Book Review: Hungerstone by Kat Dunn

Hungerstone by Kat Dunn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have never read Carmilla, but while I was reading this book, I now have an itch it read it. You don't need to read Carmilla to read this book, but oh boy, this book was sooo good and had me cheering for the end...and also something really bad to happen to Henry because I really hated him so, so much.

Throughout the novel, you are in Lenore's head and see what she goes through with her husband, Henry, and her so-called best friend Cora as she tries to get the Nethershaw Manor fixed up for a hunt that was going to happen in a couple of months. While going to Nethershaw Manor, they run into a broken carriage that belongs to a woman named Carmilla, and that's when things start to become as strange as they can be.

Men are dying, and women are starting to feel hunger for something. One day in the woods, they came across a girl who ate a whole-ass chicken and said that she was "just so hungry". Another time Lenore was out, they came across a woman in a shop, where the man was leaning over the table and moaning, his arm bleeding as the woman was cooking some pork, and said the same thing the girl said-she was "just so hungry".

But the worst thing that happened was the death of one of Henry's workers at Ajax Works--she, along with other Iron Magistrates, witnessed it, and when she thought Henry would do the right thing and give the family some compensation...it didn't happen. Instead, he didn't do it, telling Lenore to post it in the mail. But Lenore wanted to deliver it herself, and it ended up pretty bad.

My favorite parts throughout the book were the relationship Lenore had with Carmilla. It was the most beautiful, sapphic love, because Carmilla saw how Henry was treating her, and she wanted Lenore to stand up for herself, and to also fight and know what was really going on in her house. She even asked the question over breakfast or dinner, Do you think those two are fucking? When it came to Henry and Cora.

At first, Lenore didn't believe her one bit. Her Henry, cheating on her with her friend? Nonsense. She didn't believe it until she and Cora were out on a picnic and she saw the diamond necklace she thought Henry was going to give to her. Fuelled by anger, Lenore yelled and screamed at Cora before Cora tipped over and fell to her death. All of a sudden, she started to come up with a really good excuse as to what happened to Cora--after all, her dear husband wanted to throw her into an asylum for no good reason, even when she started nearly eating everything in the room.

But when she found out that she was slowly being poisoned by arsenic from these pasilies pills, oohhh boy, that also tipped Lenore off--to the point that she tore her husband's neck out with her teeth like a vampire. She even sent off evidence to the police, so if something happens to her or if she dies, the police can have the evidence.

The whole hunting secret was so bad--made me think of another hunting event that went wrong--and even though I really hated Henry SO MUCH because of this secret and all of his manipulations and things like that that when he got what he deserved, I was so happy. Because the ending went so well, Lenore and Carmilla left, even the question at the end was so good--

"You must be so terribly hungry, Lenore." (I'm paraphrasing it)

But that was such a really good ending to a really good book, and now I need to read more from Kat Dunn.

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