- Thank you NETGALLY for providing a free ARC copy -

My feelings for this book is complicated.
I mean, with a title like that I'm kind of expecting both romcom vibes and a person who loves animals.

That wasn't really what you got. You got an foul tempered and foul mouthed women who was actually traumatized and used to be a good loving animal lover. 8 years on a zoo planet from hell ruined her. But the thing is, that wasn't really outlined in the beginning. All we got was "greedy corporate zoo doesn't care about their animals"
You slowly got introduced to the depth of her trauma and how ruined she had become from it.

But, as an animal lover myself, seeing the title really set some expectations. And then reading about a woman who doesn't seem to like animals a lot (she constantly swears and talks bad about them), and then there was the incident with the bats where she figured out they were sick and knew how to cure them and just STRAIGHT UP DIDN'T TELL ANYBODY. I was furious!

I almost dropped this book so many times in that first 50%, the only reason I didn't was because it was an ARC read.

In the end, I'm happy I did finish it. I'd even read the sequel. It got a little better after the 50% and the last 20% was really pure perfection. I got teary eyed twice!

But really, the title. I cannot underline my disappointment enough. This wasn't a light hearted story, it wasn't romcom, it wasn't even very funny. It was a serious story about the desperate lows a desperate (and broken) woman goes to when she's given up all hope and I can see other people will have the same misunderstanding from the title and blurb as me.

I'm unsure how much I liked this, and it took me several days to get through. (Which, as a binge reader, usually means the book isn't catching my attention as much).

I liked it more than Max Brooks very popular World War Z, despite thinking that WWZ was probably better written. WWZ was an new and unique take on the zombie genre and generally considered one of the bests. While Devolution has part of the same flair of being presented as non-fiction, which means it has tibids of science and stuff. (Which personally I'm a big fan of). It felt a lot more like a typical horror slasher movie type of book. It even had the very stereotypical cast of very-stupid-characters that'd have you screaming at the screen (or page in this case) of "DON'T DO THAT!"

I think I might have liked it more had I grown up in any kind of Big Foot culture, but there weren't a lot of Big Foot things on TV while I was growing up in rural europe. To me, they're just apes and I never really saw why people got so excited over it when there are real primates just chilling all over the world.

However, where the better-written World War Z bored me into long gaps of ignoring the book, Devolution went down like a smooth drink whenever I picked it up. Knowing the ending from the beginning was interesting, but it kept me glued to the pages wanting to know how it actually happened.

I'd definitely read more books from Max Brooks like this in the future, but I overall think I'd have enjoyed it more if I liked Sasquatch creatures.