© 2016 Book Chatter | Book Chatter

Nosferatu

Lately, I’ve been feeling a little like this guy but I’ve started physical therapy and I am beginning to return to the land of the living. This is all a result of that fall I took months ago or at least that is what I think. The doctors, not so much.

What’s really silly is that I am to avoid certain positions and one of them is a position that involves holding my Kindle. So, the book that I am reading, Summer of Night is not all that enjoyable to read when propped up in an awkward position. Sigh.

But I’m here and looking forward to the weekend. I need to pick up a few more decorations and I feel the need to make stew or something equally good.

How have you been? I’ve been bad with blog reading this week because reading in general is tough for me at the moment but I am going to take today and tomorrow to catch-up.

The Dogs of Littlefield
By Suzanne Berne
Simon & Schuster, Hardcover, 9781476794242, January 2016, 288pp.

The Short of It:

Perfect suburban neighborhoods are anything but perfect.

The Rest of It:

Littlefield, Massachusetts, is this perfect little town filled with psychologists and professors, wide open spaces and dogs, lots of dogs. But as perfect as it sounds, the dogs are off-leash and the neighborhood is divided over whether to allow them to continue to go off-leash or to impose leash laws. In the middle of this debate, someone is poisoning dogs one by one which has set the entire neighborhood on edge.

On the surface, there is a lot of dog talk but really, as with any suburban neighborhood where everyone knows everyone else or at least seems to think they know everything about everyone else, there is a lot of conflict between husbands and wives, friends, etc. The white picket fences are just an illusion, really.

However, what could have been a really strong read was really just okay in my book. Halfway through, the story seemed to lose steam even though there was still plenty to know about what was going on in the neighborhood. But Berne’s depiction of suburbia was pretty spot-on and that is what carried me through.

In the end, I enjoyed getting to know a new author but wish that the pacing had held up a little better.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

Chatting with friends about books and life…