This was another book in the Read Harder challenge, covering both a cozy mystery and a story told from the perspective of an animal or inanimate object.

This book is a murder mystery, told from the perspective of a flock of sheep. The idea is pretty adorable, but if I had really thought about it before hand, I think I would have realised that it has its problems.

For one, sheep are really only interested in grazing and grass, which is a heavy feature of the dialogue. Also, sheep are sheep and so they see things in a bit of a muddled way. I had to take a break (as I lost my book) and I’ve also been on holiday and not reading a whole lot so it got a bit confusing sometimes.

Overall, it was just a bit meandering (like sheep, I suppose) and the kind of intuitive leaps and bounds seemed somewhat unearned (I mean, they are sheep). I suppose overall, I just didn’t get on board with the whole idea that sheep could understand anything human (though amusingly, the sheep also don’t really understand how humans manage). So it just felt somewhat forced, if sometimes somewhat adorable.

The sheep characters were all well done though, they all managed to have their individual personalities. I think I particularly liked Mopple (the memory sheep) who had his particular antagonism with the butcher, but also Othello who was a a bit of an outsider with his own secrets.

I really don’t have much to write because honestly, it is about a bunch of sheep. The ‘mystery’ part unravels (somewhat unsatisfactorily) at the very, very end and the suspects seem more hapless than murder-y. Basically, too much seen through sheep’s eyes to make very much sense to a human reader.