Quirky Cat
A disclosure before I begin my review: I picked up This Book is Cruelty Free for several reasons. For one thing, I am a vegetarian, and recently I've been trying to monitor my impact on the world. Not just in regards to animals, but the environment as well. So naturally, a novel like this instantly appealed to me.
This Book is Cruelty Free, written by Linda Newbery, is intended to be a guide to help readers lessen their negative impact on the world. It is admittedly more focused on the animal side of things, far from being a bad thing.
I love that the book is broken down into easy-to-digest sections. Not only does it make the whole concept feel more approachable, but it's more useful this way too. People looking to adjust a specific part of their lives can more easily find the resources required this way.
I would recommend reading The Omnivore's Dilemma for anybody looking for a more in-depth view of the food industry side of things. This Book is Cruelty Free does a great job of covering the basics, but there's a lot more to learn as well.
I do have one criticism of this novel that I hate to bring up, but I feel like I must: One of the citations comes from PETA. From the outside, this may look like a sound source to pull from – but if you do your research, you'll understand how damaging PETA actually is to the animal rights cause. It left a bad taste in my mouth, seeing them listed within this book. It put everything else covered into question. Again, I hate to bring this up, but it would be dishonest of me to ignore this point. So to be fair, I am docking an entire star from my rating.
Thanks to Pavilion Books and #NetGalley for making this book available for review. All opinions expressed are my own.
Read more reviews over at Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks