Book Review: Until the Road Ends by Phil Earle

This one looked interesting to me when I found it at the bookstore. So let's dive in. Spoilers ahead.

Beau is a dog who ends up being taken in by a girl named Peggy and her family. World War II breaks out and Peggy and her brother Wilf are taken away from London to be safe. Beau and the family cat, Mabel, stay behind, but when both of the kid's parents die they have only one goal: to find their people. Along their way they are guided by a brave pigeon named Bomber.

A bit simple in concept, it's basically just another "group of animals tries to find their owners" type of story à la The Incredible Journey. Stories like this are sometimes a bit predicable (this one being no exception) but they make up for it by being plenty heartfelt and having a perilous journey to boot. And in this, Until the Road Ends succeeds rather well.

I think my main gripe with this book is that I just couldn't get into the characters that much. The human characters are usually very one-note. Peggy doesn't feel like an actual rounded character, she feels much more like a goal for our characters to achieve rather than a fully realized person.

Beau and the other animals are fine but they're also just...kind of one-note. Beau is loyal and kinda and brave. Bomber is serious and bold and has a soldier mindset. Mabel is written in the typical cat fashion where she's portrayed as selfish but having a heart of gold underneath. 

And this is all fine, but it's just not very groundbreaking character writing. Loyal, brave dogs and arrogant, somewhat selfish cats are basically animal xenofiction stereotypes by now, especially if the characters don't have much else to them. Beau does have a traumatic past as a stray, but it's barely brought up in the story as he's very loving and loyal to humans regardless of his trauma. Mabel also has a sad past but aside form a scene where she has a heart-to-heart about it with Beau nothing much is done with it in the end. Bomber is also a pretty static character. He's fine, but he doesn't change much over the course of the story and then he dies, and I didn't feel that invested in his death because I didn't care much about the character.

So while the journey of this book was interesting enough, it didn't really keep me all that invested because I didn't care much about the characters. They were just too simple and stereotypical by xenofiction standards for me to truly get into them and actually care.

The book overall is fine and I'm sure this won't bother other readers, but for me it was a bit of a turnoff. 

Rating: 3.5/5