i really liked the vampire and taxidermy parts, i really didn’t like the catholic mom backstory and the resolution being that this was a “mental health crisis”

I thought I would enjoy this far more than I ended up based on the description alone. Unfortunately this was not the case; it felt very slow and lacking, with no clear plot or any substance. Again, I really wanted to like this, especially being a debut, but it just wasn’t for me.

The most obvious comparison for this novel is that it's for any reader who enjoyed "woman, eating" by Claire Kohda as they both deal with the millennial literary girl with a good dose of vampirism thrown in to shake it up. But this novel is staunchly Scottish in both its narrative location and its dissection of religion and the marks that it leaves on a person even if they're no longer devout. The copy speaks about the relationship between the protagonist, Noelle, and the vampire but really it's a narrative almost entirely focused on Noelle and her loneliness and struggles with her family. It's heavily based in Christianity and the act of confession and what purity is. This is not a sexy, gothic vampire story but a much darker and more intense piece of writing that unsettles and harks back to the literary gothic origins of the vampire and the philosophical arguments that the early creators of horror fiction were concerned with.

I don’t know how to feel about this one because on the one hand I found it extremely engaging and almost heartbreaking but on the other hand there were sections almost that felt out of place & it ended up feeling like two different books had been spliced together.

As a lifelong atheist I don’t think I’m the target audience for this and I think if you’re a lapsed catholic or have a complicated relationship with god that you’d really really love this.

For me I was only seemingly interested in the vampiric elements of which it turns out there were actually very few. The vampiric side of the story and the catholicism side felt like two completely separate events only held together by the common gothic theme. I would have loved for them to be fleshed out more and linked a little
better.

That being said I read this really quickly (for me) and it was incredibly engaging. I found the writing style to be something I really enjoy and I would absolutely be keen to see what else Jagger does - just maybe more on theme for my own taste.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher!!

Sexy, dark, evocative, and very enjoyable as an old Catholic school girl and lover of vampires!! Took me a little while to get in to, but once I did, I was hooked. Definitely unique and I’d love to read more from this author.

a dark introspective critique on the way religion and our upbringing can truly impact our sexuality. Oh and there is a vampire.

"If I treat myself like an animal, maybe I won't go to hell either."

A QUEER LITERARY VAMPIRE NOVEL WITH RELIGIOUS DECONSTRUCTION, MOMMY ISSUES, AND A MC WHO CONSISTENTLY SELF DESTRUCTS?! What a mood!

Fragile Animals is an excellent little literary fiction set in Scotland about Noelle, a 20 something hotel cleaner who travels to the island of Bute to stay in a B&B for a short time as a reset/getaway.

Right off the bat (LOL) - love the setting. Bute is described as "cold, penetrative to the bones," with "craggy, old stone buildings," and people who are "friendly but in a rude way." It has a charm to it but also just did a great job at setting the bleary tone of the novel.

When Noelle arrives at the bed and breakfast there is only one other guest, a man named Moses who confesses to her that he is a vampire. This is the OPPOSITE of the romanticized sparkling twilight vampire or beautiful charming vampires we see so often in literature. Instead, Moses is portrayed as angular and hungry looking with dirty fingernails and barefeet. I found myself actually feeling some revulsion to him everytime he entered a scene, which was such an interesting contrast to most vampire stories I read.

Noelle and Moses begin to have a relationship built on their confessions, and it is captivating getting to see their regrets and past relationships.

Do not go into this expecting the vampire to be the main character. While Moses is clearly a large part of the story, more than anything else this is about a regular woman coming to terms with her past and her future.

Noelle is an ex-catholic and it was sooooo interesting reading about her transitions out of catholicism, her memories in the church, and how she viewed her religious mother as a child and as an adult.

There are some stylistic choices the author made that were really a cherry on top for me, but I understand others might not love.

Jagger constantly went back and forth from different timelines in Noelle's life, telling a story about her childhood and then connecting it back to present day within a sentence without any sort of transition. This can be confusing at times but it made the story feel very immersive - I felt like I was hopping along following the thought processes' Noelle was experiencing in real time. The author did the same thing with first and third person narration! Some scenes would be in first person, some in third. These shifts really just kept me on edge (in a good way) and held my attention.

Loved!

*Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review*

Thank you to 404 Ink for the copy! This was a very melancholic yet sexy debut from Genevieve Jagger. It's both sulky and sultry in its introspection with some echos of supernatural elements trailing behind it. However in spite of its more anticipatory concepts (e.g., vampirism, Catholicism, mommy issues) the whole novel ended up being more temperate than expected. Jagger's prose is certainly fresh and illuminating but unfortunately doesn't shine bright enough to compensate for the dulled sparkle of her novel's plot. Her characters, particularly Moses, come off as dull or too morose to find excitable or at the very least appealing to readers.

3 stars - Jagger is a talented writer but I would love to see her future works expand into more intricate plots while maintaining this sense of complex introspection, even exploring her feelings further on religious guilt and queerness.

not typically the genre i gravitate towards, but the cover and description were so compelling- i am glad i listened to my gut feeling! this was insane in the best way. i loved every aspect from the writing to the characters, and was truly provoked to think outside the box with this one. absolutely stunning

In parts breathtakingly beautiful and evocative. In parts it completely lost me. I found the central metaphor vague and unsatisfactory - is it falling for a vampire as metaphor for self harm? Or depression? Or mommy issues? There were some chapters where the perspective shifted to a kind of uncaring but close birds eye third person - these I loved so much, I wish we had gotten the whole book in this perspective.

Noelle is a painfully relatable main character who is grappling with her faith, her family, her sexuality, and worst of all, living inside her own head/body. Trying to cope with a book deadline and her past, she stays in a very small bed and breakfast with the owner and a disgusting man who claims to be a vampire. Full of symbolism, Fragile Animals doesn't shy away from the bloodier parts of life.

One thing that worked for me that doesn't in many books is the jumping timelines of Noelle's past and current day. I was always interested in what was going on with her, whether she was reminiscing or living.

Beautifully written and v atmospheric but a slow read. I enjoyed it but overall…eh

Thank you to Netgalley and 404 Ink for the review copy

This book's blurb and cover was like it was written for me. The story is exactly what I wanted, and I was so excited to read this. However, I'm not sure it perfectly lived up to my hopes. I still enjoyed this, but it took me a pretty long time to get through, because I didn't feel immediately drawn back to the story.

This is mainly because the vampire was not engaging at all. The segments about her childhood, catholicism and familial trauma were really interesting, and then there was....him.

The two plots also felt a bit separate, and I would have loved to have read about them in two different books, in more detail. It was definitely interesting, and maybe I just need a second spin at the book in a few years to really have it grow in my mind. There were some beautiful prose, and a new take on the supernatural, but in a literary way. It just wasn't what I started the book hoping it would be.

Thanks NetGalley for this!

“There is something in my design that dictates how I will love. Something irremovable and primordial. Something so intangibly firm. If I could have ripped it out of me, I would. It isn’t possible, but still I’ve tried a thousand ways.”

Fragile Animals follows Noelle a 23-year-old writer who is on a trip at the Isle of Bute. At the house she stays at, she meets a man named Moses, a man who says he is a vampire.
This book is mostly a character study about a woman with religious trauma and a destructive relationship with her mother and this religious guilt fuels many of her relationships and decisions.
This was not at all I expected from the description of this book. It was very minimal vampire and very much character driven.
The author jumps between the present, in Bute, to Noelle’s past as she describes events in her life and relationships, so the reader gets a more understanding view of this character.
Some of these time jumps were a little jarring and it was hard to tell when things were happening, as there was no break or indication on when we were jumping back in time. It was very “stream of consciousness” but towards the end, I was used to this writing style and it was easier to follow.
It took me a while to get into this book but I loved the last 25%! For the girlies with religious trauma and guilt and attachment issues!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me a digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I DNFed 'Fragile Animals' after about 50 pages. Twice.

I picked this up because of the promise of vampires and horror, but I really struggled to connect to Noelle and the writing. I decided to wait and try the audiobook so I grabbed it from my library as soon as it was available, and while it was easier to consume in that form, I still really struggled to establish a connection to the story in any way. The beginnings of the mundane, domestic horror erred more on the gross side and was something that felt like it was thrown in for effect rather than to help paint characters, set the scene or build an atmosphere.

This is definitely one that I can imagine a lot of people really, really loving, but it sadly wasn't for me.

Thanks to 404Ink and NetGalley for the review copy.

Thanks to Netgalley and 404 Ink for an ARC.

I feel conflicted about this one. My gut instinct is that the main character's internal monologue was too self-indulgently pretentious in her misery for me to enjoy it properly; I prefer my misery affectless. But that's just a preference. In terms of what the book was actually about, I appreciated the back and forth of Noelle's trains of thought; the stretching out and springing back of time; the pivotal moments that can haunt an ill brain so persistently that they become a kind of infection in themselves. All that was very good. The problem was that the author also included the idea of a vampire in the book in such a way that it felt like a gimmick to attract attention; the book doesn't need it. It feels like the vampire was supposed to be the hook for this novel that then became something else, and the vampire idea itself is just hanging around, not really sure what it's doing. I mean the guy clearly isn't actually a vampire and is as mentally ill as Noelle herself, but if you're going to introduce the idea of vampirism to your shoegaze novel then I feel like you should actually do something with it, you know?

I wish I'd read it sooner, I would be careful with who I recommended this too as it is dark and dense but for those interested in dark I would say this is a must.
The characters are so full and well written they have stayed with me well beyond the end of the book.

I genuinely am unsure how to rate and review this book.

It flitted between chapters written so oddly, bordering on depressive, and then on to wonderful character building story that I was desperate to see the relationship blossom between the two characters.

I ultimately couldn't finish this book, as the odd chapters (which were every other one) made it unenjoyable to read and put me into a slump. I have struggled to get into another book since.

That said, if you enjoy repressed Sapphics with religious guilt and mummy issues, this is the book for you. I personally couldn't abide the writing style of the odd fanciful chapters but otherwise it is fantastically well written, the character are deep and intriguing and I it still haunts my thoughts.

This was such a fun vampire book . Its like if Fleabag had vampires in it lol
Thank you for the eArc .

Dark and twisted in all the very best ways. I really enjoyed how this brought in the occult and how much it gave me the creeps