Clever, fun and a terrific follow up to the surprise hit, Three Bags Full. The mystery solving sheep are now in France and have some surprise assistance from goats in trying to figure out what is going on. I so appreciate that Leonie Swann manages to keep the animals believable and to give each animal their own distinctive personality. Even when I laughed or shook my head at the animal assumptions, it made sense. There remains a thread of realism.
I don’t know how she did it, but Carolin Lennon provided different voices for the individual animals that fit their character and allowed me to enter an immersive world.
Now bring the gang back for another romp…they are the baaaadest detectives in the “field.”

Thank you, NetGalley/RBmedia | Recorded Books.

After solving a murder in their Irish village, shepherdess Rebecca takes her flock to France for the winter. They were offered a nice meadow for the sheep, and Rebecca thought a change of scenery would do them all good after what they’d been through. Her mother also insisted on coming, and Rebecca struggles with both of them in such a small space. But Rebecca’s focus it to take care of the sheep, to keep them well fed and healthy and to read to them.

Right next door is a herd of goats who have information that they think the sheep need. Once they start talking, the goats tell the sheep about the what’s been going on. The sheep had been trying to pick up the information from the humans talking, but Rebecca and her mother were the only ones they could understand. All the other humans just sound like they’re honking. But the goats can understand them, all the humans except for Rebecca and her mother. And they’ve lived in France longer, so they had seen things.

There were some deer who had been killed lately in the nearby forest. And after that, a human. In years past, there were sheep who had been killed along, and other humans, and other animals. No one had been able to figure out who was responsible, but there have been rumors that it was a werewolf. The sheep aren’t sure what to believe. All they know is that one of their own, Cloud, is missing. The vet came earlier to give them shots, and she had run away and not made it back to the flock yet.

A couple of the sheep go looking for Cloud, with the help of an excitable goat, and the sheep and the goats form an unlikely union in staying safe from whatever is out there in the snow wanting to end them. And the sheep do need the help of the goats. They’re new to the meadow. They don’t speak (or understand) French. And sheep have died there before. But these sheep are smart, for sheep. They’ve caught a killer in the past, and they think they can do it again. But they’ll have to work fast when Rebecca goes missing, and it’s up to the sheep to save her and save themselves.

Big Bad Wool is the much anticipated follow-up to Three Bags Full, the debut of these crime-solving sheep. Each sheep (and goat) in this book has their own personality, and getting to spend time in their heads is a lot of fun. The sheep have to figure out what is happening by their own investigation methods, like trying to stay safe by using silver to protect them (it was a foil wrapper from Rebecca’s sandwich) or eating some of her mother’s tarot cards to try to find the answers. They lean into their sense of smell to figure out friends from foes, and they work with the goats to set a trap for the killer, be it wolf or human.

Leonie Swann has created this wildly creative universe where sheep use their limited knowledge of the world to ask bigger questions than just when they’ll get fed. It’s clever and interesting, but with dark overtones, as these characters are sheep and only have so much control over their environment. The viewpoints vary from sheep to goats to humans, which means readers have to figure out how reliable each narrator is. The plot is a delicate balance, and Swann nails it. I adored this book. I loved thinking about what sheep might think about, and having the French goats in the mix also added even more humor.

I listened to the audio book, narrated beautifully by Caroline Lennon. Her Irish accent brings the sheep’s voices to life, and her French accent adds playfulness to the voices of the goats. I loved listening to this book, with all the twists and secrets, and trying to put together all the bits and pieces of information into a cohesive theory of the crime. Anyone looking for a crime novel with a fresh point of view will definitely want to check out Big Bad Wool.

Egalleys for Big Bad Wool were provided by Soho Press and a copy of the audio book was provided by RB Media, both through NetGalley, with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.

This book is such a delight! I loved the first volume, and this sequel adds even more furry characters. Despite being considered the most uniform of species, each sheep is as distinctive as the author can make them, with their own personalities and voices. Caroline Lennon is back as the audiobook narrator, and her performance is simply amazing. She recreates the same voices that she used in the first book so that it’s easy to know who’s talking. She also comes up with a menagerie of new critters, and it was just so easy to picture everything in my mind. The plot is maybe a little confusing, but I didn’t care. The sheep don’t understand humans well, and their interpretation is spot-on. They see everything based on their own experiences, so they compare people, things and situations to what they know. The writing is fantastic, and it fleshes out in detail the animals and people, the meadow, the castle and the woods. There was just one thing that bothered me, and it’s that there was so much animal death. Unfortunately, it makes perfect sense and was completely necessary to the story. It was still sad. If a genie ever granted me a wish, it would be to talk to animals. This is the next best thing. This book is a blaaaaaast!
I chose to listen to this audiobook and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/RBmedia | Recorded Books.