This book is amazing.
I've been following the writing of Mira Grant, a.k.a. Seanan McGuire, since I first saw her sing as guest of honor at a local science fiction convention. She's one heck of a musician, writes poetry that makes my hair stand on end, and is the mind behind some of the best urban fantasy I've ever read, so I picked up FEED a day or so before it officially came out.

If I had written the review halfway through the book, I would probably have said it was a pretty good book. I would have said that it was very compelling, and very intense, to the point where I did have to put the book down a few times, just to breathe. I would have recommended this book to everyone I'd ever met.

I finished the book this afternoon. Once I hit a certain event around two thirds of the way in, I literally could not put it down. I read it while walking, I read it in class, I read it to the complete exclusion of anything else until I hit the acknowledgments. I will not say merely that this book is good. It is amazing. But I won't recommend it to everybody, either. I don't recommend this one to my parents, or to anyone who is particularly bothered by very grim books. This book is a thousand kinds of wonderful, but it is not for anyone looking for silk and spun-sugar roses, or even for anyone who wants to stay somewhere where they can pretend that the world is a safe and gentle place. 

This is the kind of book you fall in love with.   You fall fast enough you don't realize what's even happening until it's much too late. You fall so fast and so hard that you almost forget what the book has promised you it is going to be.  When those promises come true you want it to be a betrayal, but it isn't.  This book doesn't lie about what it is; from the blood-smeared front cover to the very last page, this book never pretends to be gentle, or kind, or have a happy ending This book does not lie, and it does not apologize-- nor should it. The characters are so utterly real, in their strengths and virtues, but also in the little weaknesses of character that give birth to real monsters. This book has real monsters, and they are not undead.   The book does not apologize because it has nothing to apologize FOR. This book made me laugh out loud; it made me so angry I wanted to quit reading, it made me sad enough to blink back tears, but it also wrapped me up so firmly in the story that I couldn't have quit if I'd really wanted to. And on the last page? I was glad I'd gotten there.

I'm passing this one about campus. I expect to wind up buying several more copies to replace the ones people steal from me. And I don't mind a bit.