Teacup Turbulence
Pet Rescue Mystery, Book #5
By Linda O. Johnston
ISBN# 9780425259979
Author’s Website: http://www.lindaojohnston.com/
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Heidi
Ever since the cute advertisements for HotPets Bling, featuring cute teacup sized dogs wearing bling collars have been running throughout L.A. there has been an influx of people adopting small dogs. The local shelters are not able to keep up with demand on the cute pooches. So Lauren reaches out to a shelter in Missouri that has more pets, then they can handle after a puppy mill bust.
Lauren quickly makes arrangements for the pups to be flown to L.A. and to her shelter, HotRescues. But she didn’t plan on a shelter worker, Teresa, to come along with the dogs!
Teresa did not agree with the pets being sent to HotRescues, and makes sure everyone knows it! She’s nasty to everyone she comes into contact with, leaving a countless number of suspects when she’s found murdered!
Now Lauren is on the case again, solving another murder, to clear the names of the couple that flew the plane to get her newest rescues!
This was a cute sounding story and the cover was equally adorable! But unfortunately that was about all that I really liked about this book.
My main hang-up with this novel is that it wasn’t realistic. Lauren manages the HotRescues shelter, and everything just seems to be too convenient and easy for her. Being the animal lover that I am, I’ve dealt with several local shelters and have gotten both my current pets from them. So I’ve been around them enough to know that running one is not a glamorous job, but rather a labor of love. But our heroine in this story never has to beg for funding, but just ask Dante for a handout every time she wants something. She never even has to do the dirty jobs of running a shelter, always having workers and volunteers to clean-up and care for the pets. She gets to do the fun jobs like petting the animals, approving applications, and acquiring new pets (never having to worry about space and instead is actually looking for pets to fill her shelter).
And, every time they mentioned the teacup dogs they were referred to as ‘little dogs’ or ‘little rescues’ and it got pretty annoying.
Then we go to the murder investigation itself. Her security officer’s husband is a police officer and when Lauren asks for details to run her own investigation he gives her what she asks for and just tells her to keep him informed. No good police officer would ever do this in real life, vigilante justice much?
I even found Lauren’s relationship with Matt to be boring and flat. And, oh what do you know? He works in the animal services field as well. There was just nothing entertaining about this couple.
I really wanted to like this book, but found it to be uninspired and dull. I had partially solved the case about halfway through the book, and just had to wait for all the characters to catch up! That’s not to say that other readers won’t enjoy this book, but it obviously just wasn’t for me.
