I’m so excited that I got to read a copy of this early, what a wonderful book!

I read Rabbit Cake when it came out and adored that book, so I was fully expecting a possible “sophomore slump” situation, which I have had a run of lately in Net Galley reads. But Unlikely Animals was even better than Hartnett’s first novel. It was quirky in the same way that Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts was, and it was so enjoyable to read. I loved the mix of characters —the dad who is suffering from some unknown brain disease that is making him hallucinate animals, the prodigal daughter who had (and has lost) a healing power, a missing ex-best friend from adolescence, and a cast of ghosts from the town cemetery, who know everything as long as it’s within town limits. There’s an actual historical character as well, the ghost of Edward Baynes, whom the father sees. The book deals with heavy topics (addiction, death, etc), but manages not to get depressingly mired in them; there always feels like there is hope and levity in the writing, which I think is difficult to execute and makes this so well done. The use of the ghosts as a collective narrator was quirky but also so well executed. I walked away from this book just feeling like my heart was full. The characterization and everything is just heartfelt and well done.

Love, love, loved this book and looking forward to making everyone else I know read it! Thank you to Net Galley for an early copy.

Unlikely Animals takes place in the fictional Everton, New Hampshire, loosely based on the real Upper Valley in NH. The setting is a small rural town, home to a millionaires' hunting park. The spirits in the Maple Street Cemetery provide commentary about the people and animals and their history, including the exclusive hunting grounds. These speaking ghosts are omniscient and admonitory. Other background information is divulged in snippets from a book written by Harold Baynes, a naturalist who gave exotic animals to his wife as apologies. Harold was particularly fond of The Sprite, a tame red fox that provides literal and symbolic meaning for this mystical, magical story where a pet fox figures prominently.

One of the protagonists, Emma Starling, was said to have a condition called charismata iamaton which translates to "a gift of healing." She was born with this charm, and her powers sped up the healing process for many townspeople she interacted with as a child. She had a childhood friend named Crystal who practiced healing in a manner resembling witchcraft, and together, they had a well-known business in Everton. However, Emma's healing abilities gradually wore off while she was away at college and were nonexistent when she returned home to Everton to care for her dying father.

Clive Starling, Emma's father, taught poetry at a local college and struggled with a forced retirement due to his progressive brain disease, which caused hallucinations and led to many problematic behaviors. However, his fourth wife, Ingrid, mother to Emma and Augie, tolerated his illness and tried to remain married after Clive's recent affair. Ingrid is a college librarian and manages the mansion connected to Corbin Park, the hunter's retreat. She has mixed feelings about Emma's return to the family home, and she is worried about Augie, who has recently completed rehab for opioid addiction.

While reacclimating to family life, Emma has to deal with her father's bizarre behaviors. For example, he wanders out in public virtually naked. He talks to ghosts, and he is obsessed with finding Crystal, Emma's childhood friend, who developed an opioid addiction and was presumed dead since she had disappeared. Additionally, she must reconnect with her mother and brother as she learns to be a substitute teacher for a class of needy fifth graders. Augie expresses many childhood resentments toward Emma and his family as he learns to live as an adult and establishes a drug-free life. All members of the Starling family change as the story progresses. The father's growth is degenerative and more animalistic, and Hartnett does a great job showing the development of family dynamics and integrates instinctive familial emotions influenced by animals and spirits. In essence, she tells a story of the human-animal and its non-tangible qualities.

Annie Hartnett's novel was an enjoyable read; I found it was a perfect mix of real family life and far-fetched tales of domesticated wild animals, talking ghosts, and humans with supernatural powers. She carefully used names and animals to convey their symbolic and spiritual significance, and many plot points had literal and metaphoric explanations. Many themes were compelling: friendship, family relationships, healing, recovery, positive energy, persistence, guilt, grief, shame, loyalty, and many more. The characters were relatable, and topics such as mental illness, opioid addiction, and living in harmony with animals, commonly explored in modern novels, are treated with fresh insight. Millennial authors are continually trying to make sense of the world they are inheriting, and this book, with its fantastical elements, provides an escape and doses of reality.

I received a copy of Unlikely Animals free of charge from NetGalley. I am glad I had an opportunity to read something different from what I would typically choose. I recommend it for literary and animal enthusiasts.

Another addition to my favorite books for 2022.
What a fun, quirky book. Emma may have been born with a gift for healing, but it’s gone now. She returns home to New Hampshire after skipping out on medical school. Her father has a degenerative brain disease and he’s now hallucinating animals and ghosts, or at least the ghost of Ernest Harold Baynes, a long dead naturalist.
I loved the Greek chorus of the denizens of the Maple Street cemetery, with all the rules they must abide by. Intermingled with the current day story are articles about Mr. and Mrs. Baynes, who lived with a menagerie of wild animals in their house. (Make sure to read the Author’s Note about the real life Baynes.)
Brava to Hartnett for creating characters that are fully realized and realistic, despite their sometimes zany natures. She has created a heartwarming story, full of humor and emotion. She has captured the stress of dealing with a sick parent - the desire to get everything straightened out before it’s too late but the equally strong paralysis. She made sure to keep the story grounded in reality, with heroin addiction and infidelity along with upcoming death.
I recommend this for fans of Gail Honeyman, Ruth Hogan and Frederik Backman.
My thanks to Netgalley and Random House - Ballantine for an advance copy of this book.

UNLIKELY ANIMALS by Annie Hartnett was an unexpected delight. Tackling many heavy topics - including addiction, terminal illness, infidelity and more - UNLIKELY ANIMALS is raw, real, and heartfelt. This novel is both timely and unique, beautiful and tragic. I loved the writing and Hartnett's complex, multi-faceted characters. I would recommend this novel and can't wait to see what Hartnett writes in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC, which I received in exchange for my honest review.

Life is messy. Unlikely Animals has an abundance of it: terminal illness, infidelity, drug addiction & consequences, career detour, mental health issues, failed friendship, regrets & more… This book manages all the messiness with heart and a healthy sprinkling of humor throughout. Narration and points of view from the residents of Maple Street Cemetery brought a refreshing and unique dimension.  Moses and Rasputin reinforce the healing powers of animals.  I am glad to have read this book courtesy of NetGalley.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I started this book, but I'm glad I got a chance to read it The story is thoughtful and intelligent with a memorable cast of characters and a moving story that feels all too relevant to the times. Recommended!

This was a most unusual story. The characters are weird but likable and believable. There are multiple story lines that keep your interest and it all comes together. Loved this book.

This book is a gem – its story is very unique, including, but not limited to: a child born with healing hands; a college professor with a terminal unidentified neurological disease causing tremors, hallucinations, and dementia; a missing ex-BFF; a drug addict brother – and a cast of graveyard ghosts who serve as narrators! And we must not forget the fifth grade students or the stray dog and pet fox! Not to mention the ghost of a true-life naturalist who haunts the professor.

The back-story here is that a large part of this story is based on actual places and events. The author also takes time out to address the opioid crisis killing so many young Americans, particularly in New Hampshire, the scene of this book.

The book is at once serious and humorous. Ms. Hartnett has managed to balance both and has created a novel which is hard to put down – and will be hard to forget. Hers is a unique gift.

It’s hard to imagine a book about returning home to your dying father being funny. But Annie Hartnett has deftly accomplished just that. With a unique group of narrators (no spoilers!), talking animals and the hilarious/sad demise of Emma’s father this quirky little story is just what I needed. Side note: the mysterious millionaire’s park really exists!

This book is a work of historical fiction, and you might not realize that unless you read the end of the book first. Everyone seems to be grieving someone or something but the events that take place are pretty lighthearted and magical. The narrations of the historical animals who lived on the grounds where the story takes places are beautiful and based on real events, even the pictures in the book are historic. The classroom scenes are extremely entertaining and mostly funny. There is an undercurrent of the opioid epidemic but it is not too maudlin . I especially loved the dog and the fox as characters in the book. This is a quick read because you don't want to put it down.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC. I wasn't sure what to expect with this story but it doesn't matter, right? My expectations could never had anticipated such a quirky, sweet, magical story such as this. The characters were well developed and the storyline never allowed for anticipation of what would happen next because it was an entirely unpredictable story. It wasn't a turn the pages as fast as I can kind of book but it was a creatively enjoyable story that kept me wondering what would happen next.

Unlikely Animals is so much more than a story about a young woman returning to her New Hampshire home, her dying father, brother recovering from addiction and a family trying to mend. It is about a community of eccentric and adorable characters and animals too, sometimes narrated by delightful authentic voices from the town cemetery who could speak and care, but never meddle.. Add in a missing person, a school musical production of the Titanic and an adorable Russian fox. Unlikely Animals is a funny and sad depiction of a community that is clever and a sweet change from the usual suspense genre. I am glad I read this ARC in exchange for my honest review and thank Netgalley for the opportunity to meet Clive, Emma. Aggie, Rasputin and Moses. This book is a gem.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of Unlikely Animals.

This was a great read, much to my surprise!

I didn't know what I was expecting, but I did request it because the premise sounded intriguing and I was looking for something different to read other than my usual murder mysteries featuring serial killers.

Emma Starling is a medical school dropout who has returned to her small town of Everton, N.H. to care for her dad, a respected professor, who is dying from a unnamed brain disease. She reconnects with her mother, her younger brother, Auggie, a recovering drug addict, and the locals of this small knit community.

She discovers her former high school best friend is missing, and her dad is on a mission to find her. At the same time, she must forge her own path in life and reconcile with the impending loss of her father before he's gone.

Unlikely Animals is one of those books where nearly every character is quirky in that small town way.

The author's afterword explains that she based the narrative on real people and events, and I loved how animals are part of the story, since I love animals, especially dogs.

It took me no time to discover the narrator(s) are the local dead from the town cemetery, which added a dash of dark humor to the story, which made sense since Emma's dad is suffering from a disease that causes him to hallucinate animals and the ghost of a naturalist who used to live in Everton.

Emma was a likable character; surprisingly, so was her dad, despite his indiscretion with a colleague. They felt like genuine, real people I would like to meet and get to know better.

I liked how the author added the disappearance of Emma's friend as a subplot, a theme that circled back to the girls' earlier friendship and their healing business and highlighted Emma's father's determination to locate the missing young woman.

Unlikely Animals is both funny and sad, endearing and sweet; it's about family and friendship and how imperfect they and people are, it's about loss and death and how we are never really gone as long as the people we love remember us.

My favorite characters were Moses and Rasputin.

Years ago, I read Annie Harnett's debut novel Rabbit Cake and fell in love. I was so excited to see a new book by this author and thrilled to receive a digital ARC through NetGalley. This novel did not disappoint. This is a novel about families (and their issues) and small towns with a little historical fiction and elements of Our Town thrown in for good measure. A lovely read that makes me excited for what this author will do next! Thank you NetGalley and publishers!

I couldn't have loved Unlikely Animals more! Annie Hartnett has created an absolute gem, with a plot unlike anything I've ever read and characters I adored from the first pages. The book is strange and funny, with a little bit of magic and a HUGE heart, and as soon as I finished I wanted to start it all over again. I've been recommending it relentlessly to the readers in my life and cannot wait to hype it up again on pub day. This is one of those books that reminded me how wonderful it is to be a reader. Loved, loved, loved!

This one was a very uneven read to me... It started out brilliantly. And there were flashes of that brilliance throughout the story: snappy one-liners, great descriptions, and some wonderfully emotionally-charged moments between the various characters. But it was overlaid with the strange dead narrators that often felt a little more slapstick than the story called for - and I'm so unclear as to why they seemed to know everything except the stuff they needed to know... It rendered them a strange plot contrivance that I didn't entirely understand.

Add on The Ghost and the animals and the missing girl and the opioids and the 5th graders and you wound up with a story that was all over the place - and not often in a way that felt coherent so much as cobbled together. I am in the vast minority here I know, but I found it a difficult and uneven read that was ultimately disappointing because it had such great bones - but the threads covering them were a bit too uneven for my taste...

Really nice story. Hartnett writes well and created a engaging story with likeable characters. Recommended.

Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!

This is the story of Emma who supposedly was born with "healer" capabilities. She returns home to New Hampshire to help care for her father who is suffering from a mysterious disease that causes hallucinations, and him to wander off. This book is full of quirkiness - from the quips added in from the "onlookers" (dead, buried people) at the local cemetery, to the relationships within Emma's family, and many of the events that occur. There's emotion mixed in too as the characters struggle with heavy topics such as drug addiction, infidelity, and a missing person. An interesting mix of topics, but with good humor intermixed.

This is a strange and delightful story of a young woman, Emma, who returns home after college amid unusual circumstances. Her dad is suffering from a mysterious brain disease that’s causing him to have hallucinations of animals that are not really present (at least most of the time), and her childhood best friend has gone missing. Emma is offered a substitute position at the local elementary school, and we meet an entire cast of community members, family, animals, and her always-entertaining 5th grade students. Emma also used to have magical healing powers as a child that have mysteriously left her in recent years. The present-day narrative of the novel is interspersed with historical chapters about a non-fiction collector of animals who the author used as inspiration for the story and whose ghost keeps visiting Emma’s father.

If all this sounds like a lot to hold in one novel, that’s because it is. The story is a mismatch of plot-lines, characters, and scenes, and it sometimes feels a bit disjointed. The eclecticism is part of the appeal of the story, even when it’s occasionally unclear what for what purpose certain elements have been included. One example is our narrator—the dead of the community who are able to share the story from their seemingly omniscient knowledge of all that happens near their cemetery. Our dead narrators are hilarious, and I enjoyed their voices very much, but it didn’t make perfect-sense to me as a device since their omniscience was only utilized when convenient for the plot. (They do not, it seems, know more than the reader does about the missing best friend, for example) It often felt less like a cohesive story than it did an amalgam of interesting characters and anecdotes.

I did enjoy the 5th grade class and the reflections about the power of best-friendships in young people. The depiction of an imperfect family is strong, and I enjoyed the humor. I particularly loved the ending of the story, and I feel the author tied all the best elements of absurdity and joy together in a satisfying way. I recommend this to lovers of magical realism, eclectic historical fiction, and small towns you can never fully escape.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book had a lot of different elements involved and I didn’t know if I would find it to be too much, but I loved it! The opioid crisis, a missing person, dealing with the grief of a dying family member, a whole class of fifth graders, and a cemetery full of ghosts as the narrators. All of the pieces did weave together in a good way, and I really liked it.

Thank you to netgalley for inviting me to read this!