I think "Three Bags Full" by Leonie Swann will translate better into film/visual than it does on the page (I'm think the talent show scenes in particular). It's quite difficult to describe this cosy murder mystery where the main cast of characters are sheep. I suppose it is a cross between Babe and Miss Marple. Enjoyable way to spend a few hours.

This is a difficult book to review.

It’s well written, extremely funny and the main protagonists are a flock of sheep!

Seeing the world from their point of view was funny and thought provoking! The meanings of words and phrases change beyond recognition when looked at without the cultural understanding we take for granted.

The way in which they investigate the murder of their shepherd, George is at turns ingenious and hilarious!

The thing that suffered from this restricted point of view however was the murder mystery itself. Their short attention span and inability to relate to human emotions and motivations meant that the story wasn’t carried through to the firm conclusion that I expect in a mystery.

All in all I would give this book 3 1/2 stars but am happy to round it up to 4. And I’d recommend it to anyone who loves a quirky story and doesn’t mind some loose ends!


*** Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher ***

I do love a cosy mystery novel and one featuring sheep as the protagonists, sounded both unusual and funny so I was looking forward to diving right into "Three Bags Full". While the 'observations' by the sheep of the humans in the community are certainly amusing, the cast of characters, in particular sheep, was simply to large to accurately keep track. I assume the large number of sheep was used to reflect multiple personalities and also the number of sheep owned by the unfortunate farmer, but their names/personalities tended to blue after a while and I kept needing to check the character list to keep track. Not for me sadly.

A cosy crime mystery featuring sheep detectives investigating a crime. Unusual and unique but there were too many characters and I lost focus in the narrative.

Sadly this was a DNF for me. Cosy crime is one of my favourite genres, so I was looking forward to this as it seemed a different kind than normal, but it as all so slow, and with so many characters that it was hard to keep track, that I gave up 1/4 of the way through as it became a task to read it, rather than enjoyable