Animalia by Shauna C. Murphy

“It’s a nail-biting story that keeps you flipping the pages late into the night…”

Review by Rayleigh Setser

On an icy peninsula in Norway, there is a school where select students from around the world are taught the secrets of the Victorian-era world.

The school’s programs are:

Apothecary – for pharmacists.
Warbringer – for warriors.
Machinist – for inventors.
Artisan – for artists.
Animalia – for animalists.

Thirteen-year-old Sunday Gråe wants to follow in her late father’s footsteps and become Animalia – the way of working with animals’ unique abilities that is taught only at the prestigious and secretive Svalbard School. Sunday’s dreams come true when she is admitted, but the school is more dangerous than she thought. The Animalia students are mysteriously going missing… and she could be next.

Release Date: 3/2/2021

Genre: Middle Grade | Fantasy

Pages: 344

I received this book from the author//publisher. All comments and opinions are entirely my own and this review is voluntary.

"Life is dangerous. Embrace it — if you don't, you won't live."

I am very careful about comparing books to bestsellers and classics, because that can create unfair expectations for debut books. However, Animalia is very much meant for the audience that loves Harry Potter and prestigious types of magic schools. There are so many similarities between Animalia and Harry Potter, in fact, that I had a difficult time *not* comparing them, because the similarities truly aren't subtle. So if you've read Harry Potter, it's almost a given that you'll compare the two. However, it's not, by any means, a "copy" of Harry Potter.

That being said, I loved the framework of Animalia, and the characters were so special. It's a nail-biting story that keeps you flipping the pages late into the night, and it's perfect for winter time reading. My main reason for 3 stars is because the framework is absolutely there but the execution is a bit lacking. Animalia is a solid story, but I had to back up and re-read pages very often because scene transitions and setting discrepancies caught me off guard. The dialogue is also pretty choppy, and some character responses don't always make sense when they're talking to each other. As I said, the framework for the story is without a doubt 5 stars, which is why I finished the book, but I do wish a good developmental editor had their hands in this one because the issues that clogged the reading flow would've been easy fixes.

Overall, I will absolutely be following this author's future releases because I loved Sunday and her story. And I do recommend Animalia as a fun middle grade adventure set in the snowy North, but I was just disappointed that the writing flow kept jolting me out of the story.