Series ✦ Penny’s Take 🎧 Audiobook
Dinosaurs: A Novel
Lydia Millet · 2022
🎙 Narrated by Paul Heitsch
74/100
👍 Worth It
Don't let the title fool you — this is a quiet, adult literary novel about a heartbroken man walking across the country and finding an unlikely family next door, and it landed on basically every major best-of-2022 list. It's genuinely lovely, contemplative writing, though some readers wanted more plot than Millet gives them, and Paul Heitsch's narration is capably handled without anything specific to rave about. Just know this isn't dinosaur content for kids at all — it's grown-up fiction that happens to share a title with the rest of this batch.
✦ Penny’s Take — this is The Review Group’s own editorial assessment. Penny’s analytical review line researched this book from real sources and scored it across the lenses shown below. It’s an honest first-party read — not a page-by-page personal one. The gold ✓ Penny Tested mark is reserved for books Penny reads cover to cover herself.
⚠ Parent note — our reviewers flagged: Adult literary fiction easily mistaken for children's dinosaur content — includes mature themes (an undercurrent of violence, subtly handled) not appropriate for the kids'/family audience this title's name suggests. We still scored it 74; these are context for your family, not an automatic skip.
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🎙 Narration: unknown Narrated by Paul Heitsch for Dreamscape Media; no independent quality notes available to confirm listening experience.
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Show the math
Verdict receipt0–100
Faith & family safety60
Substance / usefulness85
Craft & writing88
Originality80
Evidence & accuracy90
Hype vs delivers40
Age-fit20
Human-eye read85
Penny’s verdict74
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