agency:

“It's the summer before high school, and Ronny Nguyen finds herself too young for work, too old for cartoons. Her days are spent in a small backyard, dozing off to trashy magazines on a plastic lawn chair. In stark contrast stands her brother Tommy, the pride and joy of their immigrant parents: a popular honor student destined to be the first in the family to attend college. The thought of Tommy leaving for college fills Ronny with dread, as she contemplates the quiet house she will be left alone in with her parents, Me and Ba.

Their parents rarely speak of their past in Vietnam, except through the lens of food. The family's meals are a tapestry of cultural memory: thick spring rolls with slim and salty nem chua, and steaming bowls of pho tái with thin, delicate slices of blood-red beef. In the aftermath of the war, Me and Ba taught Ronny and Tommy that meat was a dangerous luxury, a symbol of survival that should never be taken for granted.

But when tragedy strikes, Ronny's world is upended. Her sense of self and her understanding of her family are shattered. A few nights later, at her first high school party, a boy crosses the line, and Ronny is overtaken by a force larger than herself. This newfound power comes with an insatiable hunger for raw meat, a craving that is both a saving grace and a potential destroyer.”

There’s a beautiful symmetry to be found in the bodied nature of women and the blood-and-guts nature of the horror genre. What Hunger understands that the experience of girlhood, in particular the transition into womanhood, is written in blood. It’s physical. It’s primal. It’s felt in the guts. To be a woman is to commune with pain; deep wells of emotion and the tearing at our bodies by virtue of living.

Catherine Dang brings this understanding of womanhood and horror as something on the physical plane to Ronny’s story and weaponizes it against the abuses and trauma she suffers. In gory detail, Dang shapes female rage into a reclamation of woman’s most feral, bodied state and unabashedly allows her female characters to inhabit violence rather than exist as a victim. As readers, we feel Ronny’s sick satisfaction in being able to sink her teeth into anything foolish enough to underestimate her.

It’s the condition of teenage girls to simultaneously be at war with our mothers, while fully seeing them for the first time. What Hunger endeavors to push its boundaries beyond the individual journey of Ronny; Dang contextualizes Ronny as the standard bearer of a generation, another young woman in a lineage of woman as survivors and fighters.

Triggers and Tropes [Warning: This section contains spoilers]
The warning comes clearly printed on the label. What Hunger is a horror. And a particularly indulgent one, at that. Dang’s work draws out the sensation of unsettling the reader, combining graphic depictions of gore and violence with the uncomfortable tension of Ronny’s adolescent vulnerability. As a work, What Hunger delivers terror at multiple levels. We worry for Ronny. We hold our breath with every risk she takes. We recoil at the disgusting and macabre.

What Hunger stacks its plate high with heavy themes of political violence, abuse, deteriorating mental health, and generational trauma. To the point that the gristle and bone of actual gory horror feels like a garnish to a much weightier meal. That being said, no detail is spared and What Hunger demands its reader feel every pulse of the story.

Readers should be advised of the following content warnings:
-Sexual assault
-Character death
- Cannibalism
- Blood, gore, and violence
- Animal cruelty
- Discussions of abuse and traumatic past experiences

Final Thoughts:
What Hunger will leave readers squirming in their seats, stomachs sinking and turning in rapid succession. Consuming this novel is an exercise in sensation, making it a very fun read for horror enthusiasts. What lingers, however, is the bitter tang of raw emotional. Horrifying and heartbreaking, in equal measure. One of the most fascinating reads to come out of 2025.

What Hunger arrives on August 12, 2025, wherever books are sold. I highly suggest you devour it!

Thank you to the team at Simon & Schuster for the advance copy!

"Americans want you to feel small. That’s how they make themselves feel better. No one wants to be at the bottom, so they’ll throw other people down there first. We look like an easy target because we’re small and Vietnamese...."


3.5 stars.

This is like an A24 film, but make it prose. It balances the fine line between pop and auteur. And while it didn't quite hit the mark for me, it might be the perfect read for you.

Mai loved it. I wanted more action, more horror, and a lot more cannibalism than the tidbits we were given. This is more suspense with sprinklings of horror, and it's a lot more on the lit fic side than I usually prefer, with an internal voice that sounded YA at times (the FMC is very young). But like I said, YMMV.

I just wish that the big reveal wasn't told through a big info/lore dump. It was actually my favorite part of the story. But sadly, it was so short and so sudden that I couldn't really stew in how deliciously messed up it was.

I really liked the exploration of grief and family in this novel. It felt real and raw. The confusion, dissociation, and powerlessness that Ronny feels and expresses in various ways were so relatable and understandable (to an extent, as in, minus the raw meat eating). If you've been a teen girl who suffered from depression, you'll 100% understand.

The Vietnamese American perspective added another rich layer to the storytelling. I've mentioned this before in my reviews, but I'll say it again. I'll always be an advocate for diverse voices in storytelling, especially in this day and age when we need those voices to be heard more than ever.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for this arc.

Thank you @SimonBooks for my #gifted copy of What Hunger! #simonbooksbuddy #WhatHunger #CatherineDang

𝐓𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐇𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫
𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫: 𝐂𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐧𝐠
𝐏𝐮𝐛 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐞: 𝐀𝐮𝐠𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝟏𝟐, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓

This book is nothing like what I would normally read but I am really glad I read it and I actually enjoyed it. It’s one of those books that made me really step out of my comfort zone and I am so glad I did. It’s about grief and the complexities of family and I devoured this book (no pun intended). This book was a wild ride and there are definitely some descriptive scenes in this book. I thought Ronny was such a well developed character and I loved the author really focused on understanding what was going on in her mind. Overall, this was such an interesting read and while it wasn’t what I would normally read, I’m glad I took the time to read this one because it really was a great book.

🥩Literary Fiction + Horror Elements
🥩Coming of Age
🥩Intergenerational Trauma
🥩Female Rage

Posted on Goodreads on August 11, 2025: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/144922955?ref=nav_profile_l
**Posted on Instagram - Full Review- on or around August 11, 2025: http://www.instagram.com/nobookmark_noproblem
**Posted on Amazon on August 12, 2025
**-will post on designated date

Ronny Nguyen is fourteen, stuck between childhood and high school, spending her summer in suburban limbo while her golden-boy brother Tommy prepares for college. When tragedy hits and destroys her family, followed by assault at her first high school party, Ronny discovers a terrifying new appetite that becomes both her salvation and potential destruction. This isn't just body horror, though; it's a visceral coming-of-age story about Vietnamese-American identity, generational trauma, and the particular rage that comes with being a teenage girl surrounded by people who don't understand, who won't protect you, who dismiss you and deceive you and disappoint you. Dang writes Ronny's downward spiral with the kind of raw, raging intensity that feels urgent and deeply satisfying, like tearing off a scab, or finally getting to scream at the top of your lungs at the worst person you know, or really, just push back at everything that's been crushing you - there's this sense of escalating release and justified rage that felt inevitable and necessary. Ronny herself is wildly compelling; I found her acting out thoroughly enjoyable because after everything she endures, she's entitled to her fury. And when the truth about her mother's past finally comes out, it recontextualizes everything in ways that made me want to immediately reread the whole thing. I'm about to compare two books about Asian American girls with dangerous appetites, which feels reductive in exactly the way that would make Ronny say "that's another Asian," but Monika Kim's The Eyes Are the Best Part really is the closest comparison - though where Kim's book felt more contemplative, What Hunger is fiercer and more unforgiving (and I'm not pitting these titles against one another, they're both good).

Oh man.

Okay, so first off, if you're someone who can get by without content warnings, go into this as blind as you can and you'll be all the better for it. This tight little book is part an examination of a diasporic family, part teenage/coming of age rage and just, overall feelings... it was great. I'm glad I read this. I don't even want to say too much subject-wise because watching the whole thing unfold little by little was a treat and the little group I was reading it with kept saying things like, "It's so easy just to do one chapter more--". A great book too to help fill my insomnia-time one night as I was reading too - if I can't sleep I may as well read something I'm really enjoying!

While I read this book, I've heard the audio is quite good too because you get to hear the various Vietnamese pronunciations that a lot of us may be less familiar with.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster for the eARC in exchange for review - go read this when it's out 8/12/2025

It’s a common “joke” that Asian parents don’t do emotions. They yell at you, they expect straight A’s, and they keep their childhood traumas locked away like it’s some top-secret government file.

One of the ways they do show love, though, is through food. A plate of silky bánh cuốn, a crispy bánh xèo, a steaming bowl of pho—it’s edible history. Every slurp and crunch is packed with decades of family lore, whether you want to hear it or not.

The Nguyens are no exception. Ba is perpetually overworked and perpetually tired. He yells. Me keeps to herself, quiet and self-contained. When Tommy—the golden boy older brother—graduates from high school, the family throws a big party: uncles drinking beer, swapping wild stories, chain-smoking their way into early emphysema. Ronny, 14 and already a ball of anxiety about Tommy leaving, knows life is about to change. She just doesn’t know how much.

A family tragedy hits, then an incident at a high school party—and Ronny folds inward. She starts to feel a hunger. Not like “two helpings of dessert” hunger. A different kind. A bloody kind.

Ronny tries to deal. She pushes around her thin slices of pho meat instead of cooking them. She stands at the butcher’s counter, eyeing the steak like it’s winking at her. Her stomach tells her she needs more. Something else.

Like everyone in her family, Ronny has her secrets. But when things are about to end for her, she finds an unexpected hero.

Growing up is hard. Growing up as a 14-year-old girl with a raging bloodlust? Yeah, slightly harder.

To quote The Virgin Suicides: “Obviously, Doctor, you’ve never been a 13-year-old girl.”

What Hunger is a coming-of-age story that takes a hard left turn into coming-of-rage. Catherine Dang writes family dynamics with the precision of someone who’s been at 1,000 Vietnamese party and can smell the nuoc mam from three blocks away. It’s something so specific that only someone who has listened to Uncle So and So’s barking laugh is able to capture. It’s sharp, emotional, and weirdly tender, with the kind of tension that keeps you turning pages while side-eyeing your dinner.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me read this one before its release.

I’m staying in my female coming of rage era and special meat is still on the table.


What Hunger is a coming-of-age story that blends the general fiction with horror. Ronny is a high school freshman dealing with tragedy. When another tragic event happens to her, Ronny developed a taste for raw meat that makes her feel powerful. You can’t help but root for her while also thinking please don’t do that. Some of this story is not for the squeamish.


The sibling relationship and family dynamic are immediately believable. The Vietnamese cultural aspects add another layer to the story. I was immediately invested in these characters and their secrets. Although I was expecting a bit more horror.


I recommend What Hunger for fans of female coming of range stories that can handle some gore!

What hunger by Catherine Dang really surprised me in the best way. Not only was it a fantastic coming of age story, it was a thrilling horror novel with a lovely twist of Vietnamese culture.

The story of Veronica is lovingly told. As a first generation Vietnamese-American starting high school in Missouri, she is trying to merge her home identity with her school identity. When tragedy strikes her family, she begins to come undone while trying to cope with grief, her changing body, and all while finding herself with a hunger she doesn’t know how to sate. Throughout the novel, she also learns more about her parents, things that never would have been said under normal circumstances about their complicated pasts.

I absolutely loved this book. The characters feel so real, and Veronica’s difficult experience growing up in the middle of two cultures is explained so perfectly. She’s both angry and proud of her parents, feels like an island, but also a part of something larger, and struggles with not being enough of either of the cultures. Her experience with grief is also described extremely well, with her losing sight of herself for the feelings of nothingness in her body. The viewpoint of Veronica is really what makes this book shine.

The plot too… while I don’t want to give too much away, just wow. Everything follows such a logical course as it descends into depravity. I especially loved the ending and was left feeling extremely sated.

All around five stars. No notes.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster & NetGalley for the EArc

I loved this book with my whole heart. It was an intense coming of age of a child of immigrant parents. It was about family, loss, pain, assault, revenge, and anger. Every part of this book was written in such a way that it felt like someone's true experiences and reactions to those experiences. I wanted so badly to hug Ronny and tell her that her feelings and actions were justified.

The writing was intriguing and kept me engaged the whole way through. I enjoyed the development of not just Ronny, but her relationships with school friends, her distant aunt, and ultimately her mother. It has cannibalism, female rage, trauma and healing and it was just so beautifully done.

I can't wait to check out more by this author.

Adolescence is a time of Certainty covering terrified confusion, Outrage covering terrified hurt. The cultural Western headiness of slobbering pandering laser-focused attention on the adolescent, a malleable consumer/believer in the making, from all sides ignites the fuel into a solar-intensity conflagration of perspectiveless conviction that, unless *I* like/love/want it, it's a Plot to Ruin My Life.

I get lots of criticism for using Capital Letters in my writing. Here it's done, as it most often is, to highlight an emotional not a rational response evoked or intended by the author (me or other) to be evoked. Perspective needs to be earned and learned the hard way, so this is all perfectly understandable. It's also why so many of us can not stand coming-of-age stories, to the point where I recommend them to those most intensely averse to them in order to watch their manners pumps explode with the effort to say no without screaming at me. (Hiya Kath!)

In this story Ronny's ready-to-ignite rage goes critical in several incidents. The response to that criticality is, in keeping with the title, related to food choices...not unusual for adolescent females, but decidedly NOT the usual eating-disorder narrative I'm heartily sick of reading. It is if anything an inverted use of eating disorders I'm accustomed to. I've known no anthropophagic beings. Plenty of bulimics and anorexics.

What Hunger is a hilariously apt, darkly funny title for a deeply, darkly, eucharistically furious story. It's metaphor gone clear, in scientological jargon, and exteriorized. (Y'all, stick to Wikipedia to look up scientology stuff. DO NOT USE CHAT OR GOOGLE. The consequences are dire.) I'm not always interested in body horror used to explain rage, but this story worked the alchemy I need to get invested in the action. It was indeed gross at times.

Balancing that, and creating what felt to me an exquisite tension, was Ronny's family history of expressing love through gorgeously evoked meals that I damn near passed out from drooling myself into dehydration while reading. What a food vocabulary Author Dang has! It's a pleasure to read someone's upsetting writing when it then soothes me with food.

I'm easy. You might not be.

The most notable dissatisfaction I have is the pacing of the story after Ronny's, um, conversion? discovery? whatever, big change. Action slows to allow for introspection for quite a stretch, and it did not get back to work soon enough for this reader. There are developments that, in their absence of a world-building framework, just sorta...happen...which very seldom works out best for the narrative cohesion or character development. I mean, "ewwwww" is okay if it effloresces out of some Lovecraftian something, not so much done here.

The complexity of the family's internal dynamics are the source of the extra half-star on the three and a half I was planning to award this very good but not outstanding tale. Ronny, like any adolescent, is still molding her responses around her family. She, like the most bearable adolescents I've ever known, is adaptable in her responses still, not hardening into adamant certainty. She has a very touching relationship with her mother and her auntie, both still morphing as she develops.

I don't know if everyone will enjoy the horror bits, or want to experience them getting the good relationship development, but if your stomach is strong this is a contender for your summer reading.

The rise in books about cannibalism, especially written by WOC, is absolutely delightful. Devour that which hurts you is really gratifying.

Ronny's family experiences a tragedy and everything she knew spins off its axis. In an attempt to return to some kind of normal, she goes to her first high school party with her friends and drinks more than she can handle. Not only does she end up hurt by a boy, the way she escapes the situation sets her on a path that she doesn't want to get off...suddenly all Ronny wants is meat.

In addition to realizing her tastes are unique, the exploration of relationships with her family members is beautiful, frustrating, and devastating. With the arrival of her aunt (her father's sister) to help the family recover, Ronny finally learns more about the previous generations in Vietnam, her father's life growing up and as a young adult, and what happened to her mother's family at the end of the war, it completely changes Ronny's view of the life around her, and the idea that you might never really know anyone, even your own family. Everyone has secrets, and keeps them for a reason.

There's a vigilante streak in Ronny trying to do the right thing and find justice and her moral compass as she comes of age, while also dealing with the totally normal teenage things. I read this in pretty much one sitting, and felt so protective of Ronny while also internally screaming for her to get revenge.

The reveal at the end had me grinning (because I'm so twisted haha) and even though not everything is fixed in the end, you leave with the sense that this isn't over, and someday everyone will get what they deserve.

I haven’t read many novels by Vietnamese American writers specifically which as a quarter Vietnamese American I hope to rectify. this novel started out strong with development around the idea that siblings act as a unit around the traumas that immigrant parents bring with them and hold onto kept me hooked. however, once the body horror stepped in, the development around what is specific about the Vietnamese American experience became lost and I felt the writing become a bit more simplistic. the familial ties and shocks didn’t serve too much of a useful purpose.

Wowww I loved everything about this! Teenage rage, girlhood, grief, and shame. Cannibalism. The hardships of growing up with immigrant parents. I had a visceral reaction reading about their family dynamics and the way Me and Ba treated Veronica and Tommy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the e-arc.

Gods I love weird girl literary books. I loved Ronny. Her coming of age storyline was so good. This book worked for me in every way and I can't wait to annotate a physical copy. I'm excited to see what Catherine Dang writes next.

Thank you Netgalley & Atom for an eARC ♥️


⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “A Blood-Soaked Ode to Girlhood, Grief, and the Things We Inherit”

Ronny Nguyen is the kind of protagonist who claws her way into your heart and stays there♥️. Stuck in that awkward limbo between childhood and high school, she’s already drowning in the weight of her immigrant parents’ silent expectations when tragedy strikes, fracturing her world. And then—something inside her snaps.
The way Ronny’s grief transforms into something monstrous yet empowering—a hunger for raw meat, a rage that feels like both a curse and a superpower—had me glued to the page. There’s something so feral and feminine about her journey, like a coming-of-age story dipped in horror and sprinkled with magical realism.
But what really got me was the food-as-memory motif. The way Ronny’s mother communicates love and trauma through phở tái, nem chua, and the family’s complicated relationship with meat? 👍🏽Gorgeous writing♥️. It’s a love letter to Vietnamese culture, but also a searing exploration of what it means to inherit pain—and how that pain can mutate into power.
The ending left me breathless. Without spoilers, I’ll just say: not all monsters are villains. Sometimes, they’re just girls who’ve been pushed too far.
Read if you love:
🔥 Female rage that’s both terrifying and cathartic
🍜 Sensory, food-driven storytelling(warning: you WILL crave Vietnamese food)
💔 Mother-daughter relationships that are tender, tense, and deeply layered
🔪 Horror with heart

Coming of age meets rage as you meet Ronny, her brother Tommy and the family that Tommy seems to be growing out of. When an unexpected loss hits the family, Ronny has to learn how to deal in an unfair world as she really lets herself go into her anger.

It’s always interesting when I feel like a book is described with a plot but is very much more character- more of a character literary read than horror in the first half of the story. Most of the story is a tale of grief and loss, as it slowly sets up the setting and spends a lot of time letting the reader sit in the main character family dynamic. I wish the parent dynamic had been built a little stronger around Tommy and his family, as it never quite fit in with the level of disdain Tommy was growing toward. Like it needed more examples, more details. I loved when the aunt came to visit, giving both Ronny and the reader more details into who her parents are. The writing grows stronger as the story progressed and definitely pulled me in more about the 30% mark as it felt unpolished early on so I’m glad I stuck with it.

The writer does lean into the sullen teen stereotype a little too much in the first half. I would have enjoyed a little more depth and complexity into Ronny’s personality from that. I was angry for her and ready to yell at the characters on her behalf. Just to say, they had it coming.