I am not sure if I can explain to you why I loved this book so much. The writing is exceptional, the storyline itself is filled with every emotion you can think of, and the main character is a young girl with enough chutzpah that you can't help but love her. Then there are the horses built into this drama like the unbreakable backbone of an indestructible creature. The tragic dynamics of the family bonds will tug at your heartstrings and bring tears to your eyes. This book touched the core of me in a raw, visceral way and it may become one of the few books I read again.

Highly recommended!

Desire, betrayal,,Hollywood wealth.Then add three teenagers with different backgrounds.A author this being #Kate Milliken whom puts them in a fire,car wreck, and secrets.The story is dark and beautiful.The equestrian environment in California story is perfect.
Thank you,
#Netgalley,#Kate Milliken And Scribner

Horses are my jam, so I immediately threw my hand up to try this book when I saw it on Netgalley. I didn't expect this book to go so deep, but it did and it made it all the better. There were so many well-woven themes.

I really enjoyed reading Kept Animals. The book is cleverly written, focusing mostly around Rory as her daughter, Charlie, tries to learn more about her mother's shadowed past. A lot of the story is in the past, giving clues throughout of what may have happened by giving different perspectives of characters all impacted by a fatal car accident that intertwines their lives. Each character is complex, relatable, and unpredictable at times making you wonder what will happen next and want to keep reading to find out what happens. There are underlining themes of class differences, race, immigration, LGBTQ+, and symbolism between humans and animals throughout the book that also make you think about these topics in the world today.

This absolutely devastated me. Kate Milliken has been without a doubt added to my must-read list of authors. Kept Animals is a novel about so many things: grief, toxic relationships, trauma, sexuality. I feel like it's impossible to pin my thoughts on this down. I found it compelling from the start, but the deeper into the story I got, the more impossible it was to stop reading. I felt such an incredible depth of emotion reading this, and even cried at the end. It was quiet, but there was an underlying tension throughout reminiscent of a thriller -- we are, after all, trying to find out what happened on one fateful day in 1993. All I can really say is: I highly recommend this if you're interested in a dark, depressing, queer literary novel.

content warnings: drunk driving; child death; both casual and violent homophobia; sexual assault; racism and xenophobia; parental neglect; substance abuse.

Exquisite. Adult coming-of-age at its finest (and as a bonus, the equestrian component is unusually accurate - a nice change!) A recommended first purchase for all adult fiction collections. Definite crossover appeal for the HS library market as well.

I am not sure if I am just too old for this book or am trying to read it at a bad time. I could not connect with the characters and ended up DNFing it for now.

It's hard to know what to write about this dual time line coming of age story of mothers, daughters, horses, and betrayal except that it's an amazing read. You know going in that there's going to be a horrible fire in 1993 but not why or how. Rory, fifteen at the time, helps her stepfather Gus at the barn and takes photos in her spare time until she was wrapped into the world of rich kids, June, Wade, and Vivian. Her mother Mona is never really present. Vivian lives with her mother Sara and little brother Charlie. When Charlie is killed, Sara takes off and Vivian spins out. In 2015, Rory's daughter is helping Gus with his ranch in Wyoming but she's aching for Rory, now a war photographer. You'll learn something about horses and horsebreeding, as well as the cruelties that can go along. There's a lot of tragedy here and sadness but the novel is beautifully written with incredible characters. You won't like all of them- Wade figures large on that end of things- and you might grow to dislike others as the story proceeds but you will always find them believable. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC, A wonderful read - highly recommend.

Kept Animals is the story of Rory Ramos, and her daughter Charlie Scott, bouncing between the events immediately before the 1993 Topanga Fire in California (from Rory's perspective), and 2015 in Little Snake, Wyoming (Charlie's perspective). After receiving the call that her mother had been killed on assignment, Charlie is left with a lot of questions, and very few answers. Growing up and not knowing who her father was, or how her mother ended up in Wyoming following the Topanga Fire, Charlie begins asking the questions she had wanted to all along. How did Chaparral, her mom's old eventing mare, end up with half her flank burned away, and the burn scars that wrapped around Rory's forearm? What caused her mother so much grief that she was always leaving on a plane to somewhere else? Who could answer these questions?
As she begins to dig into her mother's past, Charlie gets in contact with her mother's old friend-of-sorts, Vivian Price. Vivian can't give her all the answers, but she can shed some light on the events leading up to the fire. She can provide some details of the tumultuous summer of 1993, the crumbled friendships, the betrayals, the loss they all were a part of. But it doesn't make any of it easier for Charlie to understand.
As the reader is told more of Rory's story, it's a hard pill to swallow, to be confronted with the harsh truth that sometimes money can buy silence, and those who work hard for what they want end up with nothing in the end anyway. The harsh reality that money changes everything. On Rory's path to discovering who she really is, she can't help but be confronted with questions she doesn't have answers to, and as all of us growing up come to learn, people aren't always who they appear to be, and we may not like who we become.
Kept Animals is a coming of age story for both Rory and Charlie, and it's a hit-you-in-the-feels kind of story.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC of Kept Animals in exchange for an honest review.

Of course I find horses beautiful (doesn't everyone?), but I am by no means a horse person. I think if you're a horse person you will absolutely love so much about Kept Animals, but for me the horses were secondary to the main parts of the story, which centered around the human characters. The book is told in a back and forth, two time periods way. The majority of the novel is told in third person, and it's a story of a teenager named Rory, who works at a horse ranch with her stepfather and is friends/romantically involved with two other teen girls, June and Vivian. Vivian is her neighbor, a super rich girl with absent parents and a recent tragedy in her family, and June is a horse rider, an out lesbian, and has a twin brother named Wade who is officially dating Vivian. The interspersed parts of the novel are told from the perspective of Charlie, Rory's daughter, who is aware of a huge fire that happened a few months before her birth, an event that apparently caused her mother to leave town for good, and doesn't know much more than that. Very slowly the reader begins to understand the ways in which these relationships are all intertwined and how Charlie came to be conceived and how and why Rory left town.

There is a LOT of plot to the book but it's incredibly slow-moving. It's really more of a character-driven story, but when you sit down and think about all of the events that happen in the book, it becomes clear that these characters have a ton of stuff happen to them in a short period of time. I really didn't know what to think as I was reading this novel. There are various relationships that aren't clearly defined from early on - does Rory have a crush on June or Vivian (or both)? Does Vivian actually want a relationship with Wade or is she just acting like it so people won't know she's gay? Is she even gay or is she bi or does it even matter? Does June have a crush on Rory or is she just messing with her to prove to her that she likes girls and not boys? And how and why does Rory end up becoming pregnant? And what is the deal with this fire that seems to be all teenage Charlie can talk about? And on and on and on ... there's so much more to the story than even what I described here, but for me those were the most important things that I was thinking about as I was reading the book.

There is a major thing that happens in the book that would be a huge spoiler to reveal that I absolutely hated. HATED. That one scene took away at least one star from my overall rating.

As I was finishing the book, I felt kind of blah about it. I thought the writing was really beautiful and some of the characters were hugely complex and interesting. However, I thought other characters were extremely one-dimensional and predictable and that bothered me quite a bit. I also thought that some events and behavior of some characters wasn't explained in a way that made a lot of sense to me. But the more I think about it, the more I can see that Milliken did a lot in this one novel and I'm impressed with it overall. There are a lot of characters here that she was able to flesh out in a way that showed multiple facets of their personalities. There are multiple mini-plots weaving themselves through the main plot of the novel, something that always impresses me. And the sense of place that she created within the novel is really something to marvel at - I truly felt that I was there with these characters, I could see the hills and winding roads and I could smell the horse barns and the open fields, all of it. It was beautiful.

There is a lot to love about Kept Animals. The few things that I didn't love I unfortunately hated, so for me it wasn't a favorite read. However, I'm super impressed with a lot of what Milliken was able to accomplish and I will be thinking about this book for a while.

3 1/2 stars. I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This was a good book but there were parts I found very confusing (that may just be from my old age) and had to re-read previous sections. It was an interesting and unusual story but I felt it could have been written more extensively. I felt like some of the characters needed to be expanded so you knew more about who they were. Give it a try, everyone's opinions are different. Enjoy! 📚

While I was originally looking forward to Kept Animals, about 45% of the way through, I realized I wasn't interested in or connecting with any of the characters, or even the story. There were a few things that triggered me regarding animal cruelty. And that for me should have been a hard stop, but I did keep reading, because this books is so well written. However, even though I made it all the way through, I still didn't like it.

Kept Animals comes out 4.21.2020.

2.5/5 Stars

Independent films have a level of emotional depth that I do not find in mainstream movies. I fell in love with them at a small, co-op theater in a college town I used to call home. I saw them frequently- sometimes with friends, mostly alone. The town even hosted a very well known film festival once a year, but the theater has since closed and I now live far away.

I remember how I'd sit watching an independent film in a constant level of low-grade discomfort and yet leave glowing. Independent films go there, they aren't afraid, and it's that level of depth and thoughtfulness that my soul craves.

Kept Animals flooded me with those same sort of feelings. The book is about three girls living in California during the 90s who are connected by a tragedy. It's a work of art. The writing is masterful and doesn't read like a debut novel. Emotionally, it's difficult to read at times. The author hits upon every single major topic in our world today without it feeling clunky- race, class, #metoo, LGBTQ+, immigration... it's all in there. This is one I'll be purchasing for myself as it is deserving of a re-read.

This is a beautifully crafted story, told in a way I haven't experienced before. Many sections ended by solving mysteries I hadn't realized I needed the answers to. These revelations were doled out like breadcrumbs, and while I wanted to know where the breadcrumbs would end, I was also just savoring each one as it came alone.

There is a traumatic scene at the end of the book, involving a forcible double-rape at gunpoint that left me feeling disappointed at the direction the author took, which I think may sour the rest of the story for survivors. For me, those two pages didn't ruin what was a well-told, perfectly paced, quietly powerful novel, that I will definitely be adding to my collection when it's released.

I received an ARC of this title from NetGalley

Kept Animals by Kate Milliken
Review by Carole V. Bell

Kept Animals is a beautifully written and wonderfully complex book. On one level, Kate Milliken’s debut novel is the story of three young women coming of age in Southern California in the 1990s whose lives become inextricably entangled one summer. On another level, and in a different timeline, it’s also a meditative, multigenerational saga about love, loss, the inheritance of trauma, and decades long secrets coming unraveled.

The novel alternates throughout between two different periods, settings and perspectives, forcing the reader to think about how the worlds connect. The combination offers insights into how one generation’s actions shape the next.

The coming of age story unfolds in the summer and fall of 1993 when wildfires ravaged the Southern California landscape. Though they live within miles of each other, Rory, June and Vivian occupy radically different class positions and social worlds. Despite their differing circumstances, however, emotionally their lives are far too similar: all three girls are struggling with their sexuality and all three have difficult, neglectful parental relationships.

At the center is Rory, the talented and hard-working daughter of a barmaid and god knows who— all her mother Mona will tell her parentage is that “Your father wasn’t anything.” Rory develops intense, complicated, relationships with both June and Vivian, but their familial relationships are also central to the story. Rory’s stepfather Gus is loving but deeply flawed. He cares for Rory, treats her as his own, and, compensating for her mother’s lack of attention, takes her under his wing, carrying her along with him everywhere and teaching her everything about horses. Their bond and much of the action revolves around the world of ranching. Unfortunately, Gus is also an alcoholic who so grieves the loss of his wife’s love that he often ends up failing himself and those he loves. The negative consequences of Gus’s actions reverberate far and wide, affecting everyone around them, and yet Milliken also manages to make him one of the most multidimensional, sympathetic characters in the book. That duality is part of what makes this novel so incredibly absorbing even as tragedies accumulate almost to the point of overwhelm.

In the second timeline, which takes place in Wyoming two decades later, we know that at least two of our main characters have made it out alive and (fairly) well, but an undeniable sense of loss still hangs over them. It’s in that context that Rory’s daughter Charlie, investigates what happened to her mother that summer in California, and in doing so, where she came from and how the family that she grew up with came to be.

Those questions, and that indelible sense of mystery, consistently propel the book forward despite Kept Animals’ sometimes languid pacing and sense of incipient tragedy. Vivid, lyrical prose further enriches its appeal. It’s fitting that this novel bears an epigraph from a short story by Annie Proulx because tonally Milliken’s style is sometimes reminiscent of Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain. Much like Proulx’s masterpiece, Kept Animals is a dark and beautiful story that is well worth reading, but no one should go into this expecting romance.

Content warnings:
Homophobia, racism, various forms of violence including sexual assault, and animal cruelty.

This book sucked me in just by looking at the cover and even though the beginning was a little slow, I was completely sold. I really enjoyed the dual timelines and the narration point of view. The whole story was intriguing and I really enjoyed this whole reading experience. Horses, family drama, self-discovery

While I don't know much about horses, the story was interesting and engaging. The characters were well-rounded, and despite their flaws, it is easy to empathize with and even like most of the characters.

My biggest issue was the pacing. In the beginning, the story was a bit slow-moving, although this resolved itself later in the book. The family dysfunction, tragedy, struggles involving coming to terms with sexuality in high school during the 1990s, and the underlying current of racism and inequality set against a backdrop of impending wildfires made for a powerful and moving story.

KEPT ANIMALS is a beautiful, unexpected piece of art. Yes, you will get a lot more enjoyment out of it if you are a horse person, but the story of finding yourself, California in the 90s, and shocking revelations is worth the price of admission. It had a slow start, but the second half of the book really grabbed me and I couldn't put it down. The ending will be hard to read for many, and is shocking in a way that the rest of the book is not at all, but I think the author's choices for her story make sense and all in all, it's a great work of storytelling.

The characters are well-defined and intriguing, and I loved the setting most of all. The second book in a row set in the 90s and I never tire of that period of life right before the Internet (that I can vividly remember). It's a solid read, has a great mystery, and a wonderful coming of age story. Also that cover is *chef's kiss*

This was a well written book and enjoyed the story that was told around the little girls. It goes to show how things can impacted on your life to adulthood.

I really enjoyed this, I thought all of the characters were well-drawn and you find something sympathetic to connect with in most of the characters. I will definitely recommend this to readers at my library and I look forward to getting it on the shelves. I always appreciate finding novels that are well-written and feature LGBT stories to recommend to folks who maybe don't normally go out of their way to read those stories, but I know they'll appreciate the writing and the overall story.