Welcome back for another book review. This is a pretty weird one for sure so get ready. This book takes place in a world where all animals have supposedly gotten a virus that makes them deadly to humans and therefore humans can not eat animal meat anymore. As I am sure many of you can guess where this is going… they start breeding humans for food! It is pretty gruesome and they get into some graphic details in this book so I do not recommend if you get squeamish easily. They explain the whole butchering and packaging process along with how the humans are bred and chemically enhanced to grow faster. They also remove their vocal cords so they can not talk or scream.

Most of the book revolves around Marcos, who works at a processing plant for humans. Recently, his baby son has died, his wife has left to live with her mother, and his father is slowly losing his mind in an elderly home. Everything is pretty depressing for Marcos, but he seems like a decent guy overall. Out of nowhere, he is given a gift, to make up for a mistake someone made against him. This gift is a pure bred female, which is considered very valuable and “tasty” because it has not been bred with or treated with any chemicals. Marcos does not really want this gift and does not know what to do with it so he keeps it in his barn. He says he can not bring himself to kill her, so he just takes care of her for a while.

Here is where the plot takes a bit of a turn. After a while, he starts bringing ‘Jasmine’, the pure bred female, into his house and treating her a little more like a human. Eventually, he impregnates her, which is very very illegal to do, and he now has a pregnant, mute, woman, stuck in his house, who can’t really do anything without his supervision. He goes on and start to form a more intimate and caring relationship with Jasmine. He is very excited for the baby to be born since he is still grieving the loss of his son severely. Marcos has a very strained relationship with his sister, and this is expanded upon throughout the book, like when their father dies and his memorial service happens. He also takes a lot of time visiting the old zoo, where his father used to take him, when animals were still normal and around. His connection here is very deep and also gets into a lot more detail throughout the book.

Okay, so here is what happens in like the final chapter. Its a bit insane. Pretty much, Jasmine goes into labor, but it goes wrong and he needs help. He can’t call a specialist because him impregnating her is illegal, but he calls his wife since she used to be a nurse. She comes to the house, delivers the baby, and everyone is happy, if not a little surprised. Then he turns to his wife says “He’s ours,” and proceeds to kill Jasmine. So I guess it really shows that no one in this book is actually a good person since the only decent seeming person literally used a woman to breed a child since his previous one died. Oh, and his wife exclaims “Why? She could have given us more children.” Some everyone pretty much sucks and is greedy.

That was a lot, but I did enjoy this book and thought it had some complex, interesting perspectives and ideas. I gave it 4 stars overall, however the floppiness is not amazing because it has a really thick cover so it doesn’t really flop much.