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A review by angieinbooks
Finding Home by Georgia Beers
1.0
Okay, so here's how my reading experience went with this novel. I picked it up weeks ago and couldn't connect to Sarah, one of the two main characters. I was out of the country on vacation, so I figured I just wasn't in the headspace for this novel with everything else going on, so I put it down and picked it up after I got home. And then things really went off the rails. But I bought this novel a while ago because I thought the premise was interesting, so I felt I had to read it. But it mostly pissed me off and bored me at the same time.
So here's where the book really lost me and it was early on:
Sarah is recovering from a devastating breakup, and it's not going well. So when her company offers the chance to work in New Zealand for 3 months, she jumps at the opportunity. The only drawback is it means leaving her dog, Bentley, who we're led to believe is her life, behind with her parents and brother to care for in her absence. The dog disappears one day and, though the family looks for him relentlessly, Bentley is just gone.
He's found in a dumpster behind Natalie's work. He looks underfed and he has a shallow gash on his leg and Natalie takes him in. She makes no real effort to find his owner, making a point that she hasn't called any local shelters to see if anyone is looking for him. She doesn't visit the vet to see if he's chipped (we find out later he's not for some reason, but still...) nor does she see the vet to look at his leg or to make sure he doesn't have any parasites or anything else a person who's found a dog in distress should do because "vets are expensive." And that's true--vets are very expensive. But that also means that maybe Natalie isn't the right person to take ownership over a purebred dog. But, also, she made no real effort to find the owner, opting only to print a handful of vague DOG FOUND signs around the neighbourhood.
When Sarah comes home to find that her dog is gone, she's rightfully upset but doesn't seem to make any real steps of her own to find him. It's only by chance that she stumbles upon Natalie's flyer. She calls and leaves a message and Natalie's BFF erases the message on the belief that Natalie, who rescued him from the dumpster, is now his rightful owner. Sarah calls 4-5 more times and Natalie just ignores her.
And this is the beginning of a great romance? I won't even go into the ridiculousness if the rest of the resolution around the dog or the fact that these characters had zero chemistry or the fact that Natalie's BFF is the literal worst. Sprinkle in the complete biphobia from the novel and this was an utter disaster.
I know this is one of Beers' early novels--it's painfully obvious. And I know she has improved as a writer, but, honestly, I think I may need to take a long hiatus from anything she writes. There's really only one of her books I've read that I find re-read worthy. The rest have been forgettable. But this was just bad, bad, bad.
So here's where the book really lost me and it was early on:
Sarah is recovering from a devastating breakup, and it's not going well. So when her company offers the chance to work in New Zealand for 3 months, she jumps at the opportunity. The only drawback is it means leaving her dog, Bentley, who we're led to believe is her life, behind with her parents and brother to care for in her absence. The dog disappears one day and, though the family looks for him relentlessly, Bentley is just gone.
He's found in a dumpster behind Natalie's work. He looks underfed and he has a shallow gash on his leg and Natalie takes him in. She makes no real effort to find his owner, making a point that she hasn't called any local shelters to see if anyone is looking for him. She doesn't visit the vet to see if he's chipped (we find out later he's not for some reason, but still...) nor does she see the vet to look at his leg or to make sure he doesn't have any parasites or anything else a person who's found a dog in distress should do because "vets are expensive." And that's true--vets are very expensive. But that also means that maybe Natalie isn't the right person to take ownership over a purebred dog. But, also, she made no real effort to find the owner, opting only to print a handful of vague DOG FOUND signs around the neighbourhood.
When Sarah comes home to find that her dog is gone, she's rightfully upset but doesn't seem to make any real steps of her own to find him. It's only by chance that she stumbles upon Natalie's flyer. She calls and leaves a message and Natalie's BFF erases the message on the belief that Natalie, who rescued him from the dumpster, is now his rightful owner. Sarah calls 4-5 more times and Natalie just ignores her.
And this is the beginning of a great romance? I won't even go into the ridiculousness if the rest of the resolution around the dog or the fact that these characters had zero chemistry or the fact that Natalie's BFF is the literal worst. Sprinkle in the complete biphobia from the novel and this was an utter disaster.
I know this is one of Beers' early novels--it's painfully obvious. And I know she has improved as a writer, but, honestly, I think I may need to take a long hiatus from anything she writes. There's really only one of her books I've read that I find re-read worthy. The rest have been forgettable. But this was just bad, bad, bad.