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A Good Animal
Sara Maurer
Publication Date: February 24th, 2026
St. Martin’s Press
288 Pages
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Genre: General Fiction | New Adult
Set in Michigan during the mid-1990s, seventeen-year-old Everett Lindt loves working on his family’s sheep farm, and the only thing he wants is to continue working the land he was raised on. Then he meets newcomer Mary, and the only thing she wants is to be an artist and leave for California. They have an instant connection that leaves them both with a choice to make.
The author’s writing style is very slow-paced, and it kind of works here, showing the pace of farming life. Her writing is very descriptive, which makes it easy to picture the setting in the mind’s eye. All is not a fairy tale on the farm, and the author does a wonderful job of balancing that out. Everett has to ask himself what he owes his family, and if that is more important than what he should do for himself.
I think it will surprise those of you who have read my reviews for a long time that the romantic angle in this book was such a pleasure for me to read. Everett and Mary’s feelings for each other were written very realistically. Maurer writes about first love and how it can consume you, making it the only thing that matters, even if it is with someone whose dreams are the exact opposite of yours.
The author’s commitment to making farm life realistic means there is a lot of detail about the technical aspects of sheep farming, and I can understand how some might feel these parts are a tad too slow. I am someone who appreciates character-driven stories when the characters are worthy, and Everette and Mary are, especially given the emotional stakes the two of them are dealing with. I appreciated how the author showed the results of the impact of the decisions we make when we’re young, and when our hearts and our minds are pulling us in two different directions. The ending felt a bit rushed to me after the slower pace of the middle of the book. I liked this book for the most part, and I would read another by the author. This was a fairly decent debut.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
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