Alan LazarBesprekingen

If you love animal books, particularly those about dogs, you’ll probably love ROAM by Alan Lazar. A curious dog roams too far from his “Great Love” (master) and just keeps roaming, encountering many different types of people along the way, always remembering his Great Love. It’s a darling story, and people who love animals usually are suckers for darling animal stories. I’m one of those people.

So I loved the story. But I didn’t like the children’s storybook feel to it. It even has a storybook ending.

How could it be any other way, though? The story is told from the dog’s perspective just as was another book before it, THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN by Garth Stein. That book, too, sounds like a storybook.

Since I was 8 years old I haven’t liked books that sounded like storybooks. But that’s just me. THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN was and still is popular with many other people, and ROAM should be for the same reasons.

So ROAM gets four stars for the suckers for animal books.

Roam is an absolutely wonderful story for dog and animal lovers. It covers eight years of 'roaming' by a little dog who wanders away and gets lost. The adventure takes many turns and twists from encounters with good people, bad people and those in between. Wolves, coyotes and of course a 'dog love' thrown into the mix. Not a tear jerker (I always avoid that) but just a sensitive story by an author who must love and understand dogs...

I LOVED this book! I couldn't put the book down. I would recommend this book to animal lovers for sure. I liked how the book was written in Nelson's point of view(the dog), and made me wonder sometimes what dog's really do think.