The Order of Odd-Fish - James Kennedy | Book Review

The Order of Odd-Fish

James Kennedy

Reviewed 2/14/25 

Rating: 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Review (NO spoilers):

My first 5 star book of 2025! I absolutely adored this. It’s beyond weird. Bizarre. Strange. Eccentric. Whatever adjective you want to use: it’s that and more! This book was a wild ride.

The Order of Odd-Fish is extremely well written. Kennedy’s writing style is a mix of Douglas Adams and Lemony Snicket. It might not be for everyone, but if you enjoy The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or A Series of Unfortunate Events (incidentally, I do), the Order of Odd-Fish is the child of those two series.

If you've got some time, it's a pretty short book, and a very enjoyable story.

Scroll down for SPOILERS

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Review (SPOILERS):

The only things that bothered me in this book was the abstractness of the ending and the fact that the plot, at its baseline, was a very cliche YA storyline. The Chosen One, an orphan, discovers who she is. The other people don’t know, and they would treat her differently if they found out. She struggles to adjust to life in the New Place, which is where she’s actually from, while hiding her secret identity. Does this not sound like a lot of other fantasy books?

But like I say a lot: there’s nothing wrong with tropes if they’re well-written, and this book absolutely was. The Order of Odd-Fish was not like anything I’ve read before and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The ending was a little bit weird? I wasn’t really following the abstract scenes of Jo internally pulling it inside out or something. The book was so weird, though, it didn’t feel too out of place (even if it was disappointingly normal for a little bit in the middle, as the story followed Jo’s daily life).