The Phoenix Keeper by S.A. MacLean

TL;DR: This is warm, feathered hug in a book and I adore it.
Source: Netgalley! Thank you so much to the publisher

Plot: An overly anxious zookeeper has to try to get her life and her phoenix charge in order to save a species.
Characters: Oh my gosh – I started out not liking our main character, but I ended up loving everyone.
Setting: A zoo! A ZOO! What a fun and amazing place for a book!
Fantasy: This is a very low, cozy fantasy about a world with magical creatures. It’s not here to give you details, it’s here to give you a hug and a phoenix to cheer for.

Thoughts:

Cozy books can sometimes feel a bit like the same thing over and over if authors aren’t careful with how they approach the genre. The coffee shop, bookshop is done a lot, small town, etc. But a Zoo? This was a first and a delight. I can also confidently say though, if you’re not an animal nerd or a big lover of zoos you may not be into this.

The Phoenix Keeper is a warm, cozy book about a zookeeper in a magical world who tends to the endangered Phoenix exhibit. She wants more than anything to help the population breed so she can care for these struggling animals. Alia is a hot mess of anxiety and almost debilitating shyness (at least for a zookeeper). In all honesty, I didn’t like her at first. I’m not a fan of ‘disaster’ type characters and she read initially as that. But the slow development of her character was clear and lovely, her story paced well and I absolutely loved everyone in this by the end.

The threat of the book, illegal black market animal parts dealers, felt real enough while also just distant enough that book kept a good balance between cozy and tension. I adored the romance, I was cheering for these two from the second interaction though I had no idea how it was going to work and the icing on this cake? The animals. I would read more 500 page books about different zookeepers and different animals if S.A. MacLean decided to write more. 5/5, this was a book for me.