Beauty and the Wiener by Casey Griffin (A Rescue Dog Romance #2)
Released: February 7, 2017
Contemporary Romance
St. Martin’s
Reviewed by May
Addison is a dog groomer who also loves Dachshund dogs (especially her rescued one, Princess) and volunteers at San Francisco Dachshund Rescue Center. Currently she’s got two goals: find the perfect man to be her one and only true love, and launch her line of dog clothing to the elite dog society of San Francisco.
I picked up this book for two reasons. The first is that the title made me laugh and as the owner of a Dachshund adopted from a local breed rescue in the same area as this book is set I was interested to read this author’s take on things. The bad news is, there wasn’t much to like here and I don’t even have a favorite quote. Let me explain a bit more.
The first thing that struck me as odd was that this rescue center is in a home that I visualized as a multi-million dollar home in the heart of San Francisco. While I suppose that is possible, every rescue group I know is working hard for enough money to spay and care for and rescue dogs and even if such a palace was available would opt for a lower rent place farther outside the city so the $ could be going to rescuing!
The second thing that struck me as odd is that I don’t see show dogs being paraded around with pink toe nails and wild outfits. It’s such a serious and highly competitive area that she’s talking about I would have thought simply aiming at rich clientele who spoil their dogs vs specifically high level competition dogs would have made a lot more sense. I couldn’t figure out why she was obsessed with getting show dogs in her haute puppy couture outfits.
Now I could be way off on both of those things, because while I have attended some dog shows and had a friend very much into that culture I am by no means an expert. I also am a huge advocate of rescuing/adopting vs purchasing a dog and I’ve worked with many groups– but my experiences aren’t all knowing on that either. I bring them up because the amount of time spent explaining the beautiful home (the rescue) as well as all the focus on the show dogs really ate up most of this story.
So let’s focus on the third problem I have, which is how immature and useless I found Addison. She wants to be in love she wants a boyfriend who is “the one”, etc. I get it. But to be splitting her focus on this on the same week she’s trying to launch her business into the next level a week she herself declares is her most important? Grow up, kid!
Then to be utterly focused on the exterior and what a man wears, what his job is, if he’s “good enough” to be the one made me hope the charming bartender Felix would roll his eyes and find a real woman instead of hanging around Addison until she got her head on straight.
Now I realize I’m being incredibly hard on this book, however we’re well past the age of the dimwitted heroines who stumble into love and have no significant skills or talent of their own to bring to the relationship. With a few adjustments and refocusing some of the story this might have been a tale that I really enjoyed, as the mystery element of the disappearing dogs was a fun part to the plot.
Instead flat characters plodded along an utterly predictable road and left me wishing for more, or perhaps just an entirely different story. Despite my criticism if you enjoy very light chick lit and dogs – you may just want to pick this one up.
Grade: C-
Leave a Reply