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A review by rbruehlman
Dog Eat Dog by Laurien Berenson
1.0
I found this book abandoned on the sidewalk with other things destined for the garbage. Against my better judgment, I decided to take the book and read it.
It is bad and deserves to be in the garbage.
Dog Eats Dog features Mel, an aspiring dog breeder, who reluctantly joins a snitty dog breeding club meeting where a widely disliked member gets murdered. Mel proceeds to suspiciously interview all of the club members to find out who did it, all while struggling to navigate her ex-husband's reappearance in her and her son's life.
Everyone in this book aside from Mel's boyfriend Sam and her son Davey are awful people. Everyone is sarcastic, defensive, and snitty... nobody acts this mean in casual conversation in real life?! Mel, the protagonist, was by far the worst offender. She had to have been the most passive-aggressive protagonist I've ever suffered through reading. It was so tiring and cringey reading her snipe at everyone. Even her inner monologue was mean! Her boyfriend was so nice, too; what on earth did he see in her? It is really hard to read a book in the first-person narrated by a person with seemingly no redeeming qualities at all.
The writing itself was also ... not great. It was kind of like watching a livestream of someone's average boring day, replete with descriptions of what people were wearing, the food they ate, and copious back-and-forth dialogue about nothing important. The average page did nothing to move the plot forward, and if I had to summarize the plot anyway, it was something formulaic like:
1. Mel invites herself to Person A's house uninvited and aggressively accuses them of a crime, but that person didn't do it
2. Mel goes home and is a nasty person to her ex / boyfriend / aunt
3. The next day, Mel invites herself to Person B's house the next day and does the same thing
4. Mel goes home and snipes at her ex
5. ...
100. ...
Maybe everyone in the book is so mean to each other because the book lacked any other kind of suspenseful drama to move it forward?
There are countless characters in this book, all hard to keep track of, and in the end, a character who was barely featured was the killer. What mystery and intrigue! Then the book abruptly ends.
It is bad and deserves to be in the garbage.
Dog Eats Dog features Mel, an aspiring dog breeder, who reluctantly joins a snitty dog breeding club meeting where a widely disliked member gets murdered. Mel proceeds to suspiciously interview all of the club members to find out who did it, all while struggling to navigate her ex-husband's reappearance in her and her son's life.
Everyone in this book aside from Mel's boyfriend Sam and her son Davey are awful people. Everyone is sarcastic, defensive, and snitty... nobody acts this mean in casual conversation in real life?! Mel, the protagonist, was by far the worst offender. She had to have been the most passive-aggressive protagonist I've ever suffered through reading. It was so tiring and cringey reading her snipe at everyone. Even her inner monologue was mean! Her boyfriend was so nice, too; what on earth did he see in her? It is really hard to read a book in the first-person narrated by a person with seemingly no redeeming qualities at all.
The writing itself was also ... not great. It was kind of like watching a livestream of someone's average boring day, replete with descriptions of what people were wearing, the food they ate, and copious back-and-forth dialogue about nothing important. The average page did nothing to move the plot forward, and if I had to summarize the plot anyway, it was something formulaic like:
1. Mel invites herself to Person A's house uninvited and aggressively accuses them of a crime, but that person didn't do it
2. Mel goes home and is a nasty person to her ex / boyfriend / aunt
3. The next day, Mel invites herself to Person B's house the next day and does the same thing
4. Mel goes home and snipes at her ex
5. ...
100. ...
Maybe everyone in the book is so mean to each other because the book lacked any other kind of suspenseful drama to move it forward?
There are countless characters in this book, all hard to keep track of, and in the end, a character who was barely featured was the killer. What mystery and intrigue! Then the book abruptly ends.