unfortunately wasn't a fan of this.

pros:
- I liked the bits of information, I'm always interested in learning new things, though I won't remember most of it I'm sure. Packham is clearly well-informed and passionate.
- I liked some of the turns of phrase, which were original and vivid.
- I found the present day/therapy scenes the most poignant and involving. 
- some of the animal descriptions were really good and it clear how excited Packham was, which was nice.
- I liked the bits about punk (and wanted to know more).

cons:
- the start is fraught with cruelties by neglect to snakes, all kinds of insects, lizards, Packham's many wild pets. I didn't get how he didn't seem to care that they animals he had kept dying, baked by the sun or sitting on congealed leaves, nor that his parents didn't say something about him doing all this.
- my main problem was the writing style. While I enjoyed the odd, extra vivid or imaginative turn of phrase, Packham uses it constantly and ALL the time, so much so that I frequently struggled to tell what actually he was talking about. It made it feel like a slog to read, trying to figure out what's going on every two pages what with the changes in POV, the chronological date shifts, and the seriously overly descriptive language.
- he describes some kinda gross things, eating tadpoles for one, and the whole 'discovering his sexuality' felt really unnecessary? It didn't lead into any forays into romance, it was just descriptions of pornos.
- i found all the changes in POV really confusing and was often lost as to who was speaking, and I wasn't sure these extra characters added much depth to the thing, since they only popped up once.
- it overall felt pretty miserable. Packham doesn't offer any uplifting at the end. His falcon dies after barely six months, he's bullied relentlessly, and he's badly suicidal in the present day of 2003. This is obviously true life not a fairytale, but the blurb promises 'a magical relationship with a Kestrel...learn the lessons of love, life, death and acceptance'. I wasn't convinced there was much of a magical relationship at all and did Packham learn acceptance from the Kestrel? He seems to have been driven to despair by it, utterly abandoned by his family.
- finally, it was really choppy, bringing up subjects only to drop them a moment later. Particularly, the bit with the bats - he's shown to fixate on them, sees them in the pet shop, and then- nothing. No explanation of when he changed hyperfixations or why. Other things came up - the drawing Packham did for the girl at school with no indication of how that had come about, the relationship with various sympathetic adults, etc.

overall, unfortunately not a fan. I felt like the blurb miss-sells it a bit, promising this uplifting, wholesome tale when it focuses much more on depression, isolation, bullying and without much of a positive ending.