One Careful Owner: Love Me, Love My Dog by Jane Harvey-Berrick

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Title: One Careful Owner: Love Me, Love My Dog
Author: Jane Harvey-Berrick
Published by: Indie
Release Date: January 2nd 2017
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 234
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2018 #LetsReadIndie Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 AtoZ Reading Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 Beat the Backlist Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ IndieBound
My rating:

Blurb:

“Take me, all of me, broken and in pieces, or say to hell with me.”

WARNING! This book will break your heart! From the best-selling romance author of THE EDUCATION OF SEBASTIAN comes a sexy, heart-breaking and heart-warming story about one man and his dog. (Standalone)

* * * * *

Alex is lost and alone, with only his dog, Stan for company. He doesn’t expect kindness from anyone anymore, but sometimes hope can be found in the most unlikely places. He has a second chance at happiness, but there’s a dark side to Alex, and a reason that more than one person has called him crazy.

Single mother Dawn is doing just fine. Except that her ex- is a pain in the a**, her sister isn’t speaking to her, and her love life is on the endangered list.

At least her job as a veterinarian is going well. Until a crazy-looking guy arrives at her office accompanied by an aging dog with toothache. Or maybe Alex Winters isn’t so crazy after all, just … different.

Dawn realizes that she’s treated him the same way that all the gossips in town have treated her—people can be very cruel.

Contains scenes of an adult nature.

This is a standalone novel with no cliff-hanger.

My Review:

3.5 stars — Well huh.  This book started off as a 5 star book you guys.  I was very intrigued, I was liking the characters, things were going along pretty smoothly.  But then things went a bit crazy; Alex ended up not being who I thought he was going to be, and apparently Ms. Harvey-Berrick writes endings that are SUPER unsatisfying for me.  And so we get this.  Better than Dazzled, but I’m thinking perhaps I’m not a match with this author.

Normally I start my reviews talking about the characters, but I have a feeling this review is just going to be different.  I liked both Alex and Dawn at the beginning.  I thought Alex was going to be more of a beta male, and that’s how he comes across initially…and I liked that version of him.  I felt for him and what life must be like dealing with his severe stutter.  I thought the disability was represented well, and we got to see the challenges and how it affected his life.  I kind of wished there had been more resolution with it, but oh well.  In the end, the stuttering was the only reason he appeared beta at all.  He was sensitive towards the animal kingdom, but otherwise he ended up being rather aggressive, with a nasty temper.  And honestly, for all the talk of it throughout the book, he really did feel kind of unstable to me.  But yet he never really got help.  I’m not sure what to think about that.  I’m also not sure how much he grew as a person over the course of the book…he did a bit, but maybe just not as much as I’d like?  I was also really bummed with the way he handled Stella, and I wish that had gone differently…

Both characters displayed a LOT of changing emotions, but it was mostly apparent in Dawn.  Honest to god, she almost gave me whiplash with her abrupt mind changes.  I wasn’t that impressed with that, b/c I would be really liking her and the decisions she was making, and then suddenly things would change but I wouldn’t really see the transition.  It was like she likes him…she sees reasons for not being with him, so she puts him off…then, even though those reasons haven’t been resolved, she’s suddenly fine with it…and then suddenly she isn’t again.  I’m probably not making sense, but it was one thing that just left me feeling tired.

As for Dawn and Alex together?  Well, I had mixed feelings there as well.  I’m still not completely sure what drew them together, but at the same time I loved those initial flirtations and feeling each other out…I felt the butterflies and all that good stuff.  But once they finally made the next step, everything started going wrong, and I was a bit bummed with that.

And then there was that ending.  I seriously hated the ending.  Felt like we were in the middle of the conflict, and then it’s suddenly 18 months later and an epilogue.  Am I the only one who feels that the story should give me satisfaction and a resolution without having to read the epilogue.  Epilogue should be a bonus, right?  So in the end we missed out on seeing them work out their issues, we just got to hear about it afterwards.  Not really my preference.  Also, what happened with Bob?  Why have that storyline if it was just going to get dropped?

And now for some good and bad: on the bad side, I kind of felt like this book shames alcoholics.  Was I the only one?  It felt like the characters continued to blame them and look down on them even when they are recovering.  As well, as a sensitive animal lover, I felt like the dog fighting stuff got really graphic, so trigger warning for any sensitive animal lovers…it’s mostly near the end of the book.

On the good side, I loved Stan.  He was such a sweet dog, and I loved how Alex was with him.  Honestly, most of my emotions were felt with Stan.  Having Stan’s POV was interesting as well…not always sure what it added, but it was an interesting first look at Alex, while keeping him mostly a mystery.  I also really ended up loving Katie, and I appreciated that she felt like an actual 8 year old, complete with both sweetness and a temper.

Honestly, I wish the rest of the book had followed what I thought I was reading in the first half…I probably would have liked it a lot more if it had.  Ah well, c’est la vie.