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kelly_e's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Title: Unlikely Animals
Author: Annie Hartnett
Genre: Magical Realism
Rating: 5.00
Pub Date: April 12, 2022
T H R E E • W O R D S
Empathetic • Joyful • Quirky
📖 S Y N O P S I S
It was a source of entertainment at Maple Street Cemetery. Both funny and sad, the kind of story we like best.
Natural-born healer Emma Starling once had big plans for her life, but she’s lost her way. A medical school dropout, she’s come back to small-town Everton, New Hampshire, to care for her father, who is dying from a mysterious brain disease. Clive Starling has been hallucinating small animals, as well as having visions of the ghost of a long-dead naturalist, Ernest Harold Baynes, once known for letting wild animals live in his house. This ghost has been giving Clive some ideas on how to spend his final days.
Emma arrives home knowing she must face her dad’s illness, her mom’s judgment, and her younger brother’s recent stint in rehab, but she’s unprepared to find that her former best friend from high school is missing, with no one bothering to look for her. The police say they don’t spend much time looking for drug addicts. Emma’s dad is the only one convinced the young woman might still be alive, and Emma is hopeful he could be right. Someone should look for her, at least. Emma isn’t really trying to be a hero, but somehow she and her father bring about just the kind of miracle the town needs.
💭 T H O U G H T S
Unlikely Animals came onto my radar after it was recommended to me by a friend who has a good sense of novels I will appreciate. The cover is appealing, yet it is so many of my buzzwords being included in the synopsis that convinced me to move this one to the top of my TBR. It was one of those books that came to be a just the right time.
Told through the POVs of the residents of Maple Street Cemetery, this novel explores aging, illness, memory loss, caregiving, familial expectations, imperfect friendships, grief and loss, addiction and the opioid crisis, kidnapping, and infidelity. Despite the heaviness of the topics covered, there are glimmers of hope and joy. The way Annie Hartnett handles and shines a light on the very real opioid crisis is heartbreaking and enlightening.
All in all, it is the cast of unforgettable and flawed characters - human, animal and spirit alike - that bring this story to life. It is an ode to both the living and the dead. Nature itself, including the miracles it brings, become its very own character, which I loved so much. The folks at the cemetery were a real hoot. Even with some characters being dead, there is so much humanity within the pages.
Unlikely Animals is unlike anything I have read before, in such a positive way. It really is the perfect combination of elements I love coming together in an uplifting and hopeful way. Annie Harnett takes very real, very serious, very tragic content and puts a comic spin on it in a way that works. A book I can see myself re-reading in the future and one that will most definitely be finding its way onto my end-of-year favoutires list. Highly recommend!
📚 R E A D • I F • Y O U • L I K E
• the natural world
• magical realism
• Remarkably Bright Creatures
⚠️ CW: epidemic, drug use, drug abuse, addiction, overdose, mental illness, terminal illness, cancer, medical content, suicide, death, death of parent, child death, infidelity, dementia, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempt, kidnapping
🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S
"People talk a lot about first loves, or the love of your life, but people don’t say as much about the friend of your life."
"But there’s always something you miss out on, at the end."
Author: Annie Hartnett
Genre: Magical Realism
Rating: 5.00
Pub Date: April 12, 2022
T H R E E • W O R D S
Empathetic • Joyful • Quirky
📖 S Y N O P S I S
It was a source of entertainment at Maple Street Cemetery. Both funny and sad, the kind of story we like best.
Natural-born healer Emma Starling once had big plans for her life, but she’s lost her way. A medical school dropout, she’s come back to small-town Everton, New Hampshire, to care for her father, who is dying from a mysterious brain disease. Clive Starling has been hallucinating small animals, as well as having visions of the ghost of a long-dead naturalist, Ernest Harold Baynes, once known for letting wild animals live in his house. This ghost has been giving Clive some ideas on how to spend his final days.
Emma arrives home knowing she must face her dad’s illness, her mom’s judgment, and her younger brother’s recent stint in rehab, but she’s unprepared to find that her former best friend from high school is missing, with no one bothering to look for her. The police say they don’t spend much time looking for drug addicts. Emma’s dad is the only one convinced the young woman might still be alive, and Emma is hopeful he could be right. Someone should look for her, at least. Emma isn’t really trying to be a hero, but somehow she and her father bring about just the kind of miracle the town needs.
💭 T H O U G H T S
Unlikely Animals came onto my radar after it was recommended to me by a friend who has a good sense of novels I will appreciate. The cover is appealing, yet it is so many of my buzzwords being included in the synopsis that convinced me to move this one to the top of my TBR. It was one of those books that came to be a just the right time.
Told through the POVs of the residents of Maple Street Cemetery, this novel explores aging, illness, memory loss, caregiving, familial expectations, imperfect friendships, grief and loss, addiction and the opioid crisis, kidnapping, and infidelity. Despite the heaviness of the topics covered, there are glimmers of hope and joy. The way Annie Hartnett handles and shines a light on the very real opioid crisis is heartbreaking and enlightening.
All in all, it is the cast of unforgettable and flawed characters - human, animal and spirit alike - that bring this story to life. It is an ode to both the living and the dead. Nature itself, including the miracles it brings, become its very own character, which I loved so much. The folks at the cemetery were a real hoot. Even with some characters being dead, there is so much humanity within the pages.
Unlikely Animals is unlike anything I have read before, in such a positive way. It really is the perfect combination of elements I love coming together in an uplifting and hopeful way. Annie Harnett takes very real, very serious, very tragic content and puts a comic spin on it in a way that works. A book I can see myself re-reading in the future and one that will most definitely be finding its way onto my end-of-year favoutires list. Highly recommend!
📚 R E A D • I F • Y O U • L I K E
• the natural world
• magical realism
• Remarkably Bright Creatures
⚠️ CW: epidemic, drug use, drug abuse, addiction, overdose, mental illness, terminal illness, cancer, medical content, suicide, death, death of parent, child death, infidelity, dementia, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempt, kidnapping
🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S
"People talk a lot about first loves, or the love of your life, but people don’t say as much about the friend of your life."
"But there’s always something you miss out on, at the end."
Content Warnings
Moderate: Addiction, Cancer, Drug abuse, Drug use, Infidelity, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Medical content, Dementia, Kidnapping, Suicide attempt, and Pandemic/Epidemic
Minor: Child death, Death, Suicide, and Death of parent
overdose
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