Book Review: It Will Be Alright by Marjan Scheer

 

 Note: The title of this book has been translated into English by me for the reading comprehension of this blog's viewers as the book itself isn't available in English (yet). The original title reads Het loopt wel los.

Cute short xenofiction. Let's go, spoilers ahead.

An elderly Rottweiler named Troy looks back on his life, from him being a cute puppy to a rambunctious youngster, to finally a mellow old dog. 

Overall I consider this book to be cute. Serviceable. Just fine. I honestly expected it to be a little more gripping and emotional but it was mostly just a dog recounting his life. Which is definitely fine, don't get me wrong. I also love how this is based on the author's real dog, so it's nice to see she loves him so much that she's willing to write his life's story and dedicate this book to him.

But aside from the sweet intentions I just wasn't all that gripped by this book. It might be the author's prose, or the fact that the book was mostly just standard dog fare (nothing in his life really sets him apart much from other dog characters in dog xenofiction I've read). The story definitely had a few emotional and funny moments, but I mostly didn't really feel anything while reading it. Maybe it's because I wasn't there for these events personally, but the emotions just didn't really come across well for me. 

The story is also over in a jiffy (being less than a hundred pages long) so I definitely could've done with a little bit more, maybe 150 pages or so to go more in depth on certain areas of his life. Right now the story just flies by and I never really got a chance to be too invested in one moment of Troy's life before we already moved onto the next phase.

So while I definitely appreciate the intentions of the author here to pay tribute to her dog in this way, I just didn't think that it was written in a particularly interesting writing voice, and the rapid pace made it hard to stay invested in one scene because it moves by super fast. Not bad, just wish I could get into it more.

Rating: 3.5/5