Rating: 3/5
Review: OK but not great
I thought Odd Bird was OK but nothing more. It is narrated by Simon (“Bird”) who is an expert on the mating behaviour of birds. However, his knowledge of human mating behaviour is catastrophically hopeless, and this is a pretty standard RomCom in which the hapless Simon is guided and helped in his quest for a mate by his slightly louche, devious friend Phil.
It’s decently written and Simon’s voice is quite amusing for a while as he talks about humans and their love lives as if they were the subject of his academic study. Men and women are invariably “males” and “females”, for example, a relationship is a “pair-bond” etc. and he analyses his own and others’ behaviour as if it were the subject of one of his bird studies. Simon is besotted with one woman, completely unable to understand that another is very keen on him or the behaviour of her jealous suitor...you get the picture. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it does pall after a while; there were quite strong echoes of The Rosie Project (which I loved) but for me Odd Bird just didn’t have enough freshness or real humour to carry a whole book.
This might make a reasonable beach read, but I can only give it a qualified recommendation.
(My thanks to Farrago for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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