Unpopular opinion time! I actually can’t believe I didn’t like this book. I literally know of noone who didn’t love it!

This book follows a dog called Enzo as he lives with his family. He narrates some of the struggles his family go through from babies to sickness and death and legal battles, all while staying a loyal dog.

The main thing I didn’t like about this book was Enzo’s voice. I really, really disliked it. I wanted to like Enzo but I just didn’t feel like he was a dog. One good thing coming out of this book for me, is my realisation of the type of dog-narrated novels i like to read. It turns out I don’t like it at all when the dogs sound and act like humans. It felt unnatural to me, it wasn’t believable for me. In my mind, dogs are pure, good and simple. And they are pure because of their simplicity - they don’t have to think about the big issues in life, they don’t share big philosophical thoughts that could be in a textbook and they definitely do not use curse words (I’m fine with cussing in books but turns out I don’t like when dogs do it cause it just feels wrong). There were passages of this book that could be read without knowing Enzo was a dog and I didn’t really like that. I also didn’t like Enzo’s insistence that he was really a man, and how he wanted to be a man in his next life. Humans are awful, Enzo. Stay a dog.

I didn’t feel any connection whatsoever to any of the family members from Denny to Eve to Zoe. I think the only connection I felt was to Enzo’s stuffed dog. The ending of this as well was a bit weird and I just didn’t like it. It wasn’t for me. I don’t feel like this book was about a dog. For me, it was more about Denny and his family and it just happened to be narrated by the dog with some ‘deep meaning’ thrown in along the way.