Other People's Pets By R.L. Maizes

R.L. Maizes's Other People’s Pets examines the gap between the families we’re born into and those we create, and the danger that holding on to a troubled past may rob us of the future.

La La Fine relates to animals better than she does to other people. Abandoned by a mother who never wanted a family, raised by a locksmith-turned-thief father, La La looks to pets when it feels like the rest of the world conspires against her.

La La’s world stops being whole when her mother, who never wanted a child, abandons her twice. First, when La La falls through thin ice on a skating trip, and again when the accusations of “unfit mother” feel too close to true. Left alone with her father―a locksmith by trade, and a thief in reality―La La is denied a regular life. She becomes her father’s accomplice, calming the watchdog while he strips families of their most precious belongings.

When her father’s luck runs out and he is arrested for burglary, everything La La has painstakingly built unravels. In her fourth year of veterinary school, she is forced to drop out, leaving school to pay for her father’s legal fees the only way she knows how―robbing homes once again.

As an animal empath, she rationalizes her theft by focusing on houses with pets whose maladies only she can sense and caring for them before leaving with the family’s valuables. The news reports a puzzled police force―searching for a thief who left behind medicine for the dog, water for the parrot, or food for the hamster.

Desperate to compensate for new and old losses, La La continues to rob homes, but it’s a strategy that ultimately will fail her.

Pick up your copy here...
https://www.amazon.com/Other-Peoples-Pets-R-L-Maizes/dp/125030413X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=TBOZJJB62NYJ&dchild=1&keywords=other+peoples+pets+by+r.l.+maizes&qid=1598727588&sprefix=Other+peoples+pets+by+R.L.%2Caps%2C171&sr=8-1

R.L. Maizes is the author the short story collection, We Love Anderson Cooper, and the novel Other People's Pets, coming July 14, 2020 (Celadon Books, Macmillan). Maizes's short stories have aired on National Public Radio and have appeared in the literary magazines Electric Literature, Witness, and Bellevue Literary Review, among others. Her essays have aired on NPR and have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and elsewhere.

Maizes is an alumna of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Tin House Summer Writer’s Workshop.

My Thoughts...
La la and the animals were the best part of this book.
 If you are an animal love then you need to grab a copy of this one.
You are going to really enjoy the story.
I gave Other People's Pets 4 stars and I hope that you grab your copy.
The Mary Reader received this book from the publisher for review. A favorable review was not required and all views expressed are our own.