Animal is another one of those books that seems to be splitting opinion, and to be honest I am always drawn to those to see what it is that is so divisive. I found it a dark, compulsive and consuming read which I could not put down.

I switched between the audiobook and ebook and found both copies were phenomenal. I have a definite preference for the audio as Emma Roberts was just exceptional. I felt every emotion she spoke.

There is a rawness and rage that permeates the book and it's one that can be truly felt as you read.

Without spoiling the plot the book is based on June and how she copes with many traumatic experiences that have riddled her life.

I feel that you are set up to dislike Joan at the early stages of the book as at times she can be a total contradiction to herself, but I could not stop rooting for her throughout.
She is the victim, she is the perpetrator.
You want to rescue her, you want to shake the nonsense out of her.
She is naive, she is manipulative.
She is vulnerable, she is vicious.

As the story unfolds it's so easy to see just why Joan has turned out how she has, and honestly who can blame her.

Taddeo wrote with a bursting anger but also an overwhelming sensitivity to the reality of the topics of murder, suicide, sexual assault, domestic violence, infidelity and child abuse. These topics aren't neat or pleasant so they should never be written as such.

It's hard to describe how amazing I think this book is. I can however also see why so many are put off. This is a hard book to read. It's toxic, repulsive at times and very raw, but it's worth every second.

You will either want to come back to this book again and again or else be repelled entirely. Either way I promise you will have a deep intense reaction.

I am honestly not sure what I feel about this book. It is brutally honest, sometimes disturbing and sometimes shocking. At times I felt bored and disinterested and at other times compelled to read on.

I’m sure it will prove highly controversial and will divide people’s opinion, but if it gets people talking about the issues involved, such as power and abuse of power, then that surely has to be a good thing.

This is an incredible novel and I will be recommending it to everyone I know, as well as leaving a glowing Amazon review. The writing is dark and beautiful and Joan is one the most vivid characters I have ever read. Even better than Three Women. I cannot recommend it highly enough - my book of the year.

I was drawn into the hype of this book after the sheer amount of amazing reviews I saw for Three Women and while I haven’t read Three Women as it’s not my cup of tea, I thought Animal would be. I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed though - it’s not a terrible book and there were moments that I enjoyed but overall, I found it quite underwhelming.

I’m not sure what to make of our ‘depraved’ protagonist Joan - there are definitely some very questionable and disturbing encounters but I just felt oddly detached from her as a character. I found that as the story got increasingly bloodier and more gory, I was losing interest - I wanted there to be more psychological and emotional input but I felt that I was just getting hit with ridiculous and over-reaching scenarios. I’m all for a nutjob of a main character but Joan’s characteristics didn’t really work for me.

However, I did like the author’s writing style - it’s bold, direct and informative and in that sense, I found the book easy to read. Lack of connection with the main character and failure to really ‘get’ the story stopped me from being fully invested but from a wider perspective I can see why this book has proven to be popular.

Thanks to Netgalley and Bloomsbury for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was so excited to read Lisa’s next book as I loved Three Women. I have to say I felt uncomfortable reading Animal and didn’t enjoy it as much.

I was such a fan of the real ness of Three Women. This felt different to me, it was dark and bleak. The characters are complex and the themes are deep. It’s not a light read.

This is a journey through Joan's life and all the ways that men have caused the rage inside her to build over the years, it's set in her present day but with flashbacks of her memories. After one of the men commits a horrifically violent crime, she moves from New York to Los Angeles to seek something else from her life.

<b><i>Animal</i></b> is really unsettling, and not an easy read at all - it is pure anger and sadness the whole way through and it just wasn't for me. I enjoyed the writing style - it was really well written, but there was something missing that didn't quite click for me. I felt like I was waiting for the big moment and it just didn't come - there were definitely climatic moments but they were unsatisfying and left me wanting more.

<i>Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an advanced digital copy in exchange for my honest review</i>

This book troubled me. Though I suspect it was written to do exactly that!

It started off so well, I was hooked the early extract I read it certainly served it's purpose. However, sadly I just could not get on with it. Twice I considered not finishing it. The anger I felt towards the story is what actually made me finish it! How ironic.

Joan was an incredibly unlikeable character. That's OK too. She was created that way but there was just something about the whole story that just didn't sit well for me. It made me angry, I wanted so much more from it. It is dark, that's OK too. I love dark books. But this one just was wrong on so many levels.

It needs to come with serious trigger warnings. Even for someone like me who can handle this type of content in a book it was just so awful.
And the ending. No, come on, it dissapointed me.

Thank you Bloomsbury and Netgalley for my review copy.

Having read the rave reviews of Lisa Taddeo's first book, 'Three Women', I was keen to read her debut novel, 'Animal'. It centres around protagonist, Joan, who after witnessing a very shocking act of violence, first hand, leaves New York for LA, in search of the enigmatic, Alice. At this point we don't know who Alice is, and her significance in Joan's life. The prose is sparse, brutal and shocking, and Joan is a difficult character to like. However, it's without doubt a page turner, and I devoured the novel rapidly. It reminded me a little of Raven Leilani's brilliant novel 'Luster'. So if you are a fan of this kind of fiction, you'll love it.

I'm still struggling to decide what I think of this book. There were elements of the story, the characters, and the writing which I thought were excellent - however, there was also elements of all of these things which really didn't work for me. Hearing the beginning read out at an event had me hooked, but unfortunately I felt that the start was the strongest bit.

It's not a book that I enjoyed - even the bits that I thought were brilliantly executed couldn't be described as enjoyable. While I often like books like that, I need to feel like I got something out of reading, and I sadly don't feel like that having finished Animal.

An incredibly shocking and raw novel.
I didn’t love Three Women, but with Animal the author wowed me.
I read it at a very slow pace because there was so much information thrown at the reader.
definitely recommend it to someone looking to be shocked!

Animal started slow for me but turned into an intense, gripping and dark read. Once I got into it, I struggled to put it down and found myself thinking about it in between reading.

This is quite a complex read, so I think I will find it difficult to summarise the plot. But, basically: when Joan's former lover shoots himself in front of her and a man she is on a date with, she packs up her life and moves to LA to seek out the mysterious Alice. Joan is a complicated character, both victim and perpetrator. There are traumas in her past (slowly revealed over the course of the novel), which led to other traumas throughout her life, and shaped her into the 'depraved' (her words), hurt character she is today.

There are many shocking moments in this novel, which make it so difficult to put down. It's a novel with a lot to say, especially about women, and how they are treated by men. It deals with power, control, abuse, rage, love. It deals with the cycle of trauma, I think, and how repetitive it is.

As I said, this started slow for me and I feel like the pacing was a bit off. It was also a very disjointed narration, which usually I can deal with, but we follow Joan's thoughts which means we're often jumping from one time period to the next without much signposting. It did add to the feeling of the novel overall, I think, but sometimes was difficult to read.

This novel is fascinating and compelling. I found the second half of the novel exceptional, as we more about Joan's life becomes clear. There are some really difficult parts of the novel to read, but I'm really glad I did!

Wow. This is very dark, I think Joan puts it best 'depraved'. The plot takes a while to get going but once it does there is quite a lot to unpack. I don't think this is for everyone but I was engaged so much so that I finished it within 2 days.

What a ride. Animal was a highly anticipated read for me, after reading her non-fiction debut Three Women.
Ok, now I know why this book is getting so much advanced praise.
Animal is a very dark story about rage, power, control and abuse.

t Joan is such a complex character. Sometimes she's a victim. Sometimes she's the perpetrator. She seems to crave love and respect but knowingly looks in the wrong places and then her disappointment fuels her anger. As the story unfolded, I did sympathize with her at times but she still terrifies me!

This book will not be for everyone, I feel it is another ‘marmite book’, you’ll either love it or hate it, I enjoyed it and was caught up in Joan’s animal instincts and read this in 2 days.
This is a very well written book; the author is a very skilled writer and this book really hurt my heart and will stick with me for a long time. When I finished this book, I had to take a walk, just to get my head around what had happened, I had invested that much in the book.
Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for an e ARC ofNimal in return for an honest review.

Taddeo sets out to shock with this, her first novel, following a protagonist in her mid 30s from a former lover shooting himself in front of her to the point where she causes another death, while also delving back into her past traumas. Plus I’m sure the American audience of its author in particular will be doubly shocked by just how many times Taddeo uses the word “cunt” in Animal. For a novel so set up to be filled with shocking action, though, parts of Animal were surprisingly meandering, with a real lack of pace in some of it. But Taddeo gives you so many oblique hints at events still to happen that you can’t stop reading, just in case you miss something excellent.

*THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAINS SPOILERS*
*CONTENT WARNING: ABUSE, RAPE, MURDER, SUICIDE, MISCARRIAGE*

After the huge success of Three Women, Lisa Taddeo returns with her first novel Animal.

We are with Joan for the entire duration of the novel, back and forth across the timeline of her life, inside her head and outside as spectators.

You can tell since the beginning that the story will be a dark one, and page after page you will stumble upon many different triggers which will be fully revealed as a much sordid story.

I am well aware that the intention is to challenge the readers and make them face all the hard edges of life, but there is a fine line between provocative and pushy and a few times I felt the story diverged towards the latter.

At times the story is a bit too crowded with overly disturbing images, and this might drive the readers away from Joan, leaving them unsympathetic and uncomfortable around her. We don’t always side with the victim, and that’s okay, especially when the victim becomes the oppressor, but I didn’t feel like the story made Joan justice for what she’s gone through.

I appreciated the book but I didn’t love it. I would recommend reading it expecting twisted turns at every page as it doesn’t go easy on any of the triggering topics. You will probably end up disliking all of the characters but that’s fine, they were not written to be lovable, just to be heard.

Triggers - sexual abuse, miscarriage, rape, suicide, murder.

Joan has been accused of being a sociopath and she doesn't know about that but the first word that comes to mind when she thinks of herself is "depraved". She's on a date in Manhatten with a married man when another married man she is seeing enters the restaurant and kills himself in front of her. This causes Joan to take a road trip across the country in search of Alice, a woman she saw in a magazine years ago. It's time for Joan to take stock, confront her past and find a new way to be.

Ugh, what to say about this book except that I really struggled with it.

I love a complex, morally ambiguous character and books that have shock value and Animal has certainly delivered on that front. The beginning of the book is definitely charged and intriguing. I liked the writing style with Joan's blunt, uncomfortable narrative alternatively drawing the reader in and repelling them.
Joan's story is extraordinary and there's a lot within the plot that should have the reader turning the pages as fast as they can - why is Joan the way she is? What is the trauma hinted at and what answers is she coping to achieve with Alice? I think what made my experience of reading the book such a struggle was the structure - the timeline is fragmented and confusing. Often one small detail in Joan's present will cause a long and protracted rambling reminiscence of her past. This happened frequently and it meant I got frustrated and disengaged and many times considered abandoning the book. I will freely admit, I skipped to the last chapters as I was still interested in getting some answers. I am glad that I did for the ending the author used. It was very fitting.

I can't honestly recommend the book but it was an experience. Thank you to the author, Netgalley and publisher for the opportunity to review an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest opinion.

I unfortunately had to DNF this book. There should be massive content warnings at the start of this one. I am not triggered easily but this book really jarred me.

I am afraid I didn’t enjoy this book. I even requested and received the audiobook to help me immerse myself more into the character of Joan and her hazy life. Sadly this didn’t help. I didn’t like Joan and I wasn’t bothered by her confused life and backstory. It’s all seemed so disjointed and I found that hard to relate or care about any of the characters. I stopped at 65% as it really wasn’t happening for me.
#DNF
No stars.

I love books that feature unusual ideas and concepts and Animal delivers. Joan is a fascinating protagonist and as the story develops you start to understand her motivations and quirks. I liked the pace of the prose and the interesting range of characters. There were lots of depictions of gender stereotypes which I found scarily relatable to my own experiences. Read it and you might know what I mean, but I hope you are lucky enough not to!