A book not for the fainthearted. A driving story of the abusive relationship between a woman, Joan, and the men who she abused and who abused her. Full of raw emotion - love, hate, desire, need - the story wraps around you and pulls you in to the desperate life of Joan. Relationships are explained and exposed as you travel through her past and present. Well written, I don't know if I can say I enjoyed the read but it is a story that engages and consumes you.

The story line in this book was outside my normal interest, but the blurb sounded interesting so I decided to read it. It is a well written book, the story line held my interest throughout. Joan has fled to California after witnessing a disturbing act in front of her at a restaurant. The disturbing act was the suicide of a married man she had been having an affair with and was ending it. In California she moves into a room at a commune type of compound. She is convinced that Alice, a person from her earlier life, will be able to help her get past this disturbing act. They meet and discuss Joan's life, to say that Joan is rather loose with her morals is an understatement. She is attracted to men who are either married or in committed relationships, I interpreted that she was attracted to the stability of married/committed life, though she didn't make any steps to enter into either. The writing is very compelling and though I found some of situations uncomfortable, particularly the ending, I appreciated the author going into those dark spaces. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This isn't a book for everyone. If you don't have the tolerance to step into the stolen green sandals of a woman who is both victim and perpetrator, do pass this one by. But if you want to understand what goes on in the mind of a traumatized woman like Joan, this book will move you. A raw and urgent thriller about a brutalized woman in search of her own humanity.

“Animal is a depiction of female rage at its rawest, and a visceral exploration of the fallout from a male-dominated society.”

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The book opens with Joan witnessing a violent act at the hands of a former lover while in the middle of a luxurious dinner. This is one single event among many flashbacks, but it's the one that propels her to take flight from her home in New York to the opposite coast in California. Joan is lost and in pursuit of the one person who can help her find the answers of her past which will provide her the key to her future.

This book is not for the faint of heart. It is brutal in parts, full of haunting experiences of abuse, generational trauma and extreme emotional suffering. Joan is a deeply complicated anti-heroine, and it was exactly those imperfections that made her so real and so endearing to me.

I think the thing that stood out most for me was that I have only read books with such frantic pace and unapologetic behaviour that were written by and about men. It felt a little empowering to have a woman at the wheel for this one. And, while Joan’s actions were often outrageous and unthinkable, they really honoured the complexity of life as a survivor. She isn't a character that is easy to understand and Taddeo's way of building compassion for someone so difficult is a testament to her talent as a storyteller.

To be clear, I loved this book. From beginning to end.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me with an advanced copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

I went in this blind, not reading anything but the description and not reading other reviews. It starts off strong when we meet Joan the night she sees an old lover die in front of her. She leaves New York to L.A in search of Alice. Alice is the only person who can help Joan make any sense of her past. As you read, you get glimpses into Joans past of a disoriented family and the many relationships she has had. It’s a book about lust, sex, affairs and many bad relationships.

It is gripping but you have to wait until the end to get the answers you are looking for. You finally learn important pieces in her past that has turned her into the women she is today. The pieces from her past catch up to her and she comes to understand things that have made her the person she is today.

It's like Joan is talking directly to you, almost like you are reading a diary but being told this by her at the same time. At times you get frustrated with Joan and it's hard to sympathize with her but this is a book I couldn't put down as I needed to know how it ends and her true relationship with Alice.

This novel writing style was so disjointed and chaotic but lent a real emotion to the main character. It felt like I’d gotten straight into her head and experience the crazed thoughts and depravity alongside her. Unstable and just trying to stumble through life. I weirdly enjoyed the journey.

Thank you NetGalley for this arc

I was sure from the synopsis that I’d enjoy this one and the first chapter sucked me in but the writing feels disjointed and too simple. The story is a bit all over the place and doesn’t flow well.

When I read Lisa Taddeo’s nonfiction blockbuster Three Women — marketed as a journalistic inquiry into the nature of women’s desire — my only complaint was that the narratives featured were too similar: these were essentially three women who all had relationships with married men, and each of them had childhood experiences that may have set them up to not expect more for themselves. Taddeo’s first novel, Animal, explosively mines even deeper into this line of inquiry: When we first meet Joan, she is recalling being out for dinner with a married lover when her former married lover entered the restaurant, and while this initially seems like the story of a cold-hearted gold digger who has her past catch up with her, as Joan flees her life in NYC for a hot and dusty rental house in the Topanga Canyon adjacent to LA, Taddeo artfully reveals the abuses that Joan has suffered at the hands of these and other lovers and the childhood losses that set her up to not expect much more from men or life in general. With explicit sex scenes, heartbreak, loneliness, and crushing loss, this was an uncomfortable read, but Taddeo’s writing is consistently thoughtful and provoking; Animal is a perfect followup to Three Women, the novel form freeing Taddeo up to make more explicit connections and commentary. I loved this.

I really really tried to read this book and truly gave it an honest try. However, I just could not finish it. I found it quite confusing and all over the place. There comes a time where you just have to call it quits as the challenge of reading the book surpasses interest in the story.

Having a catchy start I wanted to like this book, but there just wasn't enough for me to continue post mid-chapter 7. The ideas are all over the place just a bit too much for me to want to follow them.
Although I understand the character building with the use of choppy prose for thought, I'm just not a fan of too many short sentences. Similarly, the reader bounces around a bit too much in the main character's head when going from sentence to sentence within paragraphs.
On a positive note, the author's use of visceral descriptions, and her thoughtful use of character conversations enables you to vividly see and feel everything around, and moving through her. I feel that the author's intelligence and wit really do shine as she writes metaphorically throughout the entire book.