Amy Shojai

“The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.”
– Charles De Gaulle.

This book is an ode to all dogs and a treasure for all dog lovers. What a fabulous set of anecdotes it contains! You meet not just pet dogs but also army dogs, rescue dogs, stray dogs, and guide dogs. Their stories will make you laugh and cry and sigh. Some will shock you while others will generate anger. A few tales will leave you with a strange curiosity to know what happened next. The "Doggone show more Wonderful" section was my favourite, though I did love almost every story in this book equally.

As with every Chicken Soup collection, there are precious quotes at the start of every anecdote and a few cartoons peppered in between the sections.

The only thing I missed in this book was photos of the pooches in the stories. How I would have loved to put a face to the myriad canines who stole my heart with their behaviour!

If you are a dog lover, you will enjoy these stories of companionship and love. If you aren't a dog lover, you must read this book to know why you must become one!

Relish this in small proportions in between your usual books. It will add the right dash of happiness to your day.

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“The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.”
– Charles De Gaulle.

This book is an ode to all dogs and a treasure for all dog lovers. What a fabulous set of anecdotes it contains! You meet not just pet dogs but also army dogs, rescue dogs, stray dogs, and guide dogs. Their stories will make you laugh and cry and sigh. Some will shock you while others will generate anger. A few tales will leave you with a strange curiosity to know what happened next. The "Doggone show more Wonderful" section was my favourite, though I did love almost every story in this book equally.

As with every Chicken Soup collection, there are precious quotes at the start of every anecdote and a few cartoons peppered in between the sections.

The only thing I missed in this book was photos of the pooches in the stories. How I would have loved to put a face to the myriad canines who stole my heart with their behaviour!

If you are a dog lover, you will enjoy these stories of companionship and love. If you aren't a dog lover, you must read this book to know why you must become one!

Relish this in small proportions in between your usual books. It will add the right dash of happiness to your day.

***********************
Join me on the Facebook group, Readers Forever!, for more reviews, book-related discussions and fun.

Follow me on Instagram: RoshReviews show less

"Lost and Found" wasn't what I'd expected from the publisher's summary. I thought I'd be reading a dog-centric cosy mystery with a kick-ass heroine and her save-the-day dog.

What I got was less clichéd than that but also less easy to settle into.

This is too hard-edged and has too much violence in it for a cosy mystery. I'd barely started the book and had seen one person shot in the face at close range and another stabbed to death. The body count keeps rising, making the bad guys into spree show more killers rather than devious villains.

There are also some very dubious portrayals of the behaviour of autistic children. Although the plot shows this behaviour to be abnormal it still felt to me like it was playing to all the wrong fears and stigma attached to autistic kids.

Shadow, the dog, does indeed save the day and all the parts of the book that relate to him, especially when we get his canine view of the world, work very well. Amy Shojai knows her dogs and knows how to bring them alive for the rest of us.

The cop-with-a-past-and-currently-in-disgrace was well written and believable. The heroine was more difficult to get alongside. Her dialogue, such as it was, seemed awkward and inconsistent. She flips from being highly organised and brave to falling apart and ridden by guilt and doubt. This was explicable in terms of the plot and her backstory but it didn't feel authentic while it was happening.

I enjoyed the book well enough to read my way through it but not enough to read the next two books in the series. show less

HOLY COW!! Lost and Found fascinated me from the start, and I sure did love Shadow!! The plot just flowed at the right boiling point and I was elated when September FINALLY held her ground to fight! She had fled home to Texas from a stalker who lost everything, her husband and her dog, but she trades one problem for another when he nephew and his service dog disappear in a Texas SNOW BLIZZARD! I CAN HARDLY WAIT TO READ THE NEXT!!