danimacuk's reviews
356 reviews

I don't know if there's a single thing in this book that I could point to as something I particularly enjoyed or thought was unique, innovative, or thought-provoking. I know that it sounds pretty harsh, but I can't understand why this book was written.

The story is told through the eyes of a young girl who learns at age nine that she can taste feelings and attributes through food. She learns about ONE family secret this way; with everyone else's food, it simply gives her grief or mild interest. Her brother is discussed throughout the novel, but is mostly boiled down to just a weird kid with a weird "ability" to... turn into furniture? Because he doesn't like his life? And that's it.

There is little to no character development, and in some places, I actually felt the characters get less and less interesting as the story progressed. The mother, Lane, is describes as flighty in her interests, but it sure doesn't seem like it in the book. Her affair is never commented on or discussed other than "it's a thing that has happened for a long time".

I felt almost no connection to any of the characters in the story; many of them were either brought up, and then rarely mentioned or commented on again after they fulfilled their "purpose" in relation to Rose, the main character. Others that did exist throughout the entire story didn't develop at all. I didn't feel like I learned anything about them, for the most part, throughout the story.

Furthermore, there is virtually no setting. Besides naming places or street names, I would have no idea where this story took place had I never heard of L.A.. And I have even less of an idea of when this story takes place. There's talk of laptop computers, movies shown on airplanes, and television. But cell phones or any advanced technology aren't spoken of. I guess the setting is somewhere from the mid-nineties to the 2000's?

Aside from story and narrative, the prose is pretty poorly written. As a reader, I find it irritating when I have to go back and re-read a phrase or sentence or passage several times to attempt to understand the meaning. This novel was filled with passages like that, as well as metaphors and descriptors that didn't even make sense. Flashbacks were also occasionally hard to follow, too. And the no-punctuation-for-dialogue? Really annoying, and really poorly done. It was sometimes hard to understand what was part of the dialogue and what was internal monologue. Lastly, the author wasn't creative at all with dialogue signifiers. "S/He said" and "s/he asked" were pretty much the only two phrases used throughout the entire novel.

I have no idea where or by whom I was recommended this novel. And I don't know why that person or site recommended it to me.

The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets came to my attention in a Barnes & Nobles when I was in the mood to browse solely based on covers. Yep, that's right. I was judging books by... well, you know the drill. The cover was pretty and had an interesting title. When I turned the book over to read the summary on the back, I was pretty curious. I've always been a fan of books that explore the relationship between criminals and victims, and this book seemed like a good combination of that, plus a little bit of contemporary social criticism.

And, I'll honestly say that I was impressed. After reading a few poorly written books previously, I was very happy with the prose and story line. There were three or four main perspectives being told in this novel, and I found myself getting excited to read every one of them when a new chapter hit. Usually I get bored with one or more perspectives, but this book kept it fresh and interesting.

Ultimately, I wanted more at the conclusion of the book. I felt like it was wrapped up too quickly, and I was wanting a lot more out of a few characters, which is why I am giving this novel only four out of five stars.