Monday, 21 April 2025

My Three Dogs by W. Bruce Cameron

 


Ebook provided by NetGalley. Thank you.

5/5 stars

Liam and Sabrina have a happy life with their two dogs, Riggs and Luna, or so Liam thinks but when he brings home puppy Archie - rescuing him from a bad situation - it suddenly reveals that there are cracks in their relationship. Sabrina moves out for a break. Several days later Liam has come to his senses, he's spoken to Sabrina and they're planning to meet up where he wants to propose but before that happens he's in a car accident.

Liam's brother Brad takes over, tells Sabrina that Liam is dead and takes the dogs to a shelter where they are all eventually adopted separately to mixed success but Riggs in particular wants to reunite his pack.

At less than 300 pages this is a short novel, maybe a little too short in that we don't properly get to know our human characters but who cares when we are so perfectly in the heads of our canine characters and I love all three of them and never want them to come to harm! I especially loved the epilogue!

Steff Out x 

Saturday, 12 April 2025

Girl One by Sara Flannery Murphy

 


Ebook previously provided by NetGalley. Thank you.

2/5 stars

Josephine Morrow is Girl One of Nine. She was the first to be born as part of Dr Joseph Bellanger's experiments with parthogenesis or solo birth. Her mother, Margaret, and the other mothers all lived with Joseph at a place known as the Homestead until a fire claimed the lives of Joseph and the youngest child, Fiona.

Now years later Josie, following in Joseph's footsteps and studying reproductive science, is semi-estranged from her mother but then she hears of an incident. Margaret's house has burned down and she is missing. Josie finds a notebook that implies Margaret was more interested in the others than she let on so with the help of journalist, Tom, whom Margaret contacted, Josie sets out to find her.

The concept of this was so interesting although I didn't really understand the choice of the time period chosen (the births took place in the late 70s and the story is set in the 90s) but the execution was such a letdown. The whole story is tell tell tell. Each vital bit of information is given by another character telling a story. There is very little show. Also the ending??? What the hell was that??? To put it bluntly there was no ending. It just stopped.

Steff Out x