I tried, I really did. And based on the almost universal positive reviews, I'm in the minority. But I really don't get the fuss about this book. The characterization was dreadful, so full of stereotypes that not a single character felt real to me - the passive and childlike, drug-addled mother, the abusive and skeevy boyfriend-of-mother who is also the rich man who owns the town, the cop who is tormented by the one unsolved case, etc. etc. etc. There's even a character who has all the hallmarks of the Magical Negro. 

 

Audiobook, borrowed from my public library via Overdrive. Scott Sowers gives an awkwardly stilted performance as narrator. DNF at 18%, or about 2 2/3 hours in. 

 

 

I'm struggling with this a little. Not because it's boring or badly written. It's just a little melodramatic. The mother & mother's boyfriend seem a stereotype I've read a billion times already. 

The supernatural plot wasn't my cup of tea, but the writing was beautiful.

Among Animals 2 is a collection of short stories that examines the varied relationships between humans and animals. With a mix of contemporary fiction, historical stories, dystopian and science fiction, many different aspects of these relationships are able to be captured. Some of these stories will make you uncomfortable, some are sweet and comforting, all will make you think about the relationships humans share with animals that are pets, in captivity, on farms or in the wild and how our actions affect them.

 

Some stories that affected me were:

Phoenix Cross looks into factory farming of chickens and genetic engineering. Some of us may know exactly the horrid conditions in which factory farmed chickens are raised, we might ignore it, we may not care, some of us might choose free-range chickens. Phoenix Cross brings out not only the effects of this method on the chickens, but on the farmers as well. I loved the connection of boy and bird in this story and the bird's point of view really made me think about how our food gets to us.

 

Exotic Animal Alert: Please Post Widely inspects caretakers and zoo animals as well as the close bond one might form with an animal that is truly wild. Again, an animal point of view was used in order to empathize with the clouded leopard point of view. What I found most interesting was the differing opinions about Sokar the clouded leopard formed by the husband and wife who raised him and how Sokar's presence impacted their relationship.

 

A Normal Rabbit is the story of a family and their ordinary pet rabbit, Camper. Camper is a symbol for many things in the family, but most of all Camper's presence is able to elicit responses of empathy for other living things.

 

Overall, an interesting compilation of stories that will hopefully make readers reexamine their relationships with the animals and environment around them.

This book was received for free in return for an honest review.

Please note that I gave this book 3.5 stars but rounded to 4 stars on Goodreads.

So I would rather read an overly ambitious book that failed in the execution, than one that was not ambitious enough that failed. Does that make sense? I have read some glowing reviews about "Redemption Road" from fellow reviewers and I was hoping that I was going to love this one too. But due to me figuring out who the real murderer was around the 20 percent mark and waiting for everyone else to catch up was annoying. And honestly, I didn't really like the two characters the book focused on (Elizabeth "Liz" and Adrian). I thought the overall ending really didn't work because I saw so many flaws that it just ruined it for me. I would still read if you are a fan of earlier Pat Conroy books since Hart's style reminded me of him a lot.

The book starts off with a man who abducts a young woman. Since we are privy to his thoughts (terrible) we know that things are about to end badly for her. And they do. From there the storyline shifts to a suspended police officer (Elizabeth) who is dealing with the fallout from shooting two unarmed black men who had abducted and raped an 18 year old girl (Channing).

We also go from a young boy (Gideon) who is dealing with his alcoholic father that is still grief stricken over the murder of his wife 13 years ago. Gideon is focused on waiting for the man who he blames for ruining his life (Adrian).

And then we have Adrian who is being released after being sentenced for the murder of a young mother and wife who is still haunted by his past and all he his ordeals while in prison.

That's a lot going on. And the book does not shift between all of this seamlessly (unfortunately).

With an active investigation into Elizabeth we find out that she is hiding something (it didn't take long for me to figure out what was going on with her and the shooting) but then we start to slowly unravel her past and why she is estranged from her father and only talks sporadically to her mother. I honestly did not get Elizabeth at all. She was frustrating because in the end she was doing something that I thought was very foolish that I had a hard time with because of the circumstances.

Adrian though he is an ex-con does not seem to be smart about what he is doing. I mean at one point there is a death directly attributable to him and even though as a reader I knew what he had been through, I had a hard time with Elizabeth kind of just shrugging the whole thing off.

Channing I really liked the most next to Gideon. Probably because Channing is a survivor and she honestly sees how superficial her family is now. With her mother wanting to pretend nothing is wrong, and her own father unable to talk to her, you can see why she keeps seeking out Elizabeth. Sadly in the end, Channing shows herself to be more mature than Elizabeth.

Gideon we get only pieces of interacting with him in the beginning of the book, but he comes into his own towards the end, and once again I found him to be more solid in this book than the other two adults.

There are other characters we focus on during this book, Elizabeth's partner, a warden at the jail that housed Adrian, Adrian's defense attorney. There were a lot of moving pieces that really didn't work for me. I loved Adrian's lawyer, but thought the warden should go and take I am an evil person lessons from someone. He started to come off as cartoonish after a while.

Regarding the plots, I also didn't like the author throwing in Ferguson and other deaths by black men as a reason why the prosecutor would just charge someone with murder. I mean the reality is that even when an unarmed black man or woman is shot in the U.S. nine times out ten the jury refuses to convict the officer, that is if charges are even brought. Sorry, that whole thing ticked me off. The fact that the two men were called "animals" by Elizabeth and everything else that went with it sat wrong with me the whole book. I loathed these two characters, but finding out the backstory with everything made me really disgusted with both of them (the men) but still I see justice as always being done in a courtroom, not someone running around lone wolfing it and taking matters into their own hands. Reading about what really happened, I don't for a minute believe that a prosecutor would have brought a case. I am supposed to believe for one freaking second?

And it is said repeatedly that Elizabeth had a thing for Adrian and she still does. I am just baffled by it, because there were a lot of words, but when the two of them were near each other and actively interacting there was no chemistry. If anything, because of Elizabeth's past and how she first met Adrian I could see how she pretty much saw him as a hero and went on to hero worship him. But the whole thing was unhealthy and if there was some acknowledgement of that, I would have liked the book better.

We also have a serial killer in the midst and the author clumsily ties everyone all together in the end. The why behind the serial killer at one point kind of made me give an exasperated sigh. The whole reveal danced towards unbelievable at that point. When other bad guys popped up I just wanted the whole book to be over.

Though Hart gets complimented on showing a darker side to the south (North Carolina) I didn't get that here. He doesn't spend a lot of time on the town that everyone lives in. I didn't get a sense of the community. I just got a sense of places, we focus on a church, quarry, silo, etc. and that was it. I just needed to get a better visual on the layout of everything.

I really didn't buy the ending and it was hard for me to swallow based on the events that came before.