I would sum this book up as “The Devil Wears Prada for vegans”.
“Animal Instinct” is about a journalist who quits her job to go work for an animal rights organization. The journalist soon discovers that her boss is emotionally unstable and toxic.
The novel is based on the author’s experience of quitting her own job to go work in an AR organization. Names are changed and many of the characters are amalgamations( but only slightly). The fictitious names she uses forvarious groups are a bit tongue-in-cheek and are funny.
The bulk of the story is about how the members of the “fictitious”
organization take abuse from their boss and work around her out of
their intense devotion to helping animals.
This is one aspect of the book I liked. While it painted the boss and
other heads of various “fictitious” AR organizations as being “eccentric”, it painted the people who work for these organizations as heroic in enduring what they endured, because of their intense love for animals. It paints them as intensely decent super hard working people.
The main character who works closely with the fictitious boss gets most of the abuse. Her soul searching about why she stays involves detailed descriptions of various kinds of animal abuse that stop just short of being educational.
I like the idea of someone picking up some beach reading and getting a bit of an education into the current state of animal welfare.
There are lots of references in the book to real life AR victories,
books and campaigns.
High literature it is not. It is the kind of thing to read at the end
of the day when you are too tired for other things.