ARC was provided by Net Galley. I listened to this audiobook twice and still was lost. Lot of animal abuse in this book which was really hard to listen to. I can't really give this book an honest rating and I don't know what to say about it because I couldn't follow the story.

In a small town in England, local police detective Alec Nichols finds a gruesome sight: sixteen horse heads, severed from their bodies, each buried meticulously with one eye to the sky on a small rural farm. He calls in a forensic veterinarian, a young woman named Cooper Allen, to help solve this crime - really, just classified as a "property crime" although the act is so despicable. Cooper has seen her fair share of animals being treated horribly, and her main motivation through her work is to save animals from their owners.

But a few days later, the first responders on site start to feel gravely ill, and the investigators realize that the horses were just the beginning of something deeper - a ruse to spread a deadly pathogen buried in the soil.

Honestly, I really wish I liked this more than I did. I just couldn't immerse myself in the story in the way the author wanted me to - I understand what Buchanan was trying to do, I just didn't feel that it was well executed. I found the plot disjointed and hard to follow, and I didn't "get" any of the characters - neither feeling like I knew them well enough to guess who the perpetrator would be, nor understanding their motivations or backstories. Everything felt a bit detached and emotionless, maybe a bit necessary given the intensity of the animal abuse that the first half of the book gets into, but to such a degree that I didn't feel a connection with the town, the investigators, or the secondary characters that are introduced. The chapters also jump around a bit in terms of time and POV, and although I feel like I'm a fairly seasoned crime fiction reader, I found myself needing to rewind to various parts for clarification.

As other reviewers have said, I could see this being the first entry into a series where the protagonist is a forensic veterinarian, and I could easily see this being adapted into a gritty British crime series. But for me, this iteration and this format didn't work out as I was expecting. Thank you to Flatiron and Macmillan Audio for the audio ARC via Netgalley.

This book is about 16 horse heads found buried.

That is really all I got from this audiobook. I finished but remain a lot lost and confused. Did not enjoy this book/version. Very graphic with dismembered animal descriptions so I would not like to read this book myself either.

Audiobook provided by NetGalley and Macmillan Audio in exchange for an honest review.

CW: looooooots of talk/descriptions of animal abuse

Ok so yeah, in hindsight, knowing that this book focused on 16 horse heads found buried, I probably should have skipped it. While I didn't enjoy reading all of the descriptions in the book of animal cruelty, that really wasn't the problem with this book for me. But I'm sure that also clouds my judgement a bit on the rest.

Overall I found this narrative and plot hard to follow, I was constantly unsure of what was happening. And not in a good way some mysteries/thrillers use reader confusion to add to the suspense. I literally couldn't tell you what was happening throughout most of this book. There are large stretches of this audiobook that I KNOW I was paying attention, yet I felt like I had zoned out and missed an hours worth of it.

Some of the writing (mainly when the text is relaying social media messages) gets SUPER awkward when translated to audiobook format to make those sections of the plot somewhat off putting because they don't flow when being read aloud to you. Aside from those parts, Louise Brealey does a good job with the narration and I'm familiar with her work from Alex Michaelides' novels.

The reveal of who had killed the horses felt like it came out of left field and didn't make a whole lot of sense. I also really don't like when authors use a therapist visit in an epilogue as their method to solve the mystery. It feels like a cop out, but that could just be me.

This one just didn't live up to the hype for me.

Sixteen Horses
Greg Buchanan
The setting for this tale of horror is Ilmarsh, England. Sixteen horse heads are found buried. The expertise of Dr. Cooper Allen is requested to assist in the investigation, she is a Veterinary Forensics expert. Everyone coming in contact with the dead animals grows ill. The local investigator is DS Alec Nichols. It seems mutilation of animals is common in the town. This is a tale of mental health problems, murder, extortion, remorse, sorrow, and malevolence.
I found this book disturbing in the deepest manner. It moved along slowly and I had trouble staying interested.

I seriously can't thank Macmillan Audio.and NetGalley enough for the chance to listen to then audio version!

I've been dying to read this since I read the description!.
Here we have this dark, gloomy story which I freaking devoured! Couldn't stop listening to this story!
Sixteen Horses is very interesting and gripping the atmosphere is very dark which I absolutely loved about it!
This is not a fast-paced, crime novel; it is a slow-burner!
The narrator was a great listen really set the tone!
The characters made for a compelling wild read, I can't love or recommend this book enough!
Five major stars here!

This was a hard novel to read and, in retrospect, the blurb talking about horses’ heads buried in the dirt should have given me a clue that an animal lover would find the plot especially disturbing. I thought it would just be a random beginning about human crimes, but there is a lot of animal cruelty and some parts I had to skip altogether. That said, the novel is fantastic. Dark and horrifying, but very well written. The random cruelty inherent in all the characters, in all of us, is devastating but I still had to learn what was going on. Nothing is predictable here, the twists are unexpected and very well crafted. The insight into every character’s mind is like watching an accident, you don’t want to know, but you can’t look away and little throwaway sentences are deeply haunting (a dog who forgot what a toy is had me in tears). The audiobook performance by Louise Brealey is well done and all the characters are defined so that it’s easy to follow the action. I would not recommend this to people who can’t stand to think of animal suffering but, if you can stomach it, this is a great novel.
I chose to listen to this audiobook and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/Macmillan Audio!

I requested this one because it might be a 2021 title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book is not my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one rather than push myself to finish it only to give it a poor review.