Stay

Savannah Leone is attending the wedding of her dreams. The groom is waiting and the day is perfect. Except for the fact that her best friend, Janie is the bride and Van has to watch as she marries Peter - the man she has been in love with for years. After a long evening at home drinking vodka and watching a Rin Tin Tin marathon, Van buys a puppy from Slovakia over the internet. And with that impulsive move, her life changes drastically. The puppy (she names him Joe) is bigger than expected and her efforts to get him home from the airport are laugh out loud funny. Joe is well trained and comes with a list of commands he understands - in Slovakian. This is a wonderful novel about friendships of all types. Girlfriends, boyfriends (past and present) and the very special bond animals make with us. Van is a great character - funny and bright and doing her best to accept the changes in her life. I really enjoyed her and I REALLY loved Joe.

PLOT: Van's best friends, Peter and Jane, are getting married. There's only one problem. She's been in love with the groom for seven years. The day after the wedding, while highly intoxicated, Van orders a puppy via the internet. Purchasing Joe leads to Van meeting veterinarian Alex. For the first time, Van is truly interested in a man other than Peter. PROS: I liked Van immediately. I also liked Alex and many of the other characters. The author did a wonderful job of creating fully rounded believable characters. The pace of the plot is quick. Stay is never dull. I found it impossible to put down. There's just so much going on here, but I don't want to ruin it for other readers by disclosing all the dynamics of Van's relationships with Peter, Jane, Alex, her mother, etc. CONS: A minor issue for me was the number of flashbacks at the beginning of the novel. Though they were always interesting and served to advance the story, give background and helped with character development, they also made me feel as though I would never get to the actual plot. Van never fully discussed with Diane (the mother of the bride and her late mother's best friend) how upset she was over not being told about the seriousness of her mother's illness. I also felt that Van's discussions with Alex could have been deeper. Even after a rough patch in their relationship, there's no true discussion of why Van lied to him. 4 STARS: Don't be fooled into thinking this is a story about the hijinks of a German Shepherd. Joe must have one serious agent to have gotten so much mention. He's always there, but he's not the main focus of the plot. Stay is a really good novel. I finished it in three days and would have finished sooner if it weren't for the non-essentials of working, bathing and eating.

It would be very simple and convenient to classify Stay into the chick-lit genre. It would also be quite easy to dismiss this book as just one more book about a twenty-something woman struggling to find "the one." It'd be easier still to classify this book as that book about the dog who helps a woman find true love. The fact of the matter is that Stay is a book that embodies all three of those characteristics; it's a book that prominently features a dog on its cover and details the circumstances surrounding a woman's acquisition of a dog and her subsequent understanding of who she is as a person. It would be simple to dismiss this book as being a lesser book because of the aforementioned characteristics. However, that would be a mistake. Allie Larkin manages to embrace those characteristics and by incorporating them into her first novel it's as if the author is saying that she knows that this book is meant to entertain. Larkin doesn't want you to dismiss her, yet, she doesn't want to be taken too seriously either. The story of a woman who accidentally purchases a dog from Slovakia over the Internet and then falls in love with her puppy's veterinarian isn't going to win a Pulitzer Prize, but it's not meant to either. Larkin's debut novel is a quick read, with humor-filled passages. Stay belongs on your bookshelf with those rare chick-lit books that you treasure, right next to the other rom-com books that don't take themselves seriously but provide you with unlimited reading pleasure. Stay can hold its own on the shelf right next to Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones novels and it wouldn't be entirely out of place there.

I think in all honesty, this book deserved a more average rating of 3 but I was inclined to go with a 4 out of 5 because I enjoyed meeting Joe and watching a bond grow between Van and Joe, her new "puppy." Van has been in love with her best friend, Peter, since college. Unfortunately, he has been in love with her best friend, Janie, and now, they have just married. It's a standard chick lit type storyline basically. Van does the wallowing thing and in that wallowing, amidst some alcohol and Rin Tin Tin, she decides to order a German Shepard puppy off the internet. And oh yeah, this puppy is coming from Slovakia. $6,000 later, Van is in for a shock because her puppy is definitely not a cute ball of fur. He is a growing German Shepard who obeys Slovakian commands. Let the hijinks begin! Joe, as he is christened, becomes the cause for many changes in Van's life, including meeting a new guy. But he is also the best friend she has, her only family. Then of course, Peter comes back into her life. The story then falls into some well known plot points making it fairly average in the will she or won't she, what will she really do, type of chick lit style. What I liked about this story was the relationship between Van and Joe, even though he is a dog. I enjoyed Marley & Me and well, most dog stories so really, if you don't like dogs, you are not going to like this story. However, I did feel like he helped Van move forward a bit. It was kind of a one step forward, two steps back, but she was trying to change, trying to find her own path in life rather than wishing she was Peter's Janie. And frankly, I really liked how rude Janie was. She wasn't afraid of mincing words. She likes vodka Kool-Aid, she can't believe her dog crapped a huge one on her carpet, and her life is far from orderly. She does not have it all together and I could relate. I thought the author did a great job of conveying the pet/owner bond that springs up and that is what held my attention even as Peter dropped back into the picture, even as Van put her life on hold again. This is probably a more average story than I am giving it credit for but I read through it quickly and was engrossed. It was not a bad way to spend a few hours and I just love the cover. Allie Larkin has caught my attention and I would be inclined to see what other books she may publish. So in short, this is an imperfect but enjoyable story. And if you like dogs (particularly more happy dog stories) I think you'll enjoy Stay.

Being a dog lover, this book immediately caught my attention....although one doesn't need to be a dog lover to enjoy this book, an appreciation for the canine species would certainly help. That being said, here are my thoughts on this book: I loved it!! Savannah Leone stands by as the maid of honor in her best friends wedding, while her best friend weds the man that Savannah has been secretely pining for for the past 7 years. While she desperately tries to be happy for both of them, this proves to be a difficult task and she drowns her sorrows in vodka and Kool-Aid. One night while watching a Rin Tin Tin marathon and being plastered out of her mind, she goes online and orders a German Shepherd puppy from Slovakia. Enter said puppy. The tiny little ball of fur that Savannah ("Van") is expecting turns out to be a hip-high, seemingly mutant version of some sort of wolf hybrid. "Enormous" doesn't quite adequately describe the size of this "puppy". Van is stunned, to say the least, and quickly learns that not only does this dog only understand commands in Slovakian (for wihich the sellers have considerately supplied a list of these commands for the new buyer), but the dog also has been trained to "search the building" and "find narcotics". Ha! Ha! Ha! The first half of the book is filled with humor as Van tries to adjust to life with a dog (she's never owned a dog in her life) and I found myself frequently laughing out loud as Van rearranges her life to accomodate this overgrown ball of fur. Anybody who has ever owned a dog will surely understand how easy it is to lose all sense of reality when trying welcoming a fluffy, four-legged creature into one's life. Van does a remarkable job and soon grows to love and protect her new charge, whom she names "Joe". Van's life takes a turn for the better when she brings Joe in to the local vet, Alex, for a check-up (where, by the way, she finds out that Joe REALLY IS a puppy, and is expected to get even bigger!!) Things develop fairly quickly between the two and it seems like Van is ready to move on with her life and leave her troubles behind, and begins thinking that a future with Alex might not be so bad. Then the honeymooners return from Europe and Van is thrown back into her past troubles, this time dragging Alex in with her. While the first half of the novel was light hearted and filled with humor, the second half has less humor and more reality. Van is still trying to deal with her mother's death three years earlier, and her current troubles with the newlyweds and sudden problems with Alex cause Van to reevaluate her life in a new light. The characters in this book are very well drawn and we get to really see inside Van's head as she deals with the complexity of life in general, and relationships both past and present, and how some things (despite how desperately we try) simply can't stay the same forever. Life happens, unfortunately, and what one makes of it is the determining fact