Thank you netgalley and publisher for the early copy. 

This was well-written verse novel that I would recommend checking out.

Heartbreaking and a coming of age story, who would have thought such a combo would make a beautiful and poetic novel. Kernot's words are like art and I can envision all the beautiful things that Lottie see's. No longer does a dead animal look like one, instead love and care bring the animal back to life. Her father see's her actions as they are - a revival of her mothers memory and a way to understand death and he silently encourages her forward. Her Aunt sees her dissections and collections of once living things, as unnatural and admonished Lottie against such practice. I loved the lyrical verse style of this book so much and look forward to reading more by Kernot.

*RECEIVED FROM NETGALLEY

I did not expect for this to be written in spoken word/prose (I think that's the word I'm looking for). I also like how the title actually sticks to the actual point of the book. I loved the main character of the book stuck to what she wanted to do despite her family's opinion on her doing taxidermy. I also loooooved the artwork that was in the novel as well. If you have the chance to read it I would definitely read this. It's under 300 pages (I think even under 200 if not right around 250).

A charming novel about a girl's obsession with death.  It beautifully explores grief and loss. 

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest, voluntary review.

Short but so dark. Perfect for me. Our main heroine, Charlotte was amazing. The book is heavy but I loved it. I recommend it

This is a brilliantly dark book, really detailed with a heavy focus on death and dead things (mainly animals). Of course, the main character of the creepy death-obsessed book is called Charlotte. It is gorgeous and lyrically written and tells the story of Charlotte struggling to come to terms with the death of her mother. The whole story is infused with this loss and with her turning to examining death as a way to make sense of it. Her dad is brilliant and supportive of her unusual interest. Her aunt is not. I couldn't stand the aunt: she's bossy, controlling and wants to change Charlotte to make her more "girly" and therefore more acceptable in her eyes. This is a short story but packs a brilliant punch and emphasises the importance of being true to yourself.

A very interesting take on a coming of age story. I enjoyed the format immensely. I found that very few words were needed for the point of each poem to come through, and that the way each poem was done flowed well to create an easy to follow overall story line. 
The pain that Lottie felt, for the loss of the ones she loves, and her beloved creatures really was quite palpable. I felt like this little girl just needed someone to sit and talk with her, and really wished I could reach out and help her. 
Learning a little about the Taxidermy trade was a nice addition to the story. I always love discovering something factual in a work of fiction.
I did find that some pieces within the book felt repetitive, and that the story may have been able to progress quicker, and with more of an attention grabbing quality, if the fillers were taken out. We experienced the same things often, with Aunt Hilda destroying a little piece of Lotties world in the name of making her more girlish. 
In the end, I really loved that Lotties father came through for her, and stood up to Aunt Hilda. It's the sort of love and support we all wanted to feel growing up, and it really did warm the heart. 3 stars

Lottie investigates death and dead things after her mother’s death. Her father allows her scientific endeavor, but her strong-willed aunt thwarts her. Written in prose verse, this story flows in fits and starts, sort of like grief itself, giving the reader a sense of Lottie’s emotional state. The writing is beautiful, the story unique, the format intriguing. I confess that seeing the “n” word threw me, but it’s in context, and no matter how you feel about it, it is part of history, so that denying it is indeed whitewashing history. I was fortunate to receive this lovely, melancholy story from the publisher Text Publishing through NetGalley.

This book was a very hard read but definitely worth it. I had a hard time with grief and I was able to connect with the story and really liked the book with the topic.

I'm not quite finished, but I am loving this novel so far. Each entry is a short, concise, powerful look into what it means to deal with grief in an abstract. The first person perspective is compliments the subject matter very well.

This would have easily been a 5 star book if the story was told in a traditional format. Verse just seemed to leave too many gaps.

I have two types of 1 stars: books I didn't retain anything from and books I hated with a fiery passion. This book was the former of the two. I really like books told in verse and I was pretty interested in the premise of this book but I think the two didn't combine well for me. In the beginning it jumped a little bit between information points from poem to poem. This caused for not a lot being explained well. Therefore later on I found things hard to follow and finally I just didn't retain anything.

3*.

I clearly need to read the books I download faster because I cannot recall what led me to download this one.  It was definitely outside of my regular genre comfort zone but I enjoyed it.

The Art of Taxidermy is a novel told in short prose.  It is the story of Lottie, a young girl of German descent growing up in Australia in what seems to be the 70s or 80s.  Lottie has lost her mother and struggles to fit in with other children.  Partly because she is outcast as a German, partly because she is odd, and partly because she is slightly obsessed with the idea of finding and re-animating dead animals.

I found Lottie endearing and despite taking a while to warm up to the writing style and the prose, I actually quite enjoyed it.

I'd recommend this one to my friends with darker tastes.

*with thanks to NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for this honest review.

Creepy girls! Verse novels! Dead people! Germany! All my favourite things wrapped up into one book. I loved this a lot, it's so hard to make a verse novel work without losing sight of the poetry, but Kernot definitely creates something beautiful. I loved Lottie, and although she is pushed towards science, sometimes you just want to read about a strange girl touching dead things.

I'm not even going to lie here; I picked up this book only because I loved the cover. 

I had no idea what it was about. Or what genre it was. 

So, what a surprise it was for me when I opened the book and verses were staring back at me, which was a bit shocking because I tried to stay away from modern poetry. 
However, after finishing, I would say that it was more of prose written in verse. But that's beside the point. 

It was almost fascinating, at first having no idea what's going on and then slowly, the story started to unravel in front of my eyes. 

The taxidermy line, Lottie's mother, who is Annie, the life of German immigrants in Australia and more. 

I have a hard time deciding what to really say about this one. I would not say that I really enjoyed this book to the point I would go back to it, but at the same time it was very fascinating, and I'm still a bit marvelling at what I read. 
And as some of you may know, I'm not a fan of modern poetry, but with this book, I even considered liking the poetry part of it!

Yeah, and the cover is really pretty if I forgot to mention that.

The Art of Taxidermy, an Australian award-winning novel-in-verse, explores a German-Australian's girl's grieving process, as she mourns the death of her mother and sister, as well as her family's internment during WWII.  After Lottie's older sister drowns and her mother dies during stillbirth, Lottie becomes obsessed with taxidermy, which she views as an attempt at resurrection.  She begins collecting bodies of dead creatures and gutting them, which horrifies her Aunt Hilda, who is helping her dad raise Lottie. Her only friend is an Indigenous boy who bonds with her over their shared loneliness. He helps her with her collection and moving toward her dream of becoming a museum taxidermist.

This YA contemporary had a bit of a slower feeling to it than I expected, but the dreamlike quality of the writing fit the pacing perfectly. I loved the sort of magical realism elements to the story and can't wait for more from this author!

There aren't any other YA titles about taxidermy, so this book definitely wins a prize for its eye-opening look into the art. I was not as won over by the verse format, however; too often I felt as if it left gaps in the story. Regardless, an interesting debut.

The Art of Taxidermy is completely not what I expected, but I was pleasantly surprised. It felt very raw and deep to read this text but I had to read it in parts as it wasn't something I could read all at once as there were so many feelings attached to each word.

I would like to thank the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a digital arc of The Art of Taxidermy in exchange for an honest review.

I was so intrigued about this when I read the synopsis on netgalley so I was so happy when I was approved for it.

I found the writing style of this quite interesting, the plot itself was quite slow and there didn’t seem to be too much happening, aside from Lottie finding animals and bringing them home to try and “resurrect” via taxidermy and her Aunt Hilda constantly trying to make her more of a typical girl and ultimately destroying all of her creations.

A lot of this novel is about the loss of Lotties mother, but I felt the loss of Annie a lot more, as she just couldn’t give her up, in fact it took me a little while to realise that Annie wasn’t actually real and Lottie was just imagining her.

Throughout the novel there are some stunning illustrations that help break up the pacing.

You could see that Lottie’s father wanted to support her, he cleared out his shed to give her somewhere to work, but I do believe he struggled against her Aunt Hilda- as she was the only female in her life.

I will say though, if you have issues with the concept of death or graphic mentions of death and taxidermy then maybe this isn’t for you, I did have to stop reading every now and then as I found it a little too much for me at times.

Aside from that I do have to say that this was beautifully written and it really packs a punch.