Something in the voice, in the unknown words, broke Winstead’s maniacal focus on the sausage. He’d heard that tone so often, lately.… When he pressed his body against Daddy’s leg, he felt the mood radiating down the hand that momentarily stroked his head. Sadness. Daddy was sad, and Winstead couldn’t seem to change that, no matter how good a dog he tried to be.

By staring relentlessly, Winstead forced Daddy to lift his eyes. Excitement coursed through the dog; surely now they’d share this tantalizing meal.Would she be implicated in the crime? How could she have known—what reasonable mother would ever suspect that her sons harbored such homicidal designs toward each other?

Come si fa a non innamorarsi di una copertina così bella? Tutta la dolcezza del mondo racchiusa in un’immagine, su sfondo rosso… così ho deciso che questa sarebbe stata la mia lettura natalizia. By the way…my AA meeting topic tonight was the Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. It is amazing how I always get what I need;)

With everything that’s going on, probably the last thing the family needs right now is the extra responsibility of a lost puppy. But when one shows up, what are you going to do, turn it away? Juliana watched without comment as Ewan regarded his plastic fork with a devilish expression on his face. She knew exactly what was happening: her son was drawing a connection between the soft tines of his breakfast cutlery and some portion of his brother’s anatomy. In a moment, Ewan would turn to his twin and stab something. The damage would mostly be to Juliana’s eardrums as Garrett howled in protest, then escalated the conflict with a plateful of food heaved at Ewan’s face. Seeing death through a dog’s eyes gives us a perspective of innocence. When Winstead recounts the death of Barbara he, sadly, does not fully grasp what happened to her. Where is this type of innocent confusion seen elsewhere in the book? In what specific scenarios do the human characters’ emotions parallel Winstead’s in this instance? This book was about a family I couldn’t care less about. None of the members of the Goss family have any redeeming qualities. I wasn’t rooting for them. I didn’t even like the dogs involved, and I’m the kind of girl who would try to lovingly cuddle up to Cujo, given the chance. These characters didn’t affect me in any way whatsoever. Also, the names! Ugh! Ello? Brittne? Mourgen? Soffea? Jayneigh? Sander? Siouxanne? Stop. Just stop with that. It’s obnoxious. Ugh.