The Vet My Wild and Wonderful Friends by Luke Gamble Review

Reviewed by Penny Munro

Put simply I loved reading every page of this book. The author is a vet who was the subject of a television documentary and the book is a biography recounting his time as a junior vet starting his career in a busy Dorset practice.

The author is clearly passionate about animals of all shapes and sizes and nothing stands in his way in his attempts to help them. From removing an eye of a beloved pet giant frog, to a performing a caesarian section on a cow, from dealing with grumpy farmers, to meeting the vet who was to become his wife at Italian lessons, this book is crammed full of anecdotes about his life as a newly qualified vet. Instead of using his valuable holiday to go and relax on a beach, he recounts tales about his travels to various parts of the world where he feels he can be of some help to the animals there. One of these particular trips inspires him to set up a worldwide veterinary charity.  On the whole, the book is hugely entertaining but at times, the book is desperately sad. In particular, the book devotes one particular chapter to the author’s horrifying time spent as a vet for the Ministry of Food and Agriculture dealing with the relatively recent and tragic (for the animals, farmers and vets alike) Foot and Mouth outbreak.

The book is written in a wonderful manner which meant a number of very late nights for me as I simply did not want to stop reading. Very recently published in paperback but also available in hard back it is freely available in my local bookshop and of course, Amazon. For anyone who has even the slightest interest in animals, this book is a must read. Luke Gamble is the new James Herriott and Gerald Durrell and I can only hope he writes more books.

Rating: 5/5

RRP: £16.99 (Hardback) / £7.99 (Paperback) / £0.99 (Kindle)

Available to buy from Amazon here.