The Real Macaw

By: Donna Andrews

Available for purchase from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Meg juggles twins, murder, and a back-talking bird in the next side-splittingly funny installment in the award-winning, New York Times bestselling series

During a 2am feeding for her four-month-old twins, Meg Langslow hears an odd noise and goes downstairs to find her living room filled with dozens of animals—cats, dogs, hamsters, gerbils, rabbits, guinea pigs, and a stunningly foul-mouthed macaw. She soon learns that financial woes have caused the local animal shelter to repeal its no-kill policy.

Her kindhearted father, her zoologist grandfather, and other like-minded citizens have stolen all the shelter’s animals, both as a gesture of protest and to protect them until the hated policy can be repealed. But the volunteer who was to transport the animals to new homes has been murdered. Was it the victim’s tangled love life that drove someone to murder? Or the dark secrets behind local politics? And will Meg ever succeed in finding homes for all the animals that have landed in her life?

Full of the hilarious shenanigans – avian as well as human – that have come to surround Meg and her eccentric band of friends and family, the latest from the one and only Donna Andrews will have you laughing until the very last page: it’s The Real Macaw!

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This has the classic Meg Langslow cover. I love that every title and story in the series has at least one animal as a central part of the mystery. And yes, in this one it's a Macaw...apparently very rare and with a colorful vocabulary. lol

Meg Langslow is back with her quirky and very large family. She has just had twin boys, so her and Michael are dealing with lots of sleep deprivation. Despite her worries in previous novels, she is a great mother. She still has her "notebook that tells me when to breathe" and I am happy to see she is willing to ignore it to snuggle with her boys. She adores them, and her and Michael shifted from being a married couple to being parents with little to no added friction. It helps that they are both smart and even tempered.

On night after putting one of the twins' down after a feeding she hears animal noises coming from downstairs...praying someone turned on Animal Planet, she goes to investigate. Turns out the CORSICANS (read the book) stole all the animals from the county shelter because it had just changed into a kill-shelter. Most of the area is outraged...and things are destined to get worse before they get better. In all of this mess a murdered body is found behind the victim's furniture store.

Meg really stays on the outside of this investigation more than any other book because of the boys. She wants to stay safe, but being that all the animals are at her house and most of the discussing of the town's problems happen at her place, she gets pulled in anyway.

Donna Andrews does a fantastic job of writing a witty and charming story and weaving a fantastic mystery into the middle of it (and yes I was surprised). She also makes me laugh, the comedy in here is so dry and subtle and completely fits my sense of humor...especially Meg's goofy, large family on her mother's side.

Yup, 5 stars...I love these books! If you read them out of order, it's not too big of a deal. But if you read them all I doubt you'd regret it either.