Thank you to Ballantine Books for my e-ARC of Unlikely Animals!

Pub date: 5/12/22 (out now!)
Genre: family drama, literary fiction
In one sentence: Emma Starling returns to her small town home to care for her father Clive, who's begun to hallucinate small animals and the ghost of a famous naturalist.

This book was just a pleasure to read from start to finish! I fell in love with the town of Everton and its residents - including the ghosts in the Maple Street Cemetery who keep watch over the living, Emma's class of 5th graders, and the extended Starling family + pets. There's a lot going on in this narrative, but Hartnett did a wonderful job balancing the different plots and connecting them in unexpected ways. I loved her reflections on life, love, and family, as well as the comedy in this unique comedy. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll wish you had a tame Russian fox as a pet (or maybe not, there's only one Rasputin the fox).

Five stars for a wonderfully unique read that had me feeling all the feels!

“Moses and Rasputin were out of their skin excited to see the silver-haired man, eyes bulging, tails wagging, bodies wiggling. It was like one of those viral videos when a soldier comes home from war and his German shepherd just absolutely loses her shit in disbelief. That’s why we like living with animals so much; they exhibit their joy so outwardly, remind us how to be better alive.”

It was a source of entertainment at Maple Street Cemetery. Both funny and sad, the kind of story they like best. Emily Starling is a healer. She once had big plans, but has since dropped out of med school and has returned to her home in New Hampshire to care for her ailing father. Clive Starling has been hallucinating small animals, as well as the ghost of long dead naturalist Ernest Harold Baynes (a man known for letting wild animals live in his house). And somehow, they set in motion the kind of miracle that the town so desperately needs.

Four and a half stars rounded up to five! This was the sweetest and quirkiest book I’ve read all year. My daughter and I read this one together and we both just loved it!

If you love animals of any kind, you will love this fabulous story! Sprinkled throughout the book are the pictures and words of the first real life Dr Doolittle. What a fascinating addition to an already amazing story. With so much research done by the author and so much heart, this is just the most endearing, unique, and heartwarming story.

Thank you to Netgalley, Random House Publishing, Ballantine Books, and the author for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is such a great book! I was initially drawn to it because it's based in a small New Hampshire town. Really I love everything about this book: it's an easy read though it deals with tough topics; the historical non-fiction tie-ins with Ernest Harold Baynes; a very surprising twist; magical realism and more. It almost reads like a cozy mystery. I really appreciated the author's note at the end where she says she was inspired by Ernest Harold Baynes and found a way to tie him in to a book she was working on about a teacher without making it historical fiction. She did an absolutely great job of it.

An interesting tale, however not to my reading taste. This book is going to be interesting for magical realism readers who enjoy humor and quirkiness in their reads, unfortunately, that is not what I am looking for in the books, which is a matter of my taste.

4 quirky fun stars
“Both funny and sad, the kind of story we like best.”

From the publisher: “Emma arrives home knowing she must face her dad's illness, her mom's judgement, 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. Emma isn't really trying to be a hero—but somehow she and her father set in motion just the kind of miracle the town needs.”

Unlikely Animals is an imaginative book, sometimes a bit bizarre and quirky with subtle humor shining through. “Clive remembered, there’s no helmet law here. Clive (dying of a brain disease) decided he wouldn’t wear his helmet, either, because Live Free or Die.” Delightful historic photos of the person and animals where the forest is based transport the reader to a quainter time and place. Characters are interesting and the plot is well-paced, with some magical realism embroidery.

The amusing ghosts in the local cemetery comment on what’s happening in the story. I really got a kick out of them. “We’d all stopped celebrating birthdays long ago at Maple Street (Cemetery), even though everyone’s birthday is written right there on our tombstones. Our birthdays were one of the earthly things we forgot about, the way we all forget what cake tastes like, or what exactly if feels like to be hugged. We’d love to be hugged again, but we can’ quite re-create the sensation in our minds. A hug must be so comforting, we think, and warm.”

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I loved Hartnett's debut, Rabbit Cake, and while this novel is also quirky, the characters didn't pull me in as much. Unlikely Animals is populated by far more characters and subplots which weakened the narrative and left me feeling less "connected" to the novel. However, there is a lot of great wit in this book and some spot-on reflections about New Hampshire that I appreciated. Hartnett also does a fantastic job of tying all of the loose ends together by the close of the novel, including some peripheral characters and subplots, so there was a good pay-off in the end.

Three and a half stars.

Personally, I did enjoy this book. I love offbeat family dynamics, the speculative aspects of the stories and how they all intertwine. For a personal read? Nice. For my classroom? No.

What a fun, precious book! I loved How the author incorporated the residents of the cemetery as a POV. All the characters were well developed and I especially loved Clive. This book dealt with some heavy issues but in a soft, subtle way. I found myself laughing at parts of the book and crying at others. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the advanced copy.

This was a good book. I like good stories that make me have all the feels. was written quite well!! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher!

There are indifferent writers; good writers; outstanding writers; and then there are writers like Hartnett, that leave me with my jaw dropped down to my knees, thinking that I like to write, and you probably do, too, but friend, neither one of us will ever write like this. Not ever.

My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House Ballantine for the review copy.

Emma Starling is our protagonist, and she was born with healing powers in her hands. She went away to medical school, but was expelled for reasons that we don’t understand until later, and her healing touch is gone. She has quietly left school without telling a soul back home. She hasn’t even returned for a visit, but now she has been summoned unequivocally; her father is dying, and her mama wants her to come home. NOW.

There are enough points of view in this story to make your head spin. We have the graveyard crowd, for example, and since Everton, New Hampshire is such a tiny town, everybody knows everybody, dead or alive. When I first see that the dead are discussing the affairs of the living, I am dismayed, because the legendary Fannie Farmer has already done this in The Whole Town’s Talking. But soon it becomes obvious that this story isn’t derivative in the least; Hartnett takes this device and uses it in a different way, and it doesn’t dominate the story as Flagg’s does; these characters are there to provide a slightly more objective perspective than those that still live.

There are several points of view from among the living, too. And there are references throughout to the writings of Harold Baines, a naturalist instrumental in shaping the town and in particular, the iconic yet bizarre Corbin Park, which is open only to a chosen few. There are points of view offered from the critters as well; not all of the critters are real, however. And at the EXACT moment when I begin to think that the author should have pared this thing down, for heaven’s sake, because the organization appears to be all over the place, the narrative explains that

“A good story doesn’t always follow an arrow, sometimes it meanders a little instead, so we hope you’ll excuse this tangent…It might seem unrelated, but sometimes a minor character doesn’t become important until later…The lives of the living often get tangled up in unexpected ways, especially in a town as small as ours, even when a ten-foot electrified fence splits it up.”

I howl, because it feels as if the author has read my mind!

An important plot point is the disappearance of Crystal Nash. Crystal was Emma’s best friend, and had lived with the Starling family as sort of an informal foster child. Crystal developed an addiction and disappeared; Emma and Crystal had had a falling out, and Emma tries not to think about her too much now. Clive, Emma’s father, seldom thinks about anybody else. He’s turned over every rock; slapped a poster on every telephone pole.

To say the least, it’s an interesting homecoming for Emma.

As if the many points of view don’t make for a complex enough story, Hartnett takes us back in time—sometimes just a few years, at other times, way back in the past—and I am awestruck at the way she pulls all of it together at the end, with no loose ends hanging. At the outset I had been sure that this story should have been streamlined, but at the end, when I look back to see what, if anything, could be cut without detracting from the story, there is nothing that’s superfluous. Not one thing. All of these odd bits and pieces are essential to the story she is telling; “meandering,” indeed.

Because I had fallen behind in my reading, I checked out the audio version from Seattle Bibliocommons, and it is brilliantly performed. Usually a story this complicated doesn’t work for me as an audiobook, but this one is outstanding and not hard to follow (although I did go back over the DRC for some quotes.) Mark Bramhall and Kirby Heyborne do an exceptional job as narrators.

This is undoubtedly one of the finest novels we’ll see in 2022. Highly recommended in whatever format makes your heart happy.

Unlikely Animals is an engaging book in so many ways. The main characters are a dysfunctional family living in New Hampshire, but when the father is diagnosed with a brain disease, the two adult children rally to his side. Throw in references to a long dead animal lover and naturalist who regularly appears to the father and you have a very entertaining story. Oh yes, and it's narrated by various dead people who are buried in the town cemetery.

Sadly, I just don't think this book is for me. I had a hard time with the writing style and all the sub plots. I think there was just too much going on. Maybe I just wasn't in the right mindset for it at the time I read it. I'd be willing to give it another try at some point.

Completely delightful. Narrated by the ghosts of the local cemetery, this ‘return to your small home town’ family story is so charming, so mad-cap and I just loved it. Though it tackles some tough subjects (death and grief, brain disease, addiction, adultery) this had such a light-hearted vibe, I laughed out loud so often, and completely fell in love with the characters (including Moses the dog and Rasputin the fox.) So heartwarming and fun. I’m

So fresh and unique! I've never read anything like this before. I loved that the dead people from the local cemetery were the lens through which we saw the plot unfold. Characters were fun and relatable and quirky. Quirky! This is how I'd describe the book. It had its lulls for me, which is why I knocked off a star, but all in all it was really fun. Not the type of book I typically read, but it put a smile on my face.

I’m not sure what I just read, but it was one heck of a quirky book. It seemed to go in many different directions with many different characters, and admittedly I was a little lost at times, but even so, I found the quirkiness charming and humorous. I was most invested in the stories of Emma, a med school dropout with healing hands who returns home to care for her ailing father, and Crystal, Emma’s friend who has gone missing. The nosiness in me really enjoyed the small-town gossip of Everton. The dead crew at the Maple Street Cemetery were also quite endearing. Overall, this was a very unique and enjoyable book. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to the author and publisher for providing me with a digital ARC of this title via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

I found this mediocre for my tastes. I never really felt connected to the story or the characters and honestly forgot about it once I was finished reading.

An interesting read, not an absolute favorite, was not an “I can’t put this down” but drawn in enough to finish. I typically enjoy all from this underrated author, so will probably reread this one later and have an even more impressed opinion. Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for this ARC opportunity!

I wanted to love this book. After a slow start, I set it aside for several months before coming back to it. I ultimately stuck with it to learn what happened to Crystal, but there were many points that felt like a bit of a slog. The story finally hits its stride in the last third of the book, at which point I plowed through it quickly. The premise is really interesting but I felt like the plot got really bogged down with many of the details about Clive’s toils. I also found the attitude toward cremation to be really off putting.

This book was really quirky, clever, and a joy to read. I loved that the narration is viewed from the inhabitants of the town’s cemetery. I found that aspect to be very unique.

With a mix of coming of age, family drama, and mystery - it was a quick read. I enjoyed that the author blended nonfiction and fiction for a more realistic story. At times, I found the writing to be a tad corny, but the characters, specifically Clive made up for it.

a bit of unusual characters but unique story. This was a lighthearted read of several important messages. Emma =, the main character had healing hands and no longer does. Why? who knows but going back to her hometown and just trying to get her bearings with her father who's been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, was just another thing she will have to deal with. All the family has a flaw but in a way they still manage to be there for one another. It had its moments. It didn't exactly felt like a Wow moment but an Aww moment.