Reviewed by Donna
TITLE: Dog Days
AUTHOR: Emery C. Walters
PUBLISHER: Queerteen Press
LENGTH: 52Pages
BLURB:
Aiden is sent to Hawaii to stay with his father, whom he has never met. But when he arrives there he discovers there is no one to meet him. He has no money, and his mother and stepfather do not want him back.
Devastated at their betrayal, hungry and heartsore, he walks away from the airport in a random direction, only to be beaten up and have his belongings stolen by vagrants.
But Aiden is a fighter. The next morning he determines to find help, and on his way he sees three children being attacked by dogs. He jumps in to save them, and the consequences of this act of bravery leads him down a brand new path.
Aiden soon learns that he can choose his own family, and that his past need not always define his future.
REVIEW:
A few weeks after his seventeenth birthday Aiden is surprised to be presented with a plane ticket to Hawaii and informed by his stepfather and his mother that they have managed to track down his biological father and the man wants to meet him. Excited to finally have a parent who appears to actually care, Aiden packs a backpack and boards the plane which he hopes will take him to a new, better life. When no one appears to meet him at the other end he makes a call to his stepfather and is gleefully informed that the whole story was made up and Aiden should be thankful that they didn’t strand him in a different country. He’s told that he isn’t allowed to go home and that he should go sell himself on the street.
After being thrown out of the airport by a nasty security guard Aiden wanders aimlessly towards the beach where he’s attacked and robbed. When he regains consciousness he drags himself under a picnic table and it’s there that he spends his first night in Hawaii. The following morning as he’s walking near the beach he comes across three little kids being attacked by a pack of dogs. Without thought to his own safety he charges to their rescue and finds himself on the receiving end of some vicious dog bites. When he comes to, he’s in hospital and is being hailed as a hero.
All of this happens before page twenty and from that point the remainder of the book is set in the hospital. Up until this point I was rather enjoying the story. The writing style was not quite what I was use to but I was coping with it and thought the story had promise. I even liked that the setting was limited to the hospital. I think it could have worked out so well.
Several crazy, kooky characters were introduced during Aiden’s hospital stay that I would have liked to learn more about. Characters who I unfortunately found much more interesting than Aiden who ended up getting on my nerves. I think if that boy cried or passed out one more time I was gearing up to hurl my iPad at the wall.
There were flashes of humour throughout the whole book but most of it was lost amongst the often garbled story telling. Having said that, I laughed my ass off reading the hospital discharge scene.
In the end, it felt as though it was an absolute struggle to get through what should have been a quick read. And I tried really really hard to like this book. Like I said, it had such promise and I think it could have been a great short story it just didn’t work for me. However, I’d like to know how Aiden’s life worked out after he left the hospital and if there was a sequel to this book I’d definitely like to read it.
I think if I sorta squint and tilt my head just a bit to the left then I can say this book should get two and a half stars.
RATING:
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