I wanted to love this book. I had pretty high hopes after reading the initial excerpt. I expected a poignant story that was really going to tear at my heartstrings. I loved the premise of it - learning about the author through the 7 different dogs she's had over the course of her life.
I found the timline/chronology hard to follow. It seemed like it jumped around a lot, and I struggled with that. I also found thewriting to be a bit jilted, because it was really just random story after random story that sometimes only loosely connected back to one of the dogs.
I suppose when telling your life story through the pets you had, of course it's going to be a bunch of random stories, rather than a smooth flowing chronological retelling, but I just really struggled with the lack of flow. I never felt super connected to the author or even most of the dogs.
And while I absolutely talk to my pets, I found it strange that the author wrote word for word "conversations" that she had with her pets and treated it as actual advice/lessons/etc from the dogs. I have no doubt that she learned lessons from her dogs, and some of those lessons I agreed with, but I just found it strange how she relayed actual conversations as if the dogs spoke English to her (and treated those conversations as fact).
Despite my mediocre review, it wasn't a bad book. I'm sure there are some that absolutely love it. And I do think the author has had an interesting and unique life that can give readers a lot of perspective, I just felt like the overall style of writing fell flat for me personally.
I found the timline/chronology hard to follow. It seemed like it jumped around a lot, and I struggled with that. I also found thewriting to be a bit jilted, because it was really just random story after random story that sometimes only loosely connected back to one of the dogs.
I suppose when telling your life story through the pets you had, of course it's going to be a bunch of random stories, rather than a smooth flowing chronological retelling, but I just really struggled with the lack of flow. I never felt super connected to the author or even most of the dogs.
And while I absolutely talk to my pets, I found it strange that the author wrote word for word "conversations" that she had with her pets and treated it as actual advice/lessons/etc from the dogs. I have no doubt that she learned lessons from her dogs, and some of those lessons I agreed with, but I just found it strange how she relayed actual conversations as if the dogs spoke English to her (and treated those conversations as fact).
Despite my mediocre review, it wasn't a bad book. I'm sure there are some that absolutely love it. And I do think the author has had an interesting and unique life that can give readers a lot of perspective, I just felt like the overall style of writing fell flat for me personally.