Sam is a normal teenage boy in that there really is no such thing as "normal" for a teenager now. Everyone is just trying to find their place in the world and Sam doesn't really feel like he has a place. I'm sure that there are a lot of kids in Sam's situation. His parents grew up as hippies. They get married, have children, and over time, at least one of them starts to change their views on the world. In this case, it is Sam's dad Jeff that slowly changes. By this point, he has chosen to work for the DNR and they're in charge of the natural resources in the area. He is an ecologist and realizes that in nature, things live and things die. Cute things eat other cute things to live; and we need to preserve this balance of nature. Now, the central problem is the deer population. Given that there are really no natural predators of deer in the wild anymore, the deer population has exploded. Deer are dying each year of starvation due to a lack of food for so many of them. The DNR and Sam's dad, Jeff, believe that they need to organize a hunt to reduce the deer population to a controllable amount to stop the starvation. Sam's mom, Elissa, is on the other side of the fence. She and her group believe that all the deer should be saved. Of course, they never really address the question of how to keep them from starving, but that's not the point. Men shouldn't be choosing which deer live and which die.
Sam and his little brother, Perry, find themselves stuck. They both believe their mom is right and want to side with her. Perry is free to do so, but Sam finds himself in a covert operation to infiltrate the other side thanks to the love of his life, Megan. Megan is an extremist. She wants to save the world at any cost necessary. Of course, Sam is going to do anything he can to make Megan happy as he just wants her to be his girlfriend. Together with their friends, Ryan and Holly, these four have their own little activist group. Being that they are still kids though, not all their decisions are going to be the smart thing to do, even if they think that it is right. Sam is at a crossroads in life. He just needs to figure out for himself which side he really prefers and it might not be the one that he thinks he likes.
I'm not sure that I really loved the ending as I felt that I wanted to know for sure what side Sam chooses. But when I thought about it, I realized that given his age, even if he "chose" a side, it would quite possibly change again as he continues to grow up. Cute Eats Cute is a story about the journey, not the destination.
When I heard about Cute Eats Cute, I wanted it because it was described as a sarcastic commentary and I love sarcasm. That is a very correct description. I would call it a sarcastically witty look at the beginning of a teenager's journey to adulthood. I have been extremely impressed with how well C.B. Murphy channels the mind of a teenager. Several times, I found myself thinking "that's stupid, no one would ever think that" and then I'd remember that these are 15-year-old kids and that's exactly how they'd think. They just aren't adults yet, so they don't quite think like either an adult yet or a child anymore. You don't really find many authors remembering to think like a teen, even when that's who they're writing as. In the novel, Elissa's friend, Patti, tells them that "All books are propaganda." Cute Eats Cute is propaganda in its own way, but you're going to have to follow the characters and think which side you would choose for yourself.
