I’m torn on this one, it was good and the premise so interesting, but the book dragged quite a lot and was almost boring at times.

Hello, this review will go up on my blog, instagram, and goodreads on August 12,2019. I will also add to Amazon and Barnes & Noble (if applicable) on the publication date. I will add links to reviews when they are live.


Title: The Art of Taxidermy
Author: Sharon Kernot
Genre: YA Fiction/Poetry
Publication Date: August 23rd, 2019
Rating: 3 stars

eARC provided by publisher through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

->Click for Synopsis<-

The Art of Taxidermy is a verse novel about love and death, and the beauty that comes with it. Lottie takes us through her struggle of losing her mother and finding an outlet through taxidermy.

When I requested this book I guess I missed the part where it said verse novel but I am glad that I requested it because it turned out to be a wonderful surprise! 

The author's lyrical writing sweeps you into the fascination that Lottie has when it comes to taxidermy. Each piece has its own unique topic that come together with the rest. Taxidermy is an unusual topic and this verse novel does a great job of making it even more interesting and combining it with beautiful writing.

Overall, it was a good book to get me out of my comfort zone. If you are into verse novels with a wonderfully intriguing theme then this book is for you!

At the age of eleven
I fell in love
with death.

Lottie is 11 years old, and she has already experienced too much grief for a girl her age. Her mother is gone, dead, and her father cannot bring himself to clean out her room, leaving it as a shrine to the woman he loved instead. Opa is gone too. And still, Lottie has no friends except for a girl named Annie.

At least Annie is always with her if no one else wants to be around her.

One day, Lottie and Annie discover a dying bird, and Lottie takes it home, keeping the beautiful creature so it could live on even if it is no longer truly alive. This goes well for a while, until Aunt Hilda steps in as a mothering figure that no one asked for - taking the things that Lottie loves and throwing them into the incinerator because 'they aren't fit for a young girl'.

But how else is she supposed to deal with her grief if everything she loves just keeps getting taken away from her?

The revival and
re-creation of something
that has expired
is an honour
and a gift

There is something oddly fascinating with all things morbid, and I think that Sharon Kernot did an astounding job of turning something bizarre, such as taxidermy, into something beautiful. Lottie's story is no different. Understanding her story is like understanding our own - at the heart of it all, grief can either overwhelm us or we can overpower it. Lottie's ways may not be conventional, but they make her feel alive, even if she's not 'normal'.

I also loved the fact we got to touch on a lot of Australian history in this book. I am American, and in traditional American fashion, I only know about America's views of all the major wars (thanks history class!). It was so interesting to see how Germans were treated in Australia during the WWII/Hitler time period. And even more interesting was learning about the aboriginal people in Australia - honestly, a group that does not get highlighted enough to those who do not live in Australia.

This is a quick and easy read, but a worthwhile read all the same. If you are a fan of prose, you are going to be a fan of this!

The Art of Taxidermy has a lot going for it: beautiful writing, excellent crafting, and a look at grief that is nothing short of raw. Lottie's mother has passed, and Lottie has taken up an interest in science and death; specifically, she is captivated by dead animals and taxidermy. Her father indulges her, appreciates her scientific mind, and it's entirely possible that it's an interest she would have taken up with or without the grief she's experienced, but something about the obsessive nature of her thoughts leads me to think there's an implication of something fractured in the way she views the world without her mother in it.

There's also a bit of chat about indigenous people, with a side character, Lottie's friend, being an Aboriginal boy. I didn't actually realize this book was set in Australia at first, and I've never read a book featuring an Aboriginal character, so I really appreciated that as an addition.

The drawback to the entire book, though, and what made it impossible for me to give this more than 3.5 stars, is that I was bored. It sounds like the sort of story that should be innately interesting if only due to its gruesome nature (and it is gruesome, friends! Steer clear of this one if you're bothered by descriptions of dead animals), yet honestly, so little happens, and what does happen feels repetitive and somehow shallow. These are sad topics, yet I found it nearly impossible to feel anything about them, and I think that may be because Lottie is unfazed by anything that doesn't involve taxidermy.

This will be a great book for a lot of people, but sadly, I wasn't one of them.

Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

a touching verse novel about grief and taxidermy; I received a copy via Netgalley and finished it an hour later. lovely descriptive writing that gave me a newfound appreciation for taxidermy