In a Nutshell: A contemporary satirical fiction about a character with an identity crisis. Mostly quirky, fairly funny, somewhat reflective, a little distressing. Goes overboard in the final quarter. As long as you go with the flow and are prepared for some disturbing events, this book can be entertaining.

Plot Preview:
Teddington Miles aka Teddy lives a happy life with Millie. As she works from home, they spend many happy hours enjoying each other’s company. The only thorn in Teddy’s existence is Charlie, the unwelcome visitor who always turns Millie’s attention away from Teddy. When Millie suddenly vanishes one day, Teddy is sure that Charlie is the guilty party. He begins a secret investigation with the help of some trusted companions, but the truths that come out aren’t what Teddy expected.
The story comes to us in Teddy’s first-person perspective, with some epistolary interludes from the other characters.
Oh, and did I tell you that Teddy is a dog?

The blurb (and my plot preview) go much beyond the initial 10-15% of the book. Maggie’s disappearance doesn’t happen until much later into the story. But until this point, there is barely anything concrete happening in the novel, with the chapters till then providing a kind of background into everyone’s individual situations.

That said, the blurb does contain one helpful line: “Unnatural Selection examines our modern obsession with treating pets like people with heart, humour and wickedly clever insight.” The book takes this concept and goes wild with it. So it would help to keep this line in mind to set the right expectations: a dog that behaves human.

As a dog lover, I grabbed this debut as soon as I saw that it came from a canine point of view. However, this isn't a typical pet story as Teddy doesn’t consider himself a pet, though he does know that he is a miniature goldendoodle. He is convinced that the world has people with four legs and people with two legs. As such, it is hilarious (and a bit awkward) to see Teddy’s declarations about his “relationship’ with his “partner” Maggie. Teddy’s vocabulary is also above par, thanks to his fondness for Netflix. (In fact, his vocabulary is better than that of most humans I know.) However, we soon see that Teddy’s confidence doesn’t exactly mean that his observations can be trusted.

To use a common fictional parlance, Teddy is an unreliable narrator, which forms the foundation of the comedy in this novel. Whatever Teddy says sounds true, but we know for sure that it isn't so. As such, there are two truths in this book: Teddy’s version and the actual version. Reconciling the two in our minds is fun. We can easily laugh at Teddy’s interpretation of events, though it is equally easy to feel sorry for him.

In between Teddy’s narration, we get to hear from the humans in Teddy’s circle – Maggie, Charlie, and their group of friends (none of whom was particularly endearing to me) – and learn what’s happening in their lives. We also get to hear from a pet therapist who himself needs therapy for his personal problems. These subplots lead to many digressions, some genuinely funny and some just annoying. Many of these scenes comes through text messages and emails. The text messages were fun; the emails required a lot of patience. If you read them through a satirical lens, they would make sense. If not, they wouldn’t seem like professional emails at all.

As you can guess, Teddy’s voice doesn’t sound canine for a major chunk of the book. The first quarter of the book worked excellently for me once I started reading it as a satire. However, the humour soon started to wear thin and the situations started feeling repetitive. The dog school sections were the most boring for me, even though I developed a soft corner for Bo, the misunderstood pitbull at Teddy’s daycare. Other than Bo, the only fabulous dog character was Patrick, with his age leading to a wisdom that Teddy lacks.

The book is still entertaining as there are bits and pieces of outstanding in between the good and the average. The final quarter, however, is what brought my rating majorly down. This is quite ironic because it is only in this section that Teddy finally learns about his true identity and role in Maggie’s life. I should have loved the dog’s finally becoming a dog. But the events that lead to this self-discovery were a bit dark and disturbing. We love dogs because they aren't like humans. So to see a dog turn almost humanly feral in his emotions was too much for me to handle.

All in all, despite that troubling final quarter, this debut indie novel still works as an entertaining satire. The storyline is not at all like those in typical doggy books; this creativity of the author deserves credit. However, it would be better to suspend all disbelief and just go with the flow while reading this unusual plot.

Recommended if you are looking for something whimsical and are okay with dogs going bonkers (in a human but not humane way.)

3 stars. (4 stars for the first quarter, 3 stars for the middle, 2 stars for the final quarter except for the ending which was again 3 stars. An easy score to average.)

My thanks to Victory Editing NetGalley Co-op for providing the DRC of “Unnatural Selection” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

Books from the point of view of an animal character are nothing new, so they do need to have something that sets any one particular book aside from all the rest.

Of course, most of these books do give human-like qualities to their narrators while still giving them some shortcomings due to their animal nature, and this book did just that.

I found Teddy a pretty likeable doggo right from the start, and liked reading as he changed throughout the course of the book. Due to a highly improbable sequence of events, Teddy suddenly finds himself without his lifelong companion Maggie. Instead he's in the case of the sinister-looking Charlie. What happened to Maggie? Where does Charlie fit into all of this? And does the colour red even exist?

The book itself isn't a difficult read and I found myself getting through it in two short sittings of a couple hours each. The copy I was given needs to be proofread a lot better, as there are quite a few errors, from missing words to wrong descriptions (seriously, one sentence described the humans as four-legged), to an entire paragraph being repeated in one case. Additionally, there were a couple of characters that were highly unnecessary.

My biggest gripe about the book is that I like the overall story it's trying to convey, which is very heartfelt and one of growth and realization, but that all comes crashing down by the farcical nature of some segments. In my opinion, while somewhat funny, they don't belong in what is otherwise a very good book, and they take away from the time. There's also one character in particular that's intentionally written to be as unlikeable as possible but it crosses the line by some distance for me.

That being said, I loved when things got a bit more serious about two thirds of the way through the story and overall, everything ended up more or less resolved neatly enough in the end.

It's nothing spectacular. It's not game changing. But it's a solid read.

After reading and enjoying a cat-centered book last month, I kind of felt like I owed the boys this one. And seriously, you all know there is no way I could resist an adult book told from a canine POV right?

Teddy has lived with his "girlfriend" Maggie for almost a year. During that time, Maggie as worked from home, so she and Teddy spend every waking moment together. But suddenly, Teddy's perfect life takes a turn for the worse. Maggie's "friend" Charlie who Teddy despises has moved in, and Maggie gets a job, and he finds himself in Doggy Daycare every day. Then one day Maggie vanishes. Teddy is sure Charlie has murdered her and sets out with his daycare friends and his other best friend Patrick to find out what has happened. Along the way, Teddy makes a few discoveries which shake him to the core including some animal instincts which he didn't even know he possessed.

While this book sounds really darn cute, don't be fooled. Even though told from Teddy's POV, the author handles some serious topics and manages to delve into the lives of Maggie's found family. Clearly the author is highlighting how important pets are to so many people but also looks at it from the dog's POV showing just how extreme some people can be (yep, me, I'm one of those extreme ones 😂).

But let me share one of my favorite things about this book - Bo. Bo is an abused pit-bull that attends Teddy's daycare. Bo and Teddy get off on the wrong paw and despite numerous warnings, Teddy continues to get on Bo's bad side. However, Teddy learns over the course of the book why Bo is so negative and why he is so skeptical of the humans Teddy holds so dear. At one point I thought Teddy was a goner because he was a stubborn little thing and kept asking Bo how to get rid of Charlie. And by get rid of, I mean kill.

Overall, this was a wonderful read, and I recommend it to anyone who loves dogs and loves to spoil their four-legged family members. It may be too much to ask but I really hope the author continues with this writing style and gives us a book featuring more of Bo's story.

Great fun for dog lovers everywhere! A likely true take on what they might be thinking and saying, and their perceptions of us and the world around them. Yep, not sure mine knows she's a dog either - but either way loved and spoiled and part of the family. A fun and light read for sure.

Meet Teddy and his girlfriend/soul-mate Maggie. They have a loving and close relationship, cohabitating and spending all of their time together. But...Ted not only doesn't know he's a dog, he also doesn't know he's a pet. Add Maggie's human boyfriend/interloper Charlie into the mix, and Teddy has a hard time controlling himself. And poor Teddy's emotions are completely upended when he learns Maggie is returning to office work and destroying their previously idyllic work-from-home codependent existence. Then it's just one existential crisis after another for Teddy as his life keeps changing without warning and he tries to make sense out of his world. This was a cute premise and a quick read that was cleverly done, written almost exclusively from Teddy's POV. It was easy to get swept up in Teddy's version of events, there was both humor and angst and I felt for him in his confusion and worry over what happens to Maggie. I will say it was darker in parts than I expected, and it got a little unsettling at one point as Teddy really struggles with his feelings. (Pay attention to any content warnings.) While I do think it was clever to switch perspectives from a "two-legger" to a "four-legger" POV, the "non-human-but-thinks-he's-a-human" gimmick started to wear a little thin over the course of the book, although I did generally enjoy Teddy's perspective. I think this is a great book for dog lovers, or for those who have ever wondered what dogs really think of their lives and those around them. 3.5 stars. Publishes June 13, 2025. This review was based on a complimentary eARC, all opinions are my own.

3.5/5 Stars

Okay, this book?? Hilarious, surprisingly emotional, and way deeper than I expected.

Unnatural Selection is told entirely from the POV of Teddy—a dog who is very convinced he's not just a dog. He drinks puppacinos, wears outfits, and honestly thinks he’s just a short, hairy human with an excellent sense of style. He's also dramatic, overanalyzes everything, and has major main character energy. I adored him.

But when his beloved owner Maggie disappears, Teddy is suddenly stuck with a very shady man he knows is up to something. So, he decides to solve the mystery himself—which goes about as well as you’d expect for a dog with no thumbs and a flair for the dramatic. Along the way, he starts questioning everything from his identity to why he even likes puppacinos. (Seriously, that existential puppacino crisis had me wheezing.)

The story is both funny and genuinely heartfelt. It pokes fun at the way we treat pets like little humans, but it also explores some pretty real themes—loyalty, love, trauma, and what it means to belong. And the best part? Teddy is an unreliable narrator, which makes everything 10x more entertaining.

Highly recommend if you’re in the mood for something heartfelt, weird, and unexpectedly brilliant.

Thank you to Victory editing and NetGalley for an eARC of this book in exchange for my review.

This book had me feeling all emotions, I laughed and I cried. Any dog lover and owner will have their heart strings pulled while reading.

This book is told from the perspective of Teddy (a dog) as he goes through life in New York. The author captures the thought process of a dog so clearly- it’s exacting how I imagine my dogs perceive everyday life and how confusing it must be to them.

I wasn’t sure what I would think when I first started reading but this really is a great read for animal lovers and a very unique take on a dogs life!

Teddy is a dog but not just any dog, he a very special boy that portrays traits that are much more human and engaging than just doing normal doggy activities of daily walks and fetching balls. Teddy’s love for his owner Maggie goes much deeper, his insights into Maggie’s world are truly remarkable. When Maggie disappears Teddy's life is thrown into chaos and he is determined to find out the truth behind her disappearance.

To enjoy this book, you just need to go with it as it will be completely different to anything you have ever read before, and you need to open your mind and heart to enjoy it. A light-hearted that I do recommend if you are looking for something different. 3.5 stars rounded up

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of the book, all opinions expressed are my own.

Thank you to Victory Editing (part of NetGalley, who I also extend a sincere thank you to) for providing this book, with my honest review below.

Unnatural Selection is absolutely adorable and sure to be a hit amongst fellow dog lovers. Told from the perspective of Teddy, a teddy bear of a puppy, but interspersed with communications (text, emails) between the humans in Teddy’s life, this book did a great job of imagining a dog’s point of view while having a plot that had plenty of tension from the human’s as well.

Teddy is the pampered dog of Maggie, who he is in love with. Like actually in love since he believes dogs are partners with their humans and in fact not dogs, but one species. He has a best (dog) friend Patrick who is wise, but even Patrick can’t help him when he goes through a series of traumatic events, from his nemesis Charlie moving in with Maggie, Maggie getting a non remote new job that places Teddy in doggy day care, and Maggie disappearing one day - at the suspected hands of Charlie, just to name a few. Teddy starts to experience dissociative episodes and in his search for the truth stumbles upon even bigger discoveries that will change the course of his life.

As mentioned, this was a treat. Imagining a view point of a dog has been tried before but not to this level of cuteness and ingenuity. Teddy isn’t alone but surrounded by his dog friends, so we get to see what they think of their lives and the happenings of their ‘partners’ along with the mystery that surrounds poor Teddy. I absolutely loved how Coco Cooper wrote a story that was both believable for pets and human, funny and emotionally fulfilling, and wrapped up so perfectly.

i was smiling and surprisingly emotional in parts through this book. not because it made me cry in a bad way. but just how overwhelmingly lovely it was. and i think being a dog lover of epic proportions it just felt like coming home to a book and a dog. and every time Teddy did something it reminded me hugely of the love for my own and how truly beyond in love humans can be with their dogs and in return the dogs with their owners. the friendship, best friendship and love is just the same if not better than any human one. and so this book has me smiling all the way through. not only because of what Teddy was saying and doing but also it bringing up what i often thought my own dog or other dogs might be thinking lol.
Teddy loves his owner. he likes even more that she works from home. but what Teddy isnt so sure of is his owner Maggie's boyfriend. ugh Charlie. when Maggie goes missing Teddy world is turned upside down. where, why, how is she not here with him anymore. and grrrrr what has Charlie got to do with it? so with the help of both other dogs and other human characters we delve into Teddy need to find Maggie. it takes Teddy on a life questioning and learning journey through both people and animals.
this is thought provoking and thoughtful book. i was taken in by all the characters and just wanted to sit down and take in this snuggly hug of a book.
there was a lot behind this book. it felt like it could open up lots of questions in a book club or amongst friend, or even like me when the covers closed you sit and ponder things for a while yourself.

Teddy dotes on his human mom, Maggie. He loves that she works from home as she is always around. Life is comfy. But Teddy doesn't feel the same about her boyfriend, Charlie. Life circumstances change and Teddy meets other dogs with whom he can communicate in their special way. Suddenly, Maggie disappears leaving Teddy reeling, confused and questioning life. He seeks love in other things and discovers more about himself, other animals, and humans on his journey. He discovers the meaning of family and home. To me his search is allegorical.

The adorable story is narrated by Teddy interspersed with chapters told by human characters, including hilarious email and text exchanges which made me chuckle out loud. The HR emails killed me! I'm giggling just typing this. What stands out to me most as a passionate dog owner is the depth of love and adoration and loyalty between humans and their dogs, a very special kind of relationship. As Teddy says, his people chose to love him. That hit my heart. This was a fantastic book which would appeal to animal people in particular. My only quibble is unnecessary language which felt out of place. Otherwise, the writing is gorgeous and thoughtful with an excellent balance of light and deep topics, simultaneously heartwarming and thought provoking.

Wow, what a book. Upon starting it, I wasn't really sure what to expect. Unnatural Selection focuses on the point of view of a dog, Teddy, who has a wild (and somewhat realistic) imagination. The book is the personification of a dog, allowing the reader to indulge in what it may be like to be one. While certain elements are unexplainable to them, Teddy has an abundance of somewhat misguided information. When his owner Maddie disappears, Teddy begins to question the cause and indulges in wild conspiracies. As the reader, you have an omniscient perspective and understand why everything is happening. It was a fun and wild ride to witness Teddy work it out. All in all, Coco Cooper creates a funny story with characters with distinct personalities, making an enjoyable read. I finished the book in two-three days, found myself giggling, and didn't feel bored once.

If you ever wonder what it would be like to be a dog, I definitely would recommend! A silly story, with a fascinating premise, from a silly narrator.

Thank you for the ARC! It was a pleasure to read it :)