Representation: Asian characters
Trigger warnings: Death of a father in a plane crash, grief and loss depiction, emesis mentioned, body shaming, internalised body shaming, restrictive dieting, eating disorder
Score: Five points out of ten.
Find this review on The StoryGraph.

I saw Hungry Ghost circling my recommendations until I picked it up and added it to this website. It has high ratings overall, but only some reviews are positive. After reading a review, I feared I would be disappointed again when I finished Hungry Ghost. Unfortunately, that turned out to be true.

It starts with the first character I see, Valerie Chu, or Valerie for short, recounting her early life. She most prominently remembers her mother influencing her to be thin by not eating much. That soon turned into an eating disorder where Valerie now fulfils her mother's and her expectations to be skinny by binging and then purging. If Valerie were fat, I wouldn't mind. However, Valerie's mother constantly and subtly body-shames Valerie to keep her thin body, much to Valerie's dismay. Toward the latter half of Hungry Ghost, Valerie, alongside her friend, whose name I forgot, goes to Paris, but at the end of the school trip, she hears the news that her father died in a plane crash. For what?

My gripes with Hungry Ghost start as Valerie restricts her diet and gets away with it for the most part, sending a horrifying message that binging and purging have no consequences and one can never escape an eating disorder, but one can. I soon hated Valerie for shouting at her friend and her mother. The last person wasn't much better either. The ending was atrocious, as the two characters did a magical 180. The former stopped binging and purging, and the latter stopped body shaming. How can Valerie love her mother even though she treated Valerie like this? It doesn't make any sense. It would be better if Valerie lived without her mother. I'm so dissatisfied. ( )

teen/adult graphic fiction - Valerie, urged since childhood by her mother not to eat too much or gain too much weight, struggles with an eating disorder (bulimia) during her senior year of high school. Set in San Jose, California, with a school trip to Paris. TW/CW: eating disorders, sudden loss of parent.

As my friend said when she recommended this book, "sad, but really good." There's a lot more to the story than you might expect--definitely have tissues handy. Illustrations are beautifully rendered and the visual storytelling is excellent. Don't skip the author's afterword, where she tells of her own experiences with eating disorders through her twenties and into her early thirties, and note the resources (books and media that helped her, but which might also be triggering).

February 2024 bingo challenge: less than 290 pages, recommended by a friend, takes place in winter (lunar new year), character goes on a journey (class trip to Paris), takes place in Europe, book about social media, award winner. ( )

A beautiful graphic novel dealing with body image, parental pressure, bulimia, grief, and the healing power of friendship. ( )

A teenage girl develops an eating disorder due to her toxic relationship with her mother. A family tragedy brings everything to a head in a too tidy, YA manner, but it's an effective tale nevertheless.

If I seem lukewarm, know that I've read a few too many books about eating disorders in the past few years, including a particularly brutal one earlier in the same week: Nervosa by Hayley Gold. ( )

Valerie struggles throughout this story with an eating disorder and body image so this is definitely a tough read whether or not you fully identify with what this girl is experiencing, you’re still going to feel for her.

There’s a particularly toxic character in this one, a character who is oblivious to just how damaging they are to Valerie, and while you certainly want to see change in that person because it would help Valerie, I think it was realistic to show that there are in fact some people who are never going to change, who are never going to understand that what they say is hurtful rather than helpful.

This does offer a flip-side to that toxicity by showing the power of a strong friendship, so there are glimmers of hope in this one amidst the emotionally dark stuff.

I also loved the art, there was such a pretty, soft quality to it and the subdued color palette fit the story really well. ( )