Families can be very complicated in the best of times. Through in recovery from opioid addiction, anger about the way life has played out, undiagnosable mental deterioration and changing your life’s purpose and it can get awfully messy. Emma arrives back home after living in California for her college years, not so much because she wants to, but she is adrift. She knows her fathers illness is progressing, even though no one can say what it actually is. Her brother is also adrift, trying to figure out his path forward after achieving sobriety, her mother is just plain angry, and her father - well her father is having hallucinations at the most in opportune times. That part of this book is based on real people only adds to the quirky appeal. Kudos to Annie Hartnett on this appealing, sad, happy family story.

If I had only two words to describe this book, they would be . . . fascinating and unique. I’ve never read ia book quite like this one and I have to say, I enjoyed it.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

What a delightful and original story! Unlikely Animals was a little slow at the beginning but once I met all of the main characters, the narrative took off with lots of humorous situations that made me smile, chuckle, and even laugh out loud. The characters are quirky, each in their own way, and their interactions drive the story. In addition, there is a “Greek chorus” of commentary by the dead from the town’s cemetery. Clive sees invisible animals and consults with a ghost, Harold, taking Harold’s advice on numerous matters, including paying $18,000 for a domesticated fox. Is Clive undergoing dementia? His family is not certain.

Meanwhile, there’s a wacky cast of characters, including:
- the daughter Emma, born with a healing touch, whose best friend from high school is missing;
- the son Auggie who has a snarky comment for everything;
- Moses the dog and Rasputin the fox with their comic antics; and
- the students in Emma’s fifth grade class.
Enjoy a most unusual performance of “Titanic, the Musical.” And throughout the narrative, we see the underlying love of Clive for his wife and children.

All is not fun and games. There are instances of infidelity. There is an opioid crisis in town: Auggie’s past drug addiction is front and center at the start of the novel; an arrested heroin distributor is put on trial. A fifth grade student mourns the death of her best friend. And there is Clive whose illness is ever present and whose death seems imminent.

Ultimately, all’s well that ends well, especially the last chapter which contains a final touch of humor. I enjoyed reading this endearing tale. (P.S. Make sure to read the Author’s Note at the end.)

4.5 rounded up
This was a weird/fun one about a woman who returns to her small hometown to see if she can bring back her ‘charm,’ heal her dying father, find her missing friend and also find herself. Lots of crazy characters and humor, but also an underlying sense of doom re: the opioid crisis. Maybe if you tried to make a comedy out of winters bone + Lincoln in the bardo + + dr doolittle + ghost (the movie)? Bizarrely good.

A fantastic story. Truly a story of “life, death, and whatever comes next”. The more I read the more I became invested in the characters and their lives. It was interesting to have comments “from the grave”, the deceased people in the town’s cemetery. So much happening in the story, but, yet, never confusing. The author’s notes at the end were very interesting and gave some perspective as to what influenced her to write this wonderful story. Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read and review an advance copy of this book.

Such a great read. I could not put it down. Absolutely fantastic! Can’t wait to read more by author.

This was such a beautiful and also heartbreaking story. I loved all the quirky characters and the little blips of non fiction in between. I also loved the narration from the ghosts of the graveyard. At first I didnt think I would like it but it definitely grew on me.

I was invited to read an #ARC of Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett through Penguin Random House Ballantine Books on #NetGalley. I must say PRH-Ballantine targets their audience pretty darn well. This was blurbed by Kevin Wilson who wrote my favorite book I read in 2020 Nothing to See Here. Unlikely Animals is bound to appeal to anyone who likes Kevin Wilson books. A heartfelt story with just a bit of unreality attached.

Emma Starling was born with a healing charm. Nothing too big. She could clear up your skin condition, not cure your cancer. Still it made everyone around her treat her as special. We pick up her story as she returns to her small New England home having failed to become the amazing person everyone was always telling her she was. But also because her father is dying from a mysterious illness that causes hallucinations and lapses in judgment. He is haunted (or befriended) by the ghost of Ernest Harold Baynes and buys a fox from Romania for $18,000.

The narration switches from the 3rd person singular to the 3rd person omniscient collective, for lack of a better term. The collected souls in the Maple Street Cemetery fill in any missing background information for us. For the most part the shifts are smooth. This is the second book I've read recently with a collective 3rd person voice. It has a far more charming effect here than it did in the other book!

Overall I enjoyed this story of a young woman growing into her talents and finding out what's truly important to her very much. I will be checking out this author's first book, Rabbit Cake, too!

Unlikely Animals" turned out to the perfect book for me this weekend. I needed a break from the dreariness happening lately and this upbeat novel was the perfect escape. Hartnett stumbled across some interesting facts about this park that was filled with unusual animals long ago and used that park as the backdrop for this small town novel, where the dead in the cemetery keep an ongoing commentary about all the events in the book, and and a retired English professor realizes he's not only having neurological problems but is close to death. His daughter graduates from college and returns home, instead of heading to med school as planned, and moves in to help care for her father, who helps her teach the fifth grade students, and her brother and she reconnect as they all live together, in this novel filled with quirky turns and twists dealing with exotic animals, some real, some imagined, a missing person, drugs, and romance--all written with humor and insight.

What a fun read! This novel has everything you need for a heartwarming book. Add in some magical realism and you have a novel you will never forget.

Set in a small town in New Hampshire, this story has a lot of characters. But the author writes deftly enough that the reader can keep up easily. Emma Starling is the lead. As a newborn, her midwife declared that she was a healer. That declaration had such an impact on her childhood that it drove her to escape town and move to California for college. The book begins upon her return, where she dreads dealing with her overbearing mother, recovering brother, and dying lunatic father.

I liked the character of Emma very much. Her growth from beginning to end was heartwarming. In fact, I think the author did a wonderful job of creating a host of unique and well-developed characters. Her brother, Auggie, was another complex character who rose above his early conditions, and I thought her portrayal of Clive as he deals with his escaping sanity was excellent.

There is a lot of humor in Emma’s return to a town dealing with a growing opioid problem and the disappearance of Emma’s childhood friend, Crystal. I loved that even in his madness, her father wouldn’t give up looking for Crystal. I found that very endearing. In fact, the entire story was endearing and the ending was excellent. However…

And now I’ll address the shadow in the room. You learn early on that the book is narrated by the dead in the cemetery who watch over the town. I found this so distracting that I nearly stopped reading. There’s this wonderful story of struggle, redemption, and family dynamics, but squeezed in between are the two old men from the muppets throwing out one-liners - only they aren’t funny. This was a 5-star story that loses its luster because of a very strange and (In my opinion) poorly executed choice of narrator.

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

It was a good book. Better than I expected. It took me a little while to get into, but once I did it did hold my attention. I loved all the characters and thought the author did a great job developing each of the character's story.

This book was a pleasant surprise from beginning to end. Annie Hartnett has a unique writing style that pulled me into her crazy world. I always wanted to know what was coming next and it often was beyond the pale. Thrown into the mix of unlikely events was humor that made me stop in my tracks. Emma and her dad Clive were memorable characters who learned how to tolerate and maybe even love each other. Ingrid and Aggie, mother and son, added to the quirky family. Then there were all of the dead people who had to have their say. And a pet fox and a motorbike ride with some unexpected passengers.

I can not do this book justice with my words.. Be ready to accept a little woo woo then pick it up this summer when it’s published. Now I’m headed back to read her debut novel Rabbit Cake.

This. Book. This is why I read. This is what I want to read for the rest of my days. Every character is charming. All the plot lines are magical. Emma is enchanting. The way the author portrays someone who is battling addiction and showing them as a real person and not some loser is so important right now. I want to fill my house with the wild animals that are outside my doors! Please give us more of this story!

Very impressed with this title. The characters and plot were on point and really worked well to deliver a great story!

A fun new perspective on a story we hear so often.
A small town girl who has escaped to California to make something of herself, only to be forced home to help care for her dying father.
But before her father can die, he wants to solve the disappearance of a young girl.
Along the way, he gets help from some unexpected friends.
This story shines light on common issues like drug addiction and dying loved ones, while staying lighthearted and enjoyable to the last page.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the ARC

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a DNF for me around 25%.

Unlikely Animals is charming....way too charming in fact. I think a lot of readers will enjoy the heavy layer of whimsy coating this story but I just got really bored really fast.

Thank you Random House and NetGalley for a chance to read Unlikely Animals prior to its publication. Emma Starling has returned home to New Hampshire from California where she has been pretending she is in medical school. She was accepted, but has no interest in being a doctor. Her father has developed a terminal brain disease where he hallucinates animals and a long dead naturalist. He has been forced to retire from his Professorship at the local university. Her mother who is working, is at the end of her patience trying to care for her husband who can no longer be trusted to make proper decisions. Emma's brother is living at home and trying to jump start his life after recovering from opioid addiction. Touching on many contemporary themes, Unlikely Animals kept me turning the pages and rooting for the members of the Starling family to figure out what's next in their lives.

I loved this quirky, complicated family; hartnett keeps a lot of balls in the air, infuses hard subjects with humor and a singular absurdity, and plays with point of view in a way that propels you forward and feels easy but has such skill behind it. I would recommend this book to fans of kristen arnett or kevin wilson, a family and small town story, a bizarro world of a loved one who's not himself that's also a constant improv show, and a woman in that second coming of age after college that is so rich with expectation, disappointment, humor, failure, and the energy of screwing something up and then figuring it out again in your early 20s.

This book had such great promise, with some magical realism of souls in the graveyard commenting on some wacky events in a tiny New England town. But it didn’t do much for me. The book felt tossed together, with the souls and the animals especially becoming distractions. The characters all had issues, but they seemed cribbed from other books, and held no emotion for me. DNF at 15%.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for my electronic ARC in exchange for my honest review. This book will be published April 12, 2022.