Book Review: Ice Dogs by Terry Lynn Johnson

 

Another one that's been on my TBR shelf for a while. Spoilers ahead.

Victoria, a fourteen-year-old musher, gets lost in the woods. Her only companions are her dogs, and a newbie named Chris, whom she doesn't get along with. Will they survive, or perish to the elements?

This was a pretty solid read, however at the same time I wish it grabbed me more. It's a fine book and I do recommend it to people who like winter, survival stories, dogs and dog sledding, etc. But I kept waiting for it to really grab me and that just never really ended up happening.

Honestly with this book I am more interested in the setup and especially the conflict between Victoria and her mother over the loss of her father, rather than the actual story itself. While the main journey for survival of Victoria, Chris and the dogs is pretty good and well-written, at the same time I just wasn't too invested because I knew the leads were going to survive, or at least guessed with 99% certainty that they were going to (I was correct). It's a middle grade novel, I don't think they're just going to go kill of children characters willy-nilly. Even the dogs all made it out okay, with only one needing to retire afterwards, so the peril never felt too great because it was just predictable that the characters were going to be okay.

And, again, I was just more interested with the stuff between Victoria and her mother (the more interesting conflict in my opinion) than the stuff with Victoria and Chris. I didn't even particularly enjoy Chris as a character, so the fact that we're spending 90% of the book with him didn't do much for me.

So yeah, solid enough book, but it never truly "clicked" with me. I like it fine enough and it made for a decent adventure, but I couldn't truly get into it.

Rating: 3.5/5