Unnatural Selection - Coco Cooper - ★★★

AUTHOR: Coco Cooper

GENRE: Contemporary Fiction, Satire

PUBLICATION DATE: June 13, 2025.

RATING: 3 stars.

In a Nutshell: A contemporary satirical fiction about a character with an identity crisis. Mostly quirky, fairly funny, somewhat reflective, a little distressing. Goes overboard in the final quarter. As long as you go with the flow and are prepared for some disturbing events, this book can be entertaining.

Plot Preview:

Teddington Miles aka Teddy lives a happy life with Millie. As she works from home, they spend many happy hours enjoying each other’s company. The only thorn in Teddy’s existence is Charlie, the unwelcome visitor who always turns Millie’s attention away from Teddy. When Millie suddenly vanishes one day, Teddy is sure that Charlie is the guilty party. He begins a secret investigation with the help of some trusted companions, but the truths that come out aren’t what Teddy expected.

The story comes to us in Teddy’s first-person perspective, with some epistolary interludes from the other characters.

Oh, and did I tell you that Teddy is a dog?

The blurb (and my plot preview) go much beyond the initial 10-15% of the book. Maggie’s disappearance doesn’t happen until much later into the story. But until this point, there is barely anything concrete happening in the novel, with the chapters till then providing a kind of background into everyone’s individual situations.

That said, the blurb does contain one helpful line: “Unnatural Selection examines our modern obsession with treating pets like people with heart, humour and wickedly clever insight.” The book takes this concept and goes wild with it. So it would help to keep this line in mind to set the right expectations: a dog that behaves human.

As a dog lover, I grabbed this debut as soon as I saw that it came from a canine point of view. However, this isn't a typical pet story as Teddy doesn’t consider himself a pet, though he does know that he is a miniature goldendoodle. He is convinced that the world has people with four legs and people with two legs. As such, it is hilarious (and a bit awkward) to see Teddy’s declarations about his “relationship’ with his “partner” Maggie. Teddy’s vocabulary is also above par, thanks to his fondness for Netflix. (In fact, his vocabulary is better than that of most humans I know.) However, we soon see that Teddy’s confidence doesn’t exactly mean that his observations can be trusted.

To use a common fictional parlance, Teddy is an unreliable narrator, which forms the foundation of the comedy in this novel. Whatever Teddy says sounds true, but we know for sure that it isn't so. As such, there are two truths in this book: Teddy’s version and the actual version. Reconciling the two in our minds is fun. We can easily laugh at Teddy’s interpretation of events, though it is equally easy to feel sorry for him.

In between Teddy’s narration, we get to hear from the humans in Teddy’s circle – Maggie, Charlie, and their group of friends (none of whom was particularly endearing to me) – and learn what’s happening in their lives. We also get to hear from a pet therapist who himself needs therapy for his personal problems. These subplots lead to many digressions, some genuinely funny and some just annoying. Many of these scenes comes through text messages and emails. The text messages were fun; the emails required a lot of patience. If you read them through a satirical lens, they would make sense. If not, they wouldn’t seem like professional emails at all.

As you can guess, Teddy’s voice doesn’t sound canine for a major chunk of the book. The first quarter of the book worked excellently for me once I started reading it as a satire. However, the humour soon started to wear thin and the situations started feeling repetitive. The dog school sections were the most boring for me, even though I developed a soft corner for Bo, the misunderstood pitbull at Teddy’s daycare. Other than Bo, the only fabulous dog character was Patrick, with his age leading to a wisdom that Teddy lacks.

The book is still entertaining as there are bits and pieces of outstanding in between the good and the average. The final quarter, however, is what brought my rating majorly down. This is quite ironic because it is only in this section that Teddy finally learns about his true identity and role in Maggie’s life. I should have loved the dog’s finally becoming a dog. But the events that lead to this self-discovery were a bit dark and disturbing. We love dogs because they aren't like humans. So to see a dog turn almost humanly feral in his emotions was too much for me to handle.

All in all, despite that troubling final quarter, this debut indie novel still works as an entertaining satire. The storyline is not at all like those in typical doggy books; this creativity of the author deserves credit. However, it would be better to suspend all disbelief and just go with the flow while reading this unusual plot.

Recommended if you are looking for something whimsical and are okay with dogs going bonkers (in a human but not humane way.)

3 stars. (4 stars for the first quarter, 3 stars for the middle, 2 stars for the final quarter except for the ending which was again 3 stars. An easy score to average.)

My thanks to Victory Editing NetGalley Co-op for providing the DRC of “Unnatural Selection” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.