Described as a lighthearted adult cozy fantasy about magical zookeeping with a queer romance, this is actually a not very lighthearted, anxiety inducing story about an extremely anxiety ridden woman who's supposed to be 28, but reads more like a teenaged social pariah, complete with perfect mean girl nemesis coworker (absolutely spilling over with enemy to lover flags) and hot male zookeeper (absolutely spilling over with not-gonna-happen flags) crush she can't help get tongue tied around.  Early on in the story she spends an entire week having a mental breakdown after reading a news article and being held together by her saint of a best friend/therapist stand-in (we find out shortly after that she has an actual real therapist whom she didn't contact on her own volition), having panic attacks around crowds, accidentally implying her crush smelled like fish among other stumbles, and being brow beaten by her nemesis at every turn.

There's nothing wrong with any of these things, if this was what the book was sold as and I was in the mood to read that. It was not, and I am not; I don't have it in me to deal with an MC like this right now. This has a lot going for it if you're looking for a more YA high schoolish vibe and like the magical animal theme. There's great lgbt rep (Tanya is the best character and it's not even close), there's a enemies to lovers romance plot that's SO loudly telegraphed from early on, there's a lot of animal conservation focus, and the Illumicrate version is really pretty and filled with animal sketches; not sure if the regular editions have that. If I had finished this and things continued as they were, I would probably have been somewhere in the 3/5 range.

I'm absolutely not dismissing social anxiety as I'm very personally familiar with it, but I'm dropping this out of pure exasperation for mismatched expectations between the book and how it was sold.

This book has the dubious honor of getting me to cancel my Illumicrate sub.