"Before I get to the review, I want to make sure to mention I am ALWAYS grateful to receive books from publishers. (A big thank you to Doubleday for allowing me the chance to read this one.) I can try to imagine the herculean task that writing a book must be - authors work many hours, bravely sharing their innermost thoughts and imaginings with people outside and not at all connected to themselves. That's a huge deal, and it should always be recognized as such. I also recognize that every book does not resonate with ever reader. Unfortunately, this novel did not resonate with me.

The synopsis painted this book as an exploration of grief through the POV of a woman dealing with a miscarriage while trying to keep her small brood of chickens alive in a devastatingly cold Minnesota winter. It's billed as being full of "wisdom, sorrow, and joy". I expected big feelings.

My first impression was that the writing was perfunctory, distantly emotionless, and austere. I hoped we'd just gotten off on the wrong foot and kept reading. There were chickens, and they did play a major role in the story. There were a few mentions of a miscarriage.

Other than that, it felt like I was reading clusters of detached thoughts about animal husbandry and house cleaning, with some fleeting glimpses of the protagonist's marriage, friendships, and an almost clinically brief report of her miscarriage.

It all read like a very dry journal.

I tried to unpack it - having dealt with a shattering pregnancy loss myself and being a hopelessly animal-obsessed empath, I allowed myself to be open to the fact that not everyone handles grief in the same way. Some of us wrap ourselves in it, facing it head-on and allowing it to brutalize us until we come out, battered, on the other side. Others of us remove ourselves as far from it as we can, and we stay tucked away from it until we can peek back into our feelings and find a point in time that they won't drown us.

Even trying to think that perhaps the story's protagonist was one of these latter types, who distanced herself from her grief and found solace in these chickens to sustain her through it....I just found myself not connecting with her at all.

Brood certainly has potential, but it missed the mark for me."

"I generally avoid the celebrity author books, but TV and comedy legend Bob Mortimer seemed like one to try and I had high hopes. What a massive letdown. There are flashes of his trademark quirky and outlandish humour, but it soon falls flat. Nothing more than a standard crime novel, and not a very good one. The plot is simple and uneventful, the characters pretty unmemorable. Worse, the writing is flat and dull. Far too many profanities for no reason that dilute their impact, a weird obsession with toilet humour that isn't funny. Not good. Stick to TV, Bob. Leave the bland celebrity novels to Richard Osman.

Side note: many reviews and ratings of this book seem to be based on the publisher releasing only the first 2 chapters to reviewers ahead of publication. How anyone can provide a rating based on that I don't know, bit hopefully not the start of a worrying trend. Only review once you've seen the whole book."

Joe is currently reading 1356 (The Grail Quest, #4)