Laughing Dog - D.C. Burns

Title: Laughing Dog
Author: D.C. Burns
Genre: General Fiction
Published: 2011
Formats: Ebook

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"Laughing Dog" by D.C. Burns is a rather quirky little story that follows the life of a woman named Lauren as she tries to recover from a debilitating illness. Along the way she receives help and advice from a ghost, God and her rather eccentric little dog called O'Poo.

There is quite a large amount of the novel that is based around the relationship between Lauren and O'Poo and I have to admit that early on this almost caused me to give up on the book. I am not much of a dog fan and don't really understand the relationships that some people seem to build between themselves and their dog. So after the first few chapters that seemed to mainly concentrate on this type of a relationship I found myself struggling to keep reading. However, I did keep at it and the amount of plot and story that was heavily based on the interaction between Lauren and O'Poo decreased to a level that I found easier to follow.

Besides that, I found it to be an interesting and in the end, quite a heart-warming story. The reader follows Lauren through all her traumas and problems from a woman that can barely walk into a woman who works on a ranch and has her own child. The writing was also competent enough and the story was amusingly quirky at times, I found myself smiling when some rather random events occurred such as when a Scottish ghost appeared and spoke with Lauren.

The novel does suffer a little from its short length though in that it does seem to jump very quickly from one important aspect in Lauren's life to the next. This was a shame really as it would have been nice to really see some more development of the characters and relationships that were built up around her. I specifically found that whilst the relationship between Lauren and her dog is well defined and both of them are well developed, the other characters in the novel seemed quite light.

Overall, I found this to be an interesting and quirky story that could easily have been expanded further into a longer novel. I suspect that if you are a dog lover then some aspects of this novel will really appeal to you and I would therefore advise you to give this book a read for the dog sections alone. However, if you are like me and don't "do" dogs then you may find it a little hard going at times but there is still a nice little story there for you to read and enjoy.