I don't know what I expected from this read but it definitely wasn't this.
It was a gross, grotty, filthy novel portraying a lost and grieving family and they make their way through the cloud of loss and a found love.

Don't be mislead by the cover, this isn't a quirky, humorous read.

An interesting read that I'm glad to have discovered. I'll definitely be seeking out more by this author.

Humorous, dark and warm in equal measure, this is a wonderful novel. I'd never have thought of taxidermy as a premise for a book but Kristen Arnett makes this work!
Looking forward to more from this author.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me read an advance digital copy of this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

Just couldn't get into it. Situations and characters unfortunately just didn't grab my attention. so would not reccomend

Moving And Often Unexpected.....
A dark but humorous and engaging read. A moving and often unexpected picture of family life, loves and losses. Strong, literary fiction, compellingly executed.

This was a book that was difficult to put down! The characters were superb and story just kept you guessing right up until the last page. 10/10 would recommend.

This examination of grief and family dynamics would have fared better had it been shorter and recognised the more captivating parts of its own narrative. Jessa's father has recently taken his own life leaving her to run the family taxidermy business and the family itself which includes a mother both grief-stricken and dazed by the freedom from an overbearing husband and a brother whose wife (also Jess's former lover) left him with two children. Jess venerated her father but is troubled by the realisation of many of his faults and is struggling to live up to his expectations even after his death. Her mother has developed a habit of creating sexually explicit displays using the taxidermied animals. Her brother slopes around feeling sorry for himself.

Arnett has a flair for the grotesque that she uses to good effect in the descriptions of the squalor around the shell-shocked family and the descriptions of taxidermy (some will find this very unpleasant). The fetid atmosphere of hot, humid Florida is brilliantly evoked and the descriptive passages create the sensation of grimy, muggy heat and sweat. But it sometimes backfires. The trouble I had with it was the wallowing, the pinpoint description of every unpleasant physical flaw and sensation fed to hide the fact that the characters are not particularly well-developed or complex. The same ground hashed over again and again without interesting development so that in the middle I largely lost interest in Jessa's world. The ineptitude and self-absorption of the characters becomes suffocating until I was just skimming the pages to the end. The rather trite resolution felt too easy and convenient after wading through the swamp of bloated story to get there.

I think it needs to be said that this book is not for everyone. If you flinch away from dysfunctional families then maybe don't pick this up. And if you're in any way squeamish, if you find taxidermy repulsive or if lengthy and detailed descriptions (complete with sounds, smells and even tastes) of animal dissection upset you even slightly...run. Right now.

But if you're ok with all that (or can at least stomach it), please pick up this book. Because underneath the roadkill, the exposed tendons, the discarded innards and the murdering of peacocks is a pretty interesting story. Jessa-Lynn and her family are cracking under the double strain of the death by suicide of her father, and her brother's wife Brynn walking out on the family without a word. Jessa struggles to take over the family taxidermy business, walking in her father's shadow while mourning the loss of Brynn - the only woman she has ever loved. Meanwhile her mother is acting out by making strange, pornographic art with the taxidermy, whilst her brother isn't being the father his kids need. This is a study of a family in turmoil, told with a dark wit and an excellent eye for the many ways people cope - or don't - with grief. I loved Jessa's character in all her grubby, conflicted rawness, and I thought the way that Florida itself becomes almost a character in it's own right gave the story such an incredible stage to play out on. I do think that at times things swing off into ridiculousness, but they're always pulled back in to the human heart of the story.

This one will stay with me, that's for sure.

What does it take to come back to life?
I have a morbid fascination with blood and gore which I normally satisfy through reading crime fiction, but when I happened upon Kristen Arnett’s fabulously titled ‘Mostly Dead Things’ and discovered it centered around a family taxidermy business…I was sold!
In the aftermath of the fathers’ suicide, each member of the Morton family deals with grief in their own unique way. Often helped along by a cold beer, Jessa-Lynn is tasked with keeping the failing taxidermy business running. She finds it hard to cope with her Mothers bizarre new passion for creating sexually provocative art projects, especially as she is also propping up brother Milo who seems to have given up since his wife left.
As we are led through the story, into the past and back to the present, we discover a web of relationships in this hot and sweaty small town in Florida told with a funny, weird vibe throughout. The tender descriptions of the dead animals as they are dissected with skill and patience paired with the chaotic family life of the characters delivers a totally unique book.
With an eye-catching cover, using art from John James Audubon and designed by Jakob Vala, I thoroughly enjoyed Mostly Dead Things.
Available now! With thanks to @netgalley for the opportunity to read the ARC.

This was an unusual, offbeat story about family, love and art. Told in vivid prose (maybe too vivid during the taxidermy scenes) the author creates a well realised family in a perfectly represented part of Florida. Not your every day novel.

My thanks to the publisher and netgalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

You know how, as a kid, you might find something gross, and one of our parents might make a comment along the lines of “that’s just a normal bodily function”? That’s generally the feeling I get reading adult contemporary general/literary fiction. There’s often an almost-hyper focus on presenting the mundane in all its rawness (and thus, grossness), which very often turns me off it.

So, really, I don’t know why I keep trying it over and over.

Mostly Dead Things is the revealing of a family’s dysfunctionality following the death of the main character’s father. Dysfunctionality and the various ways in which this man has, to put it bluntly, fucked them all up.

I actually quite liked reading that aspect of this book. It’s probably what kept me reading after coming to the realisation that the rest of it was not to my liking. Somehow, despite not really liking the graphic descriptions of animal death, despite not really liking the characters individually, that family relationship is what kept me going. I was rooting for them to sort everything out and start repairing relationships all throughout.

But, like I said, the characters were not all that likeable. It’s almost as though, in making the book so focused on that rawness and nastiness of life, making the characters sympathetic got left behind (or at least, so it seemed to me). I’m not saying they were all terrible people with zero redeeming characteristics, but. They were people who had been fucked over who maybe should have inspired more sympathy than they did, perhaps.

On the whole though, I did like the book. And it gives me the (dubious) honour of now knowing multiple gay books that involve taxidermy.

I do not know what to do with that.

Even if I liked the style of writing and found the characters intriguing the story didn't keep my attention and it fell flat.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

trigger warning
child neglect, child abandonment, grief, death of a parent, trauma, lethal illness, mental illness, depression, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, suicide,self harm

After her father's suicide, nothing is as it was in Jessa's life. Everyone has different coping strategies, but Jessa can't deal with the way her mother chose to grieve.

Beware: Taxidermy inside.

I was drawn to this 1) because of the beautiful cover, 2) taxidermied animals are mummies, and 3) female-female relationships.
While the timeline is not only non-linear, there is no pattern to when something from the past will be recounted, I found that anything fit neatly together and we were told things when they made sense, even if that meant jumping from the present day to Jessa's brother's wedding to Jessa's childhood and back to the present.

This book made me feel dirty, but not in a bad way, though disclaimer: My area is going through a heatwave and I only feel clean till maybe three minutes after taking a shower.
Jessa's depression shows itself in lack of self care, she lives mostly on cheap beer, doesn't do personal hygiene and should really clean her appartment. Then there are the gory details from the taxidermy shop and process of conserving animal corpses. These feature a lot, so if you can't do that, don't try.

It's kind of outside of my comfort zone, but not too far out for me to enjoy it. The atmosphere is summery, moist and swampy. Weird things are happening while people trying to figure out how this business of having relationships work. Trial and error make up the most of the book, with a very nice ending that gives closure and make you realise that the characters went through some growing in the last hundred pages.

I liked it.

I recieved a copy of this book in exchange for a honest review.

Unfortunately I had to dnf this one as I struggle reading details of dissection and dead animals, this is my fault for not fully reading that this book was about taxidermy.

In Mostly Dead Things, by Kristen Arnett, we meet Floridian Jessa-Lynn Morton. Since her father killed himself a year ago, Jessa has been carrying on his taxidermy service and shop and propping up her family - mother Libby, brother Milo, and Milo’s children Bastien and Lolee. She’s her father’s natural successor - she’s strong-stomached and skilled, whereas Milo is squeamish and ineffective.

However, money is tight, and Libby has started expressing herself through alarming art projects involving taxidermied animals, spare parts, and sex aids. Jessa is appalled and embarrassed by her mother’s creations, and it gets even worse for her when attractive local gallery owner Lucinda Rex takes an interest in Libby’s work. Can Jessa ever come around to her mother’s point of view, and get better at opening up and sharing her own feelings?

I’m a very squeamish person myself, and lots of scenes in Mostly Dead Things describe Jessa and other family members practicing taxidermy, yet after maybe the first couple of descriptions, it stops being icky. Instead, what comes through is the passion, skill, and hard work involved, which I had never really considered or appreciated before.

I love reading books where characters carry out skilled artistic work with their hands because it’s a chance to experience a life totally different from my own - sitting at a computer day in, day out - and this story turned out to be a fascinating example of that. In fact, I was far more grossed out by the descriptions of the human characters’ bodily fluids and smells - especially when they squeezed spots, or Jessa casually wiped anything nasty on her jeans. Though it is different to see that stuff actually included in a book, I suppose!

It feels as though the ‘Mostly Dead Things’ of the title refers more to two people whose absence haunts the book, rather than the animals who, while dead, are still there in optimal physical form. One of these missing characters is Jessa’s dad: Jessa is quietly traumatised by discovering his body and the note he addressed only to her, and weighed down by his expectation that she should take his place, while Libby’s feelings about him directly influence her shocking art.

The other is Brynn: Milo’s former wife, Jessa’s former lover, and mother of Bastien and Lolee, who isn’t dead but deserted the family more than a decade previously, leaving a hole in all of their lives. Over the course of the story, Jessa, Libby and Bastien in particular make real progress in putting themselves back together and discovering just who it is they’re going to be. That all makes this book seem really earnest, so I should make it clear that there’s a thread of dark humour going through it. The scenes where characters react to Libby’s art are particularly funny!

Although I shared Jessa’s view of her art initially, Libby was the character I found myself cheering on the most. Much like the women in A Theatre for Dreamers by Polly Samson, Finding Dora Maar, by Brigitte Benkemoun and The Age of Light, by Whitney Scharer, during her marriage, anything Libby creates is regarded as secondary to her husband’s work. The crafts she makes to decorate the house, and the clothes she sews, are taken for granted by her children and dismissed by her husband as ‘domestic arts… to pass the time’, and it’s not until her thirties that Jessa finds out her mother had a passion for sculpting as a student. For these reasons, it’s really exciting and satisfying to see Libby bloom and receive credit for her work.

Mostly Dead Things is a tender, visceral and darkly humorous story of a family’s recovery from grief.

This book is about a family's grief. they own a taxidermy business and after their father's suicide, it's difficult to maintain it.
I found the taxidermy definitions very graphic and detailed. I'm aware that was on purpose with metaphors. So, I think it's very clever. But, it wasn't pleasant of course.
I think the writer is very promising to create this plot with an interesting twist. I just thought it was a bit slow. A bit more energy would make it a really compelling read.

Overall, I thought it was imaginative.
Thanks a lot to NG nad the publisher for this copy.

Mostly Dead Things has been on my TBR since it’s publication in the US last June and I’m so happy to have been sent a copy by Netgalley and Corsair to review before it’s UK publication on 2nd July. I’m even happier to be talking about this beautifully written queer novel during pride month.

The story follows Jessa and her family, left to run the family taxidermy business after her father commits suicide. We follow the three broken hearts of Jessa, her brother Milo and their mother, stuck on the love they have lost.

This is a novel about taxidermy and many other mostly dead things. The graphic imagery of dead animals being gutted and put back together new is a perfect metaphor for how a heart can be torn apart and healed again.
What struck me most was the realism. The vivid descriptions of weird central Florida as well as the raw, real and flawed characterisation of Jessa. She is utterly compelling, I enjoyed being inside her head.

This novel is gross, weird, messy and heart achingly sad in places but absolutely fascinating.

Mostly Dead Things is a novel about a family dealing with grief badly, set at a Florida taxidermist's. Jessa-Lynn Morton took on the taxidermy business after her father's suicide, but it struggling to keep it afloat. Her and her brother are both still reeling from when her brother's wife Brynn—who Jessa also loved—left town, leaving behind her teenage daughter. And their mother starts to make art out of taxidermy, but not in a way Jessa approves of.

This is a strange book, with detailed descriptions of taxidermy and a cast of frustrating characters caught in various ruts and in need of some kind of therapy probably. The narrative is in Jessa's point of view and moves between the present day and her memories of her past, particularly her father and Brynn. There's a lot of interesting family dynamics, from the complex relationship between Jessa and her brother considering that his wife was cheating on him with Jessa throughout their marriage to the connections between Jessa and Brynn's two children, one of whom is her niece. The vibe of the novel is well executed, bringing the detail of the family's at times fairly horrible existence (there's a lot of focus on the dirt and grime that is everywhere, which I've seen other reviews found too much) and really giving a sense of what this complicated family is like. However, the narrative was hard to get into, and what actually happened to the characters didn't feel very memorable, so it didn't make you want to keep reading.

Mostly Dead Things is clearly quite a divisive book, dark comedy in some ways but mostly a look at a messed up family in need of some outlets for their emotions. The reading experience didn't quite live up to the hype for me as I found it a bit slow (and occasionally it was frustrating that you couldn't point out to the characters why they needed to listen to each other), but it certainly creates an atmosphere and the characters are intriguing and complex.

Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett is about a woman who has been damaged by loving the same woman as her brother and by her father’s suicide and her family dynamics. Very real and raw.

I have been wanting to read this for so long because I kept seeing so much buzz about it online. It completely surpassed my expectations.
Jessa is left to run the family taxidermy business after the death of her father, taking the entire burden of her family and its history on her shoulders. Her mother begins to create pornographic art with the animals and her brother is drifting further away every day. Both Jessa and her brother are reeling from the departure of the only woman they have ever loved.
I loved this book from the first page until the last one. Every character is vivid and believable (the amount of actual rage I felt at Brynn testifies to that) and I couldn't put it down. Dark, sad, funny and twisted, this is a sublime novel about love, death, loss and taxidermy. I promise you've never read anything like it.