2022-04-08

Woof by Spencer Quinn

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I've read Quinn's adult mystery series from a dog's pov. This is the middle-grade version of that. If you like a narrator whose thoughts are like a dog on meth bouncing everywhere you'll enjoy it. It's not a bad book. That said I'm in no way motivated to read more of the series but that's because it's not my thing vs it being bad.

Birdie's grandmother takes her to the shelter to get a dog for her eleventh birthday and she selects Bowser a large bernese mountain dog mix who used to be with a gang somewhere in a less rural area of Louisiana one assumes from his various revelations about life with the gang. Bowser immediately thinks Birdie is the best human alive and you are going to hear ALL about it ad nauseum for over 200 pages. It's exhausting.

Birdie lives with grandma while her mother is working an oil rig off the coast of Dubai and her police officer father has died. Grandma owns a bait and swamp tours company that is being crushed by Straker's empire dealing in the same tourist activities.

The day they bring Bowser home Black Jack, her grandmother's prized marlin taxidermy has been stolen from the store and Birdie is determined to get it back. While Birdie does have a friend in Nola and the sheriff's son Rory seems interested in friendship, it's mostly a Birdie and Bowser solo adventure.

As a mystery it's not bad until you get to the end and then it feels obvious that Quinn realized oh I'm too close to the word count limit let me slap something on here to end it. The ending pretty well sucked. And it's much more bittersweet than happy, a little surprising for any mystery especially one aimed at kids. Birdie's father had a mantra 'no loose ends,' but there was an awful lot in this one.

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