I loved this final full length novel of the Natural History series. Erin Mallon’s humor in these books is perfection! Or at least it is my perfectly matched to my own sense of humor! I loved getting to be back with Calliope from Flirtasaurus and Mabel from Lovebug. And oh my gosh was Mabel definitely #unchained or whatever different craziness she was about at the time!

This book had the same crazy out there wackiness of the situations the characters found themselves in or how they reacted to people or events around them. And while the first book will always be my favorite, because, dinosaurs, this one came pretty close to being better than the first two in that I LOVED getting both sides of the story as it alternated between Louise and James. While the love interests in the first two books, Ralph (snort-laugh) and Wally, definitely had their personalities shine through with Mallon’s writing, James getting his own voice in this story just made everything even better!

Now the family issues in this one were definitely deep for Louise, Cold Brew as James nicknamed her, they made sense and I liked how they were all wrapped up in the end. I feel like it was done realistically. The single dad bit as well, what a unique situation James had that led to his daughter Iris, and it was perfect how he dealt with her and even with dating. I totally got Louise’s points about a father should put his daughter/child first. It was based on her lack of that with her own parents. But even with my own good experience with divorced and remarried parents, I have always felt that is important too.

So many things to mention that stuck out for me. One, just like one of the characters mentioned, I also always have to think when I’m trying to spell the word jeopardy. You didn’t see it of course, but I had to pause and think as I typed it for that last sentence. A line thrown in about how the rhythm is going to get you just randomly, but hilarious if you caught it. AND THEN! OH MY GOSH! The bedroom scene where one of Mabel’s praying mantises makes a guest appearance had me laughing so hard and later on googling just what or if a praying mantis might actually be able to lift anything like in this scene. A sarcastic reply to Louise from James asking if she was “inviting him into her oven”. So so good. Love love love! I think with Teddy Hamilton narrating, I’ll have to buy this on audio to listen to as well. Another hit from Erin Mallon, and I was so pleased to see she’s got some short stories coming out that will fill in some details and add some fun scenes for these characters.