Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
Now, that kind of content warning would help. I just finished a charming book that featured a wonderful dog; while the dog is not the focus of the story, he got into a couple of dicey situations where I was thinking, Oh no, oh no. But the dog was OK.
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Yeah, I'm with you. I can relate to the motivation in movies like Shooter, and, more famously, John Wick, where the lead character goes on a revenge rampage because (in part) someone killed their dog, but you have the catch-22 of having to have the dog die in the movie to get that motivation, which sucks.
My son and I just watched "Prey" this week (a prequel to "Predator"). It opens with scenes of the heroine and her dog. My son said "if the dog dies, I'm not watching anymore."
I also recently read two different, unrelated mystery novels, by different authors, both parts of long, ongoing, usually one-book-per-year series, BOTH of which left the lead character AND THEIR DOG in a life-or-death cliff hanger, then the authors BOTH took multi-year breaks before the next book in the series.
What's up with that?! If I had been reading these books when they were new, I'd never have read either of those authors again! Even now, when the following books are all available, I'm tempted to boycott them for the heck of it.
As for the original topic, like others, I'm not interested in reading
about the pandemic (and I'm rarely a fan of "ripped from the headlines" plots in general) but I'm OK if novels set in the real world acknowledge it. I'd find it hard to suspend disbelief if they ignored it.
As it happens I just read a Brad Thor novel that came out just a couple years before the pandemic, and the plot included a pandemic that had eerie similarities. I had to double-check the publication date.
ApK