A review by amarettto
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

4.0

I wanted to love this book, and I was so sure I would because a story narrated by a dog? Sign me up! I don't know precisely why but the entire thing just fell kind of flat, and a book that apparently moved thousands to tears and touched them with the notion of having grit through hardships did absolutely nothing for me. I was waiting to feel invested in the characters, any of them, most of all the dog, and I could not achieve that.

I will give this book credit for being different. A non-standard form of narration as well as tying to a theme (racing) does make it easier to digest a slower moving plot line, but I could not connect with the racing theme, and most of all, I found it a little irritating that the dog was so smart. Most of the appeal of dogs is their innocence and simplicity, and this dog was basically a philosopher. It felt like there was a weird seesaw of when the dog was a dog and when we were in an alternate realm where the dog was a human in a dog's body. To be clear, I don't care which one the author chose but that choice didn't seem consistent throughout the book.

I think this could be up a lot of people's alleys, a fairly reasonable story with a motivational message. It fell a little short of the mark for me.