Considering this is a book about a zoo full of magical animals starring in-depth descriptions of each creature, a sapphic romance, and a slower pace over a lot of pages, I really expected to completely love it. Seriously, I LOVE speculative biology and all things fantastical, and mostly read romances between women, so this seemed right up my alley! It was not. I also thought about giving it 2 stars, because it did get more tolerable the further I got into it, the descriptions of the animals were pretty good, and I could see what the author was doing (or trying to do) with character arcs--but I'm rating based on my personal enjoyment, and there was never a point where I was actively having fun reading this book. That sucks, because I was really set up to love it! But by the end my friends were begging me to just give up on it because I was complaining so much but I had to stick it out to the end.

For starters, I did NOT like Aila as a character. Part of this is just that I prefer characters who are confident and driven right from the beginning, which was not the case here, that much is down to just my personal preferences. However, I have rarely ever found a main character so incredibly annoying as I did in The Phoenix Keeper. It wasn't her social anxiety, I get being afraid of crowds or having trouble talking to unfamiliar people, and I have a lot of love in my heart for characters who are weird (weird said with love!) and have trouble fitting in. The problem, though, is that Aila is weird and mean instead of weird and nice. She's just so deeply judgey of both her coworkers who are just trying to do their goddamn jobs and be nice to her, and even of zoo guests??? Like. I get that working with The Public can be harrowing but she's like mad at people for coming to the zoo that she works at, and showing interest in her life's work, and asking simple questions, even though she works in an educational position!!! Her inner monologue is just CONSTANTLY going "ugh this idiot doesn't know XYZ about the thing I'm literally supposed to be gently teaching them about?" It just really grated on me, especially as someone who has volunteered in zoo outreach stuff in the past. She's also just so incredibly unkind to her coworker/love interest Luciana; sure, she has some good reasons to be upset with Luciana, at least from Aila's perspective, but instead of handling this like an adult, she constantly insults her mentally and is rude to her face--if I remember correctly, there's a bit where Aila almost says the line, I swear to god, "calm your candy-coated tits" but cuts herself off first, basically unprompted. I cannot understand talking to a coworker she sees on a regular basis like this at all, especially with her social anxiety. Like she's just a mean-spirited person, but in a way that is deeply uninteresting because the book seems entirely unaware of this and it's mostly played for laughs without actually being funny. She's also just really unaware of how her actions affect other people for a good majority of the book.

She does get some growth in this area, like realizing she judged Luciana too harshly and... learning to care about her best friend who is CONSTANTLY coddling and supporting her, as well as getting more confident in working with the public and recognizing the importance of zoo publicity in general. I did appreciate that last point especially and felt like it was handled well, but Aila's arc in general felt very simple and really predictable.

I could've overlooked a lot more of this if Aila was a teenager and this was a YA book, but I was expecting actual adult fantasy and she is, supposedly, in her late twenties, so her character was just really frustrating and I had trouble actually rooting for her because of that.

Aila is also pretty terrible to both her love interest and especially to Tanya. There's a little arc in there about her realizing she's effectively been ignoring Tanya's big project while her friend has been sacrificing tons of time and effort to helping Aila with her own work, but this just felt so easy to me and like it didn't resolve the main issues of their friendship. Tanya is constantly coddling and supporting Aila, even when she's in the wrong, and again works so hard for her emotionally and physically while receiving very little back. This is made especially weird because Tanya is a black trans woman, representation that might've been really cool, except she ends up feeling super weirdly maternal towards Aila and really falling into the stereotypes of the black best friend character in a way that felt so gross. There's several references like comparing her to a "mama bear" and just being really protective over Aila, despite them being the same age. There's just so many moments where she's doing so much emotional work for Aila and comforting her and just generally being protective of her and it felt so... gross. In a similar way, Luciana, who I believe is coded to be this fantasy-world's equivalent of latina, is a much stronger personality than Aila, very opinionated, and is at one point literally described as "fiery," which is literally the name of the stereotype. Like. Come ON. I was just uncomfortable with the way that the women of color in Aila's life do SO much to support her and her journey, without really having strong character arcs of their own, despite the author's attempts otherwise. Especially when we have to be reminded every 20 pages that Aila is soooo pale and white.

My other biggest issue with this book is the writing style... like Aila's character, a lot of this felt much better suited for a YA fantasy than an adult one, cozy or not. I felt like it was really clumsy in places, with setting up character motivations and such, it felt a little like the author was just checking off boxes. It was very simplistic and often extremely repetitive. The same few adjectives were used for the characters over and over and over again like every time they were in a scene--I swear to god if I had to hear about Connor's ~dreamy curl of hair~ ONE more time I was just going to start screaming, but every single character got this same treatment. Aila herself was just constantly describing that she was SOOOO skinny and so thin and weak and so pale and burns so easily and is pasty white, to the point where it just felt weird. Who thinks about themselves that way??? Why do we even care that she's stick-thin and white??? That's also just a personal pet peeve for me though, but the repetition was ridiculous. The prose was also extremely telling and very little showing, with information about Aila's anxiety and her feelings and really every little detail just thrown at us without any kind of skill or nuance. Like, seriously, we were reminded of Aila's anxiety what felt like every three pages, which was just really grating--even if anxiety is a major part of her life and really affects everything, there would've been better ways to incorporate that into the scenes than just repeatedly announcing it to us. Also, for my least charitable critique of MacLean's writing, it was just deeply, deeply millennial. I can't really describe it any other way, it was just so twee and quirky and, for me, horribly annoying. The word "boop" is used MULTIPLE times over the course of this book. There's also literally three separate conversations about topping or bottoming, one of which is an incredibly strange interaction that I think is meant to be funny when she's talking to Connor, which is especially baffling, and then two more awkward ones with Luciana. Why did we need to know this? This book is more or less PG with maybe one fade-to-black, so having multiple conversations about sexual positions just feels stupid and immature, to be fully honest. There were just a lot of poor attempts at humorous and ~quirky~ writing that really didn't click for me at all, especially when I felt like the tone didn't blend well with the more serious moments in the book.

The plot itself was like... fine. I could see what MacLean was trying to do with Aila's character arc, and I think she succeeded to some extent, but also that this sort of arc is much more suited to a YA fantasy. I was invested in the phoenix breeding program, but it was PAINFULLY obvious who the culprit was, and I say that as someone who is completely terrible at solving mysteries.

Especially since this is marketed as a Sapphic romance, I knew that Connor wasn't going to remain the love interest, so it was pretty apparent that the whole arc with him was just to set him up as the big villain. It felt like kind of a waste of time since I knew Aila would end up with Luciana anyways and those sections were not especially interesting. I also felt like it was really cheap to just have "liking stocks and not caring about the main character's interests enough=the villain". Don't get me wrong, I'm as leery of business dudes as anyone else, but it just felt shallow and silly, especially because Aila is literally hurt by him not listening to her talk about her passions enough while actively tuning his conversation about stocks out. Like I think it would've been much more interesting for Connor to be a genuinely decent guy and then ALSO behind the phoenix stealing, or have him just be kind of a random asshole coworker. In general, I found him boring as a love interest and somehow even MORE boring as a main villain. More broadly, I could predict what the entire arc of Aila's character, the main romance, and the phoenix breeding like a quarter or less into the story, which made me really unmotivated to keep reading, especially since I didn't love Aila. I get that this is a cozy fantasy, but I still wish there were, like, any serious stakes. Surely there could've been something that didn't end up perfectly for Aila, even just one small thing? But also I think maybe I just don't like cozy fantasy. Highlight of the book for me was the page where I thought I'd get to read about a guy getting eaten by a kelpie, but we didn't even get that! Also, my final note is just that I hate an ending that's basically "the cops show up and make everything okay! Yayyy law enforcement and carceral justice in this wish-fulfillment fantasy!" But that might just be me being petty.

To end on a more positive note, MacLean's descriptions of the fantasy animals and the thought she put into their habitats/general ecology absolutely shone through in this book. I would've loved to read a fantasy textbook from her, just not this novel. I can also see what she's trying to do with Aila's character arc, and, again, I found the second half of the book better than the first as she began to have some growth and learn some lessons. I'm also sure that Aila is really positive representation for some people, and that many readers connected with her and resonated with her story. But for me, representation alone is not enough to sell me on a story, and the issues discussed above really made this an unpleasant read for me when I wanted so badly to love this book. 

I should probably stop reading cozy fantasy.