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Insatiable : Book summary and reviews of Insatiable by Meg Cabot

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by Meg Cabot

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Published Jun 2010 464 pages Genre: Romance Publication Information

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About this book

Book summary.

Sick of hearing about vampires? So is Meena Harper. But her bosses are making her write about them anyway, even though Meena doesn't believe in them. Not that Meena isn't familiar with the supernatural. See, Meena Harper knows how you're going to die. (Not that you're going to believe her. No one ever does.) But not even Meena's precognition can prepare her for what happens when she meets - then makes the mistake of falling in love with - Lucien Antonescu, a modern-day prince with a bit of a dark side. It's a dark side a lot of people, like an ancient society of vampire hunters, would prefer to see him dead for. The problem is, Lucien's already dead. Maybe that's why he's the first guy Meena's ever met whom she could see herself having a future with. See, while Meena's always been able to see everyone else's future, she's never been able look into her own. And while Lucien seems like everything Meena has ever dreamed of in a boyfriend, he might turn out to be more like a nightmare. Now might be a good time for Meena to start learning to predict her own future ... If she even has one.

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"Her characters ... feel pleasantly natural even as they live alongside the vampires next door." - Publishers Weekly

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Author Information

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Meg Cabot Author Biography

Meg Cabot is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Princess Diaries (which was made into two Walt Disney movies, published in over 40 countries and voted as one of England's 100 best-loved novels), the Airhead trilogy, The Mediator Series, 1-800-WHERE-R-U series (which was the basis for a TV series called Missing), and Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls. She's sold over 15 million books worldwide and has received the Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award and the American Library Association's Top Ten Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers. Meg donated all of her proceeds from the Princess Diaries companion novel, Ransom My Heart , to Greenpeace. She divides her time between Key West, Indiana, and New York City with various cats and her husband.

Author Interview Link to Meg Cabot's Website

Name Pronunciation Meg Cabot: Cabot rhymes with habit - cabit

Other books by Meg Cabot at BookBrowse

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Book Review: Insatiable by Daisy Buchanan

by Daisy Buchanan

One of my favourite things about talking about this book is having one of two reactions. The first: “wait, is that a book based off the Netflix show?”. The second: “did the lassie from the Great Gatsby write a novel??” Classic.

And now – here’s my book review for one of my favourite reads of the year.

Messy horny girl summer!!

This stream of consciousness novel tells the story of Violet. Newly single, in a dead end job, she’s on the doorstep of the career of her dreams. But not quite able to cross the threshold. She has recently distanced herself from the man she was set to marry. On top of that, she’s living in the wake of of a massive fall out with her best friend. 

When she meets the seemingly perfect and fabulously wealthy Lottie at an art exhibition, she careens into a lifestyle of high art, bougie restaurants, career opportunities, and wild group sex. She becomes something of the pet-girlfriend of Lottie and her husband, and navigates relationships with the couple’s high influence friends. 

Embracing the bubbly

This novel doesn’t hold back in its writing style. Violet’s narrative is bubbly, fast-paced, and full of character.

I think a lot of writers now opt for a cooler, maybe more detached writing style. I often describe this style as a child’s teddy bear, the type that wears a blank expression so a child’s emotions can better reflect upon it. If that makes sense. This cooler way of writing is really good, by the way, and I’m not knocking it.

But Violet as a narrator is refreshing. She’s at times undignified and she makes really bad social, financial, and vocational decisions. It might be easy to hate her, to be really annoyed with her decisions. Instead, we’re rooting for Violet because she’s so endearing. 

She’s sweet and she’s a woman who’s been through a lot of heartbreak that she’s clearly still living with. Therefore, she’s a very sympathetic character who manages to still be relentlessly fun.

So…I didn’t know that this book was spicy walking into it. But it is. I learned this on my bus to work, at approximately twenty five past seven on a Tuesday morning. 

A lot of the ~spicy~ writing is very exciting. If you’re looking for something like that, then I recommend it!

However, there’s a lot of unsexy sex. Lottie and her husband are (badly) recovering from a major trauma. They use a physical relationship with Violet to work through that. They are uncommunicative and deeply problematic, and as you learn more about what they’ve been through, these scenes can become very uncomfortable.

And that’s not said as a criticism. It’s just, if you’re after a book with sex where all the sex is sexy, then you won’t find this here. The conflict presented in these sex scenes is upsetting, anxiety-inducing, and all round really interesting.

Please read this book

I feel like I don’t see a lot of people talking about this one, which is a crime. The way this novel is written is bouncy and fun, the plot of twisty and takes you down unexpected paths. If I had to compare it to other books, I’d maybe liken the writing style to that of Colleen Hoover’s, a nd I pair this book with Luster for fitting in the “horny messy girl’s unhinged stream of conscious” genre.  

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@hollyfleminggunn baking lemon drizzle loaf makes me so happy….tell me why I’m wearing resting bitch face in this video ? #fyp #baking #food #foodtok #cake #lemon #brownbutter ♬ Au Revoir - Sweet After Tears

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Insatiable: ‘A frank, funny account of 21st-century lust' Independent Hardcover – February 11, 2021

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'Extremely funny, touching and wonderfully refreshing on women and sexual desire' Marian Keyes 'You will be intoxicated by this witty and honest exploration of female desire' Elle 'As filthy as it is funny, you won't be able to put it down' Dolly Alderton ' Insatiable is a story about loneliness and trying to fit in, about our desire to be loved and included, how it's easy to confuse being wanted with being used. It'll draw people in with the shagging, but people will stay because they're rooting for Violet.' Evening Standard A Grazia, Stylist, Cosmo, i paper, Red and Independent book of the year for 2021 Stuck in a dead-end job, broken-hearted, broke and estranged from her best friend: Violet's life is nothing like she thought it would be. She wants more - better friends, better sex, a better job - and she wants it now. So, when Lottie - who looks like the woman Violet wants to be when she grows up - offers Violet the chance to join her exciting start-up, she bites. Only it soon becomes clear that Lottie and her husband Simon are not only inviting Violet into their company, they are also inviting her into their lives. Seduced by their townhouse, their expensive candles and their Friday-night sex parties, Violet cannot tear herself away from Lottie, Simon or their friends. But is this really the more Violet yearns for? Will it grant her the satisfaction she is so desperately seeking? Insatiable is about women and desire - lust, longing and the need to be loved. It is a story about being unable to tell whether you are running towards your future or simply running away from your past. The result is at once tender and sad, funny and hopeful. * 'This novel shines with dark humour, sharp intelligence, sizzling sex scenes, and a piercing portrayal of loneliness. Not even the most insatiable reader could ask for more.' Katherine Heiny 'Filthy, funny, and raw, Insatiable is utterly addictive' Louise O'Neill 'Come for the absolute filth and stay for the empathetic and sensitive way that Daisy Buchanan writes about all the chaos and conflict of being a young woman in a hard-edged, hard-faced world.' Red 'A piercing insight into the unreal demands modern women place on themselves and told with real humour and energy, we love this book so much' Stylist 'A raucous unravelling of female desire and bodily pleasures, in all their maddening complexity' Emma Jane Unsworth 'Few books out in the early half of the year are as flat-out entertaining as Buchanan's fizzy, filthy story of a young woman's sexual awakening.' i paper 'I'd call Insatiable Jilly Cooper for the Instagram generation, but that wouldn't do this book justice' Lauren Bravo 'Daisy brings characters to life like no other writer, pumping them full of humour, vulnerability and sexy sexy sex' Lucy Vine 'Gloriously rude and brave about the nature of women's desire' Sophia Money-Coutts 'I raced through this funny, filthy and utterly compelling debut about female sexuality, ambition and vulnerability... I'm still thinking about it long after turning the final page.' Daily Mail 'I can't believe this is a fiction debut - she writes stories like she's been doing it for fifty years' Laura Jane Williams ' Insatiable is an unashamedly filthy and yet deeply sensitive exploration of female desire, aspiration and vulnerability, and Daisy is an exciting new voice in contemporary fiction.' Hannah Beckerman 'It reminded me of Bridget Jones's Diary - if Bridget were bisexual and Daniel Cleaver were a couple who were into group sex.' Julie Cohen 'Erica Jong for the Instagram age.' Keith Stuart 'Intelligent, observant prose that gives a snap-shot of life experienced by millennial women.' Kate Sawyer 'Like going for a drink with your wisest and smuttiest friend' Jessica Moor 'Funny, filthy ... Buchanan offers astute social observation, while the development of Violet as an ardent yet vulnerable heroine to root for makes her a millennial counterpart to Jilly Cooper's Bella or Octavia.' The Sunday Times

• Print length 337 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Sphere
• Publication date February 11, 2021
• Dimensions 5.51 x 1.34 x 8.58 inches
• ISBN-10 0751580171
• ISBN-13 978-0751580174
• See all details

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Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sphere (February 11, 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 337 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0751580171
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0751580174
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.01 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.51 x 1.34 x 8.58 inches
• #2,618 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)
• #5,751 in Contemporary Women Fiction
• #11,115 in Literary Fiction (Books)

About the author

Daisy buchanan.

If you're talking about it, Daisy Buchanan is writing about it...

'If you loved America Ferrara's speech in the Barbie Movie, you'll love Daisy's books.' Ellie Middleton, author of Unmasked

'Daisy Buchanan has that special something.' Marian Keyes

Daisy Buchanan is an award-winning author, journalist and broadcaster. Her books include the novels Insatiable (long listed for the CWIP prize), Careering (as heard on BBC Sounds), Limelight, and Pity Party, coming in July 2024. Her non-fiction titles include How To Be A Grown Up and The Sisterhood.

She hosts the chart-topping podcast You're Booked, where she interviews legendary writers from all over the world about how their reading habits shape their work, as well as the Daisy Is…series. You can also hear her on beloved podcasts including Comfort Blanket, Cuddle Club and Crushed. Daisy has also appeared on a number of TV and radio shows including Woman’s Hour, The Today Programme, Soul Music, A Good Read, This Morning and Good Morning Britain. She is a TEDx speaker and has guest presented the Booker Prize for BBC News.

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Life With All The Books

Book reviews, book chat – basically anything books , insatiable by daisy buchanan – book review.

Title : Insatiable

Author : Daisy Buchanan

Genre : Fiction, Romance

Publisher : Sphere

Publication Date : 11th February 2021

Rating : 5/5

Stuck in a dead-end job, broken-hearted, broke and estranged from her best friend: Violet’s life is nothing like she thought it would be. She wants more – better friends, better sex, a better job – and she wants it now.

So, when Lottie – who looks like the woman Violet wants to be when she grows up – offers Violet the chance to join her exciting start-up, she bites. Only it soon becomes clear that Lottie and her husband Simon are not only inviting Violet into their company, they are also inviting her into their lives.

Seduced by their townhouse, their expensive candles and their Friday-night sex parties, Violet cannot tear herself away from Lottie, Simon or their friends. But is this really the more Violet yearns for? Will it grant her the satisfaction she is so desperately seeking?

I had heard some brilliant things about Insatiable so I was desperate to get my hands on it and I’m so glad I did because it is truly fantastic. The story follows Violet, a woman in her mid 20s whose life feels, to her, underwhelming and not what she had imagined it would turn out to be. Her story takes a thrilling turn when she is drawn into the lives of glamorous aspirational couple, Lottie and Simon and their group of friends.

I absolutely loved this book – I couldn’t put it down. It is such an intelligent and uncompromising look at what being a young woman is actually like with all of the second guessing, insecurity and uncertainty that comes with it. Simultaneously, it also dives into the complexities of female desire. It is pretty explicit and unashamedly so which feels like a massive step forward in the stories being told about and by women. I think, even now, there is still a certain degree of shame surrounding reading novels that fully explore lust – specifically female lust – and there shouldn’t be. It’s something that should be out there and accessible because it is important to acknowledge it in an honest and realistic way – no holds barred.

Insatiable is also really funny – I was laughing away to myself frequently whilst reading. The humour in this book lies in its honesty – Violet feels like a real, unfiltered person. Her feelings and internal dialogue are infinitely relatable. I obviously can’t speak for all women in their 20s but I do think Insatiable vividly captures the feeling of being a bit lost, of feeling like you should have your life all figured out by now and the desperate anxiety that you haven’t ‘succeeded’ at life. I really can’t recommend this book highly enough. It is a provocative, funny, moving and razor sharp look at a woman trying to understand herself and her desires. Phenomenal.

I kindly received a copy of the book from the publisher. My review is entirely my own honest opinion.

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2 thoughts on “ insatiable by daisy buchanan – book review ”.

Great review! I’d not heard of this book before and while the synopsis sounds intriguing, what you’ve written in your review about its exploration of desire and lust, and the shame around reading about these things has sold me on checking this one out. Will definitely keep it on my radar!

Like Liked by 1 person

Thank you lovely! ☺️ It’s so good – I absolutely loved it and I really hope you do too if you decide to give it a read! ❤️

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by Daisy Buchanan

10th February 2022

Price: £8.99

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Season 1 – Insatiable

Where to watch, insatiable — season 1.

Watch Insatiable — Season 1 with a subscription on Netflix, or buy it on Prime Video.

What to Know

Broad stereotypes, clumsy social commentary, and a failed attempt at "wokeness" make Insatiable hard to swallow.

Cast & Crew

Lauren Gussis

Dallas Roberts

Bob Armstrong

Alyssa Milano

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Young, Beautiful, Murdered — and Her Mother

In the memoir “Rabbit Heart,” Kristine S. Ervin explores the human being behind sensational headlines, and our culture’s insatiable thirst for other people’s tragedy.

By Alissa Bennett

Alissa Bennett is an author and co-host of “The C Word.”

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RABBIT HEART: A Mother’s Murder, a Daughter’s Story , by Kristine S. Ervin

One week after the arrest of Bryan Kohberger — currently awaiting trial for the brutal 2022 slayings of four college students in Moscow, Idaho — law enforcement officials were seen removing bedroom furniture from the victims’ home. The media covered this development with the same ardor it had displayed since the crime first entered the news cycle, and photo documentation quickly made its way to a detail-starved public.

In the days that followed, internet sleuths and news outlets began presenting digitally enhanced versions of the images, speculating that the dark shadows that appeared to bloom beneath the mattresses’ protective covers were pools of blood, that an innocuous-looking drip sliding down the leg of a desk was evidence of carnage. If the house had already become the grim metonymy of the young people who’d died inside it, the removal of its contents functioned as a kind of autopsy, a methodical post-mortem conducted in front of an audience invested in the lurid details of strangers’ deaths.

Studies indicate that the primary consumers of true crime-related media are women , and I’ve thought a lot about why that is. The most straightforward explanation I can suggest is that it’s a forum where we can passively engage in violence while simultaneously managing our fears of victimization. But if the genre dramatizes the differences between “safe” and “endangered,” it also has the effect of reducing victims to pure abstraction. In her new book, “Rabbit Heart ,” the poet and essayist Kristine S. Ervin offers a devastating account from the other side of murder, outlining in stark detail the trauma we fail to recognize when we consume tragedy as entertainment.

Ervin was 8 years old in 1986 when her mother, Kathy Sue Engle, was abducted from a mall parking lot in Oklahoma City. It would be several days before Engle’s partially decomposed body was discovered in a nearby oil field, and more than 20 years before a suspect was identified and convicted of the murder .

Melding true crime with memoir, Ervin reminds us of what happens when we conflate people with the transgressions committed against them — the collateral damage we inflict when we turn human beings into moral allegory. She asks, too, what it means to live in a world where even death does not spare women’s bodies from the indignity of surveillance.

Ervin writes with painful clarity about the instability of a childhood defined by public tragedy. The unanswered questions surrounding her mother’s death meant that even the most familiar of places became potential crime scenes, familiar objects indexes of loss.

Much of the book grapples with Ervin’s need to separate her mother’s identity from the brutality of her death. Part stranger and part cautionary tale, Kathy Sue is the absent epicenter of her daughter’s adolescence.

And running parallel is the author’s reckoning with how her own vulnerability was exploited. Recounting a series of psychologically and physically injurious encounters with adult men during her teenage years, Ervin untangles how her understanding of sexual agency unfolded in tandem with her growing knowledge of the crime.

She is particularly skillful at examining the conflict inherent in commodifying female sexuality — while simultaneously punishing women for being looked at. Though she had long heard innuendos that tacitly held Kathy Sue accountable for the violence committed against her, it was not until Ervin was a freshman in college that she learned the language — “dragged,” “bound,” “raped” — that had been used to describe the murder, and felt a horrifying shock of recognition. Measuring her own experiences of abuse against the facts of the case, Ervin exposes a culture that shames victims while demanding access to their trauma.

Throughout, her mother remains elusive. At one point, Ervin describes encountering the piece of clothing she most identified with Kathy Sue: a brown leather blazer that once smelled of Charlie perfume and menthol cigarettes. Slipping it on one afternoon, the author is surprised that the garment does not accommodate her at all; she has tried on her mother’s body and it does not fit.

“Rabbit Heart” is a powerful treatise on love and loss, on mothers and daughters, but it is also a warning to all of us who consume true crime. Reading about the afternoon Ervin ran across an image of Kathy Sue posted to a website called “Victims, Young, Beautiful — Murdered,” I found myself considering my own relationship to catastrophe-gazing. Looking at violence does not protect us from it, and our passivity does not prevent it from happening again.

RABBIT HEART : A Mother’s Murder, a Daughter’s Story | By Kristine S. Ervin | Counterpoint | 294 pp. | $27

A picture caption with an earlier version of this review misspelled the author’s surname. She is Kristine S. Ervin, not Erwin.

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Passenger review – this supernatural thriller is scarily fresh

Confident, atmospheric and packed with creepy realism, this drama – starring Wunmi Mosaku as a copper trapped in a small town – is a convincingly detail-oriented paranormal horror

A h, former Met detectives who have moved to quiet northern towns for personal reasons and find themselves longing for the big cases and exciting days of old – be careful what you wish for! Detective Riya Ajunwa (Wunmi Mosaku) is our frustrated gal here, in the actor Andrew Buchan’s screenwriting debut (no, come back, come back – it’s good!), Passenger. She moved to the small Lancastrian town of Chadder Vale five years ago with her husband, who wanted to be nearer his family.

Now that he has left, she is looking after his mentally unstable mother, while her caseload comprises mostly missing bins and, occasionally, cats. There is the odd bit of excitement from the protesters at an intended fracking site, owned by Jim (David Threlfall), but otherwise – bins.

As luck would have it, however, there’s summat nasty in the local bread factory. Or, at least, summat nasty being brought in and out on a semi-regular basis. Something that causes gasps of horror when seen by the driver. These dark oozings – and assorted other ominous disturbances – are puzzled over by people who have clearly never seen a supernatural tale metaphoring all over a nationally representative town before.

A local girl, Katie Wells (Rowan Robinson), is driving with her friend Mehmet (Shervin Alenabi) through the woods one night after a bust up with her boyfriend, John (Jack James Ryan), when something large, dead and bloody lands on the bonnet. Mehmet’s eyes open in an unblinking stare, because Passenger leans into its folkloric and televisual tropes while still delivering something that feels fresh and real. The next thing we see is him safely home and fast asleep in bed. Katie is missing.

Not that anyone notices for 24 hours, because she is young and she has her mum’s car. (“Why would you ever come back?” seems to be the prevailing opinion in Chadder Vale.) Just as her mother realises something may be amiss, Katie returns – apparently none the worse for wear, but with no explanation, either.

Meanwhile, Riya and her team (a pair of comedy sidekicks, one of whom especially – Arian Nik as Nish – seems to belong in a different show, but is so effortlessly funny that you forgive the tonal disruption) have discovered a segmented stag in the woods near Katie’s abandoned car. It is spattered with sticky black liquid. Probably motor oil – you know how mechanics like to segment stags in their spare time – but Riya sends it off to the lab anyway. She should, of course, talk to Katie, who has started coughing up gobs of the stuff and is feeling increasingly poorly. Mehmet hasn’t noticed, because he is too busy playing a strange video game so intently it is almost as if he is … possessed.

To the supernatural threat are added more tangible fears. A man who was given a 10-year sentence for stabbing Jim is being released early. Eddie Wells (Barry Sloane) is Katie’s father. He is welcome nowhere, but his wife takes him in. While she is out, he tries to enter his younger daughter’s bedroom. With an alacrity you presume is born of practice, she locks the door against him.

Every kind of anxiety and trepidation is given its due here, from the daughter’s unspoken dread, to the factory owner’s fear of displeasing the masters who are using his place as part of their oozing cargo-smuggling operation, to Jim’s PTSD, to the darker, timeless terrors the woods and their possible ancient and malevolent inhabitants represent. The two episodes (of six) that were available for review keep the mundane and the mystical in nice balance, each one enhancing the potential horror of the other. Alone in the woods, Riya suffers her own flashbacks, too, to some kind of childhood trauma yet to emerge from the shadows.

There are odd moments that pull you out of the story. Riya, for instance, seems oddly unbothered when, before she knows Katie has reappeared, she finds blood inside Katie’s car and on the handle. In the second episode, Katie finds a website dedicated to “The Curse of Chadder Vale”. It seems strange that she has never heard about it before and that no locals have mentioned it in passing to Riya over the past five years, either.

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Despite that, this is a confident, well-paced and atmospheric series that I hope continues to be as sure‑footed and scary to the end.

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