Author: Kristin von Kreisler
First Published: December 31, 2013
Publisher: Kensington Books
252 pages (paperback)
I purchased this book out of spontaneity, as it was on sale at Wal Mart; as well, the adorable Golden Retriever on the cover caught my attention. The synopsis on the back cover also sounded like something I would be interested in reading. Sad to say, but this was a regretful purchase. It was underwhelming, and the story felt like it lacked heart.
The book is about a woman named Lila Elliot, an aspiring artist who works an ordinary office job. One day, at work, an ex-colleague came in and shoots up the place, killing some and injuring many. Lila is one such injured victim. Her best friend Cristina takes Lila in at her home to take care of her after the incident, at the same time she is fostering a previously abused dog, a Golden Retriever, named Grace. Lila hates dogs but puts up with Grace to be thankful for Cristina’s generosity and care.
Not too long afterwards, Cristina has to leave with her husband and children for six months (for a business trip of her husband’s). She asks Lila to continue staying at her home, rent-free, and insisting she pick up her artistry again. Her only request is that Lila also take care of Grace, with her ulterior motive being that maybe Lila will like Grace and adopt her. Lila is extremely hesitant to do this, but in the end agrees. Over time, Lila and Grace bond, helping one another let go of their respective pasts and moving forward in life.
Having finished this book in its entirety, my first feeling was one of relief — that this book is over. It just … wasn’t very good. My biggest complaint is the character of Lila. There was absolutely nothing to like about Lila, and she was kind of creepy as well. I get it, she was a victim and was suffering from some undiagnosed PTSD, but the way she was written just made me want to shake her shoulders and tell her to, “Let it go!!!” Examples: she began to make wide sweeping generalizations about men being evil, she began to stalk the family members of her shooter to find “closure”, she moaned and complained at home about being helpless to do anything, she was rude and mean to the people who wanted to help her … and more. What’s more, a big part of the book was centered on Lila finding closure with the shooting. Yet, in the end, she anti-climatically decides that, whatever, he was just a psycho.
Her relationship with Grace, the Golden Retriever, was eye roll worthy. First of all, it was established that Lila hates dogs (due to her idiocy in childhood of approaching a stray dog that ended up biting her hand, but she’s convinced herself that all dogs are just people killers now, whatever). So, her best friend Cristina thinks it’s a good idea to have Lila, who is in recovery and can barely care for herself, take care of a dog, alone, while she is away …? That was the first thing that made me questioned the common sense of all these characters. So naturally, Lila hates Grace the whole time, thinking Grace is going to chew her up to bits, even though Grace has done NOTHING to make her think she is aggressive. Then one day, Lila decides to give Grace away, only to have second thoughts and claim Grace back. All of a sudden, Lila is in love with Grace and can’t live without her. Talk about a 180 degree turn! There was no building of a relationship at all, Lila just went from hating Grace to being best friends with Grace in less than a day. I craved an explanation as to how a person who hated dogs most of her life can become a fervent dog lover after attempting to give the dog away, but there was no explanation.
Then for the next several chapters, Lila and Grace’s relationship took a backseat to Lila’s relationship with male character, Adam. Adam is a neighbour and the one who brought Grace to Cristina’s home initially looking for a home for her. Lila disliked Adam from the beginning and was quite rude to him. Adam was actually the only character I thought that had any sense in this story, and actually told Lila off a couple times for being overly negative and irresponsible. Suddenly one day, after Adam helps Lila give Grace a dog bath, Lila finds Adam super attractive and goes on dates with him and yeah, they are together. I have no idea what they saw in one another all of a sudden, because every interaction between them prior was rather negative.
I also think this story has some minor illogical plot hole stuff going on. I couldn’t stop questioning why Cristina and Adam insisted Grace had to be kept at Cristina’s home while they found a new home for her. The story is that Adam stole the dog from his neighbour who had been abusing the dog, and put her at Cristina’s house temporarily while they found a new home. Adam even said they had to keep it a bit hush hush since he didn’t want the neighbour to know he stole Grace. However, they put up posters around town with Grace’s picture (a photo that INCLUDES Adam!) to try to find her a home. Are they not worried that the neighbour will see the posters?!
I’m wholly unimpressed with this novel. The lack of proper relationship building between characters was my biggest issue. I don’t even really see how Grace helped Lila heal at all, or vice versa. I expected a warm, touching story between human and dog and instead, got a very lackluster story about the world’s most annoying gunshot victim ever.
My Rating: 1/5
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