Hello, bookworms!
Happy Tuesday, I hope your week started out great. I am not sleeping too well these days, so I am even more tired than usual, but I am looking forward to a couple things coming this weekend. I am also reading the last things on my March TBR and a few extras, so overall, things could be going much worse, and I am nor complaining too much.
That said, today I am here to talk about You Lucky Dog by Julia London, the first straight romance I am reviewing for my Romancing the Reader series. It's a book I gave Vitt as a gift a couple birthdays ago, because it features dogs like one of mine, and we both had high hopes for this buddy read. Unfortunately, my March luck is not changing yet.
But, without any further ado, let's get this review started!
About the book
Title: You Lucky Dog
Series: Lucky Dog #1
Author: Julia London
Publisher: Berkley Romance
Publication date: August 25, 2020
Pages: 340
Plot, as stated on Goodreads
An accidental dog swap unleashes an unexpected love match in this new romantic comedy from New York Times bestselling author Julia London. Carly Kennedy's life is in a spiral. She is drowning in work, her divorced parents are going through their midlife crises, and somehow Carly's sister convinces her to foster Baxter--a basset hound rescue with a bad case of the blues. When Carly comes home late from work one day to discover that the dog walker has accidentally switched out Baxter for another perkier, friendlier basset hound, she has reached the end of her leash. When Max Sheffington finds a depressed male basset hound in place of his cheerful Hazel, he is bewildered. But when cute, fiery Carly arrives on his doorstep, he is intrigued. He was expecting the dog walker, not a pretty woman with firm ideas about dog discipline. And Carly was not expecting a handsome, bespectacled man to be feeding her dog mac and cheese. Baxter is besotted with Hazel, and Carly realizes she may have found the key to her puppy's happiness. For his sake, she starts to spend more time with Hazel and Max, until she begins to understand the appeal of falling for your polar opposite.
My rating: 1 out of 5 stars
Review
Not even basset hounds could save this book for me, and that's saying a lot. I am a proud basset hound owner, and I've only picked this book up for the cover, but I was disappointed.
However, I am going to start from the only good thing about this whole thing: the basset hound descriptions and the way the acted was 100% accurate, and if you enjoy this kind of romance, I'll encourage you to pick this up so that it makes you want to get a basset.
Aside from this, unfortunately, I hated the book. I don't even know where to start, but since it's a romance, I'll start with that: there was literally no chemistry, no tension, no nothing between the two main characters. I was not invested in their relationship at all because there was no sparkle there and the way they interacted made no sense. Or maybe it's just that I have a really hard time understanding how straight people think, who knows.
The characters were not interesting at all, and they were so one dimensional it actually hurt reading this book. I hated both of them, and the entirety of the supporting cast (most of which was entirely useless, in my humble opinion), especially the storyline involving Max's brother — which felt too surface level for what it was — and both Carly and Max's parents. I can only save Baxter and Hazel, but even they became solely a plot device and everything about them became repetitive, and as if the author did not care about them anymore.
The writing style was too much. I am all for over the top, absurd romcoms, I truly am. I love the drama, and I live for that laugh out loud feel of early 2000s romance and/or comedy movies. Julia London was trying to achieve The Devil Wears Prada levels of epic, but failed miserably, as far as I am concerned. I was constantly rolling my eyes, huffing and puffing.
I am not even going to comment on the plot, because it was just ridiculous. The way things happened was just boring, and the worst thing is that the potential was there for this book to be both engaging and fun. What really annoys me is that reading this felt pointless, and I hate when that happens, because I really have better things to do with my time.
And don't get me started on the ending. It was completely anti-climatic and it relied on one of the "tropes" I hate the most. Also, it did not make sense because there was a time jump and we did not get to see what truly lead the main character to decide what she decided. You may or may not agree with her decision (I did not), but for me to acwknowledge the MC's reasons, you have to give me something more than this, to be honest.
I am really sad to have disliked this one as much as I did, and I am not going to read the companion book. I am also not going to actively recommend this, because it was not a good romance for me. In spite of that, I am going to recommend this as an incentive to getting a basset hound, because bassets are amazing and they will make your life 100 times better.
That is going to be all for today, I am going to talk to you on Thursday with my review of the second season of Shadow and Bone, which I've finally gotten around to watching last Sunday. I am not going to spoil any of my thoughts just yet, but brace yourselves, my friends.
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