3.5 stars. I'm not sure how I keep reading books about dogs as a self-proclaimed cat person, but once again I found myself tearful over the death of a dog.
As happens a lot in my reading life, the right book showed up at the right time. One of the prompts on my reading challenge for the year is A book by a trans or nonbinary author. I wasn't sure what I was going to use to fill it. I had decided at the beginning of the year to use as many books off my own shelves for my challenge--because my to-be-read backlist had grown to ridiculous proportions. But I'd already read the only books I owned that would fit this prompt. I was also aware that I do receive or request various advance reader copies throughout the year, so maybe one would fit this category. When I received Good Boy on my doorstep, my first thought was of my reading challenge. Perfect book for this harder-to-fill prompt!
But enough about me. I enjoyed Boylan's memoir about the dogs she has owned throughout her life, and how each one impacted her--and reflected the stage of life she was in. This was my first book by the author, and she mentions several other memoirs she's written previously. There were times I did feel like I was missing part of the story, and I'm sure it's because she'd already told it in another book. She did also have a tendency to jump around in her story--sometimes in mid-thought. I was still able to follow where she was going with her point, but sometimes it did distract me.
Overall, I laughed and my eyes became teary on a few occasions. So if you're a dog lover, you'll probably need a few more kleenexes than me.
As happens a lot in my reading life, the right book showed up at the right time. One of the prompts on my reading challenge for the year is A book by a trans or nonbinary author. I wasn't sure what I was going to use to fill it. I had decided at the beginning of the year to use as many books off my own shelves for my challenge--because my to-be-read backlist had grown to ridiculous proportions. But I'd already read the only books I owned that would fit this prompt. I was also aware that I do receive or request various advance reader copies throughout the year, so maybe one would fit this category. When I received Good Boy on my doorstep, my first thought was of my reading challenge. Perfect book for this harder-to-fill prompt!
But enough about me. I enjoyed Boylan's memoir about the dogs she has owned throughout her life, and how each one impacted her--and reflected the stage of life she was in. This was my first book by the author, and she mentions several other memoirs she's written previously. There were times I did feel like I was missing part of the story, and I'm sure it's because she'd already told it in another book. She did also have a tendency to jump around in her story--sometimes in mid-thought. I was still able to follow where she was going with her point, but sometimes it did distract me.
Overall, I laughed and my eyes became teary on a few occasions. So if you're a dog lover, you'll probably need a few more kleenexes than me.