Pug Hill

Last week I finished a very sweet book that you should all allow yourselves to read - Pug Hill by Alison Pace. It’s taken me this long to finish my review because I wanted to be honest about the book, but not discourage anyone from reading it at the same time. Make no mistake, I loved the book, but I just felt like there was something missing from it. Reading Pug Hill was like floating above the life of the main character, Hope, when what I really wanted to do was dive in and find out more.

I found the ad for Pug Hill one of my daily blogs, Cute Overload. I loved the cover (always important), the synopsis sounded light and fun and I thought it would be perfect for my next book club selection. So I bought it. And I loved it.

If any of you have read Sammy's Hill (hi Amanda and Flannery!) you'll love the heroine of Pug Hill, Hope McNeil, a socially awkward, hopeless-in-love paintings restorer living in New York. She loves dogs, isn't sure she feels the same about her current boyfriend, lusts after her coworker, goes to Pug Hill in Central Park whenever she needs to get happy, and dreads a speech she has to give at her parents' upcoming anniversary party. She’s similar to Sammy in her clumsy zaniness, but Sammy’s character was more developed and Sammy’s Hill had more to the plot. (Consequently, if you haven’t read Sammy’s Hill, you really should. It was written by Kristin Gore – Al’s daughter – and it’s a fantastic, fun read.)

Hope is lovable and the story is sweet. I love her dad and cheer for good things to happen to every character (well, ALMOST every character). I love the dogs in the story, even Betsy, her mom's jealous, neurotic, insane Jack Russell. Hope’s “Overcoming Presentation Anxiety” classmates are wacky and fun and I felt physically anxious, myself, reading about them giving speeches in front of the class. It was an easy read and perfect for the summer heat, but it wasn't as deep as I'd like it to be. I don't know what I think the book needs, maybe just more pages! There are so many characters with vast amounts of wacky history that we are only given a glimpse of and that leaves me looking for more pages to read.

Hope's sister Darcy was the prettiest and most perfect daughter and now she's contemplating living on a commune with her boyfriend "C.P." (that stands for Crested Possum, I kid you not) whom her parents hate. I want to know more. Hope has had such a history with her best friends but they're just frilly glimpses of characters in the periphery. I want to know more. There’s a brief sprinkling of one of her friends who is married with a small child and the bits of story involving that friend are so random that I wonder if there WERE more pages to this story that were just edited out.

Pug Hill was light and fun and everyone should include it in their laying-in-the-hammock/sitting-on-the-beach reading list this summer. It has a very sweet, fairy tale ending, (is that the seventh time I’ve used “sweet” in this review? Time for me to find a thesaurus), and even though you know it’s completely improbable, it still makes you smile.

I think I might go look for Pace’s other book If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend. She has an easy writing style that makes for a great, quick read and sometimes that’s all a girl wants when it’s too hot to do anything else but sit in the shade with a good book. And a mojito.