Waiting for Doggo by Mark B. Mills

Title | Waiting for Doggo  

Author | Mark B. Mills

Publisher | Headline  

ISBN | 9781472218339

Source | Review Copy

Purchase | Amazon

A Page of Fictional Love Rating | 4/5 

No-one ever called Dan a pushover. But then no-one ever called him fast-track either. 

He likes driving slowly, playing Sudoku on his iPhone, swapping one scruffy jumper for another. 

He’s been with Clara for four years and he’s been perfectly happy; but now she’s left him, leaving nothing but a long letter filled with incriminations and a small, white, almost hairless dog, named Doggo. 

So now Dan is single, a man without any kind of partner whether working or in love. He’s just one reluctant dog owner. Find a new home for him, that’s the plan. 

Come on…everyone knows the old adage about the best laid plans and besides, Doggo is one special kind of a four legged friend…and an inspiration.

This book has been hailed as 'male chick-lit' and rightly so. Our shelves need far more books filled with the male perspective of love, heartbreak, moving on, finding yourself, and love again. Mark B. Mills has delivered that, in this one book that may be small in size, but boy is it packed with simplistic viewpoints of the wows and woes of daily life. 

As a woman, I loved this book, because it broke down the situations we all go through when having endured a break-up, finding love again, finding ourselves again, the office politics we face at work, and most importantly, those of us with four legged friends can appreciate the 'conversations' we have with them - yet all from a super-refined male perspective. No complications added, life throws us enough of those itself, no meltdown dramas (don't you find them just exhausting?), no endless analyzing of why it went wrong - just a pure innocent acceptance of what is. What is not to love? 

The characters we meet are so realistic you find yourself thinking that you actually know them, the situations, again as I've said we've all faced them, or can easily put ourselves in those shoes, ... Doggo - that dog that's at first described as 'ugly' actually turns out to show you just how beautiful HE is, how beautiful life is.. can be... when you allow it to be.

What gripped me what the letter that Clara ... Dan's ex left him letting him know it was over. It was heartfelt... it was humorous, it was honest.  

I don't want to complicate this review because I feel it will spoil the book. This book is simplistically unique, a modern day breath of fresh air, one that will stay with you until the end of time. As will Doggo.