There are no words to describe how much I hated this book, but I'll do my best so you don't make the same mistake.

Let's start like this. If the stars went from -5 to 5, I would give it -10. If the only thing keeping me from going to hell was a good rating and review of this book, I would suffer eternal torment. If God himself told me this was the best book in the world, I would laugh at him. There is nothing good about it.

After that, you're probably thinking "It can't be THAT bad. She must be exaggerating." You'd be right. This book is so much worse.

It all starts at the beginning. This book is obviously written by a journalist, and while I have no problem with journalists, they should understand that an article and a book have two different formats. This author (because it seems that Suzanne Chisholm was simply added for the credit) does not get that. He opens, continues, and ends in article format. This ruins a book's flow.

Next, and what dropped this score like it was a flaming alligator demanding higher taxes and more money for the 1%, was the idiocy of the author. Parfit tries, and hopefully fails, to convince the reader that Luna (a male orca, if you don't know) is better off in a bay away from all orcas, constantly surrounded by boat traffic and people who want to kill him, subjected to noise that could harm his hearing and pollutants that could poison him. Yeah, cause this is better than shipping him back to his home pod. In case you did fall for it, let me explain why the author's argument is so stupid.

1. Humans cannot provide the amount of socialization a whale needs. Boats, swimming humans, people by docks, none of it is enough. In the wild, orcas are rarely alone. Many of them are in constant contact, rubbing against each other, being in sight distance, or simply always being heard (unless they are transient, which Luna is not). Luna had none of this. Humans could not give him the amount of contact a healthy young orca requires.

2. Luna, as a male orca, would have had to mate if he survived. However, he was never around other orcas, so that chance would never have come. Not only that, but male killer whales also learn how to mate by practicing with each other or within their pods (no, it is not like that). Luna could not do that, so his chances of mating are lowered. When he matured, he could have become dangerous out of frustration. This puts surrounding board and people in danger, as he might take it out on them. Yes, he was a friendly calf, but he was not yet mature.

3. Interacting with any boats teaches him bad habits. Luna learns that if he goes to a boat, he gets attention. So, he goes to a boat, and gets attention. The author claims that this is good. He's being socially active. He is wrong. Luna instead learns not to fear boats, even ones with dangerous additions. This actually is why he died. He got too close to a boat, and it killed him. Accidents like this happen to many whales and dolphins like him. It is almost unheard of that it doesn't end this way. If they freed him, allowed the truck ride and temporary captivity, Luna would have had a much longer life.

4. People. Resident orcas like Luna eat fish. There will always be people who claim he endangers their jobs because he eats the fish they want to catch. There were even people ready to kill him, and the author saw no correlation. Luna however didn't know this. He didn't know that some people who used to be friends now wanted to kill him. He may have one day gone over to a new boat, where people came from someplace else. He wanted to meet new people. The humans could have become frightened, or simply have been sick, and shot Luna to death. This actually happened for years around the world. Before Luna's time, of course, but it was still recent enough to be in everyone's memories. Luna would have no fear of humans, and that could have been his downfall. Of course, a boat chewed him up and spit him back out first.

5. Bays, especially ones with fish farms and boats, are polluted (If you don't believe me about fish farms, the bit of Listening to Whales gets into that). Pollutants, such as fertilizer, fish poo (excessive amounts), fish pellets, and oil leakages, along with the normal plastics and cans, enter the water here. None of these are good for Luna's health, and can hurt his eyes, blowhole, and stomach. Maybe he doesn't swallow something, but his meal did. Now that is inside him, wrecking havoc. It is honestly a miracle he didn't get sick, especially since it can be so much worse in places like the one he lived. The noise, too, is a pollutant. Killer whales have sensitive hearing. Luna would have had to listen to the roar of boat engines, the lumber mill, and possible seal scarers (something used by fish farms to ward off seals, at decibels high enough to give a human, who does not have quite as sensitive hearing, pain). Depending on the day, he would have to listen to that constantly, unable to escape. A lone orca in the ocean, especially as young as him, wouldn't survive long elsewhere. If he were with his pod, he would not be subject to this torment.

There you go. That's why you shouldn't read this. The author proposes ideas and for Luna's health and safety, and does not know how to write a book. If you STILL want to read this book, then I don't know what's going on inside that head of yours.

A warning to future readers of this book: this is more about SeaWorld and the trainer's life than it is about the orcas. I loved this book, and I love learning about a topic in a book written in biography form, but this is more biography than whales than I expected. That is why I wrote this review, just so you don't start reading in expecting an in-depth view of an orca's life in captivity. It has depth, but not the kind I was expecting.

I'm going to start off with: this book it is good. It is interesting and at times entertaining. It is not, however, a book about dolphin behavior or conscience as it is portrayed. Instead, this book is about the relationship between humans and dolphins. As a result, it lost a star, because this is not what I was looking for, nor was it what the title suggested.
This book also varies in credibility, and some chapters are worse than others. If I rated it by chapter-to-chapter, for instance, every Joan Ocean one would get 1 star, tops. In case you don't know, Ocean is an ex-psychologist who has taken her fascination with dolphins to the next level. She has become a cult-leader, preaching about how dolphins are aliens who can teleport, time-travel, and communicate telepathically. She lacks logic in all forms of the word. She believes that the images she "recieves" when talking to dolphins are answers to questions. They are not. They are the first thing she thinks of when hearing the question. This is common understanding. And the "spaceship" she sees, while I may not know what it is, I know that Hawaii is made up of volcanos, so I'm guessing they are related. The dolphins looked different because of the change in the water. That's it. Ocean says she would lose credibility for publishing that. What she is unaware of us that she has no credibility in the first place. And this makes me question Casey's work. Yes, she is writing about human-dolphin relationships, and Ocean fits in here. However, she tries to use well-known facts in tangent with Ocean's crazy theories, and that does not work. This may be nonfiction, but I know that I would not use it as a source. If I did, I would do a lot of fact checking to be sure that what Casey says is accurate.
Finally, while I didn't mind it, as I've read much worse, Casey does talk about dolphin slaughters, and goes into detail, so if this is a sensitive topic for you, I would avoid this book.
In the end, I did learn a lot about the relationship between humans and dolphins. While I do not trust it completely, it is still a good starting point for that topic. If you still want to read this, enjoy it. Just be warned it has a slow start.