Book Review: Please Don't Feed the Mayor (border collie, romance, Oregon)

Please Don’t Feed the Mayor, by sue pethick [sic] (Kensington Publishing Corp., 2019, 274 pages, $9.95)

Have you read a kid’s book lately? Maybe one for 8 year-olds? A book that goes so slowly you, an adult, simply can’t stand the dragged out pace, a book that you absolutely know how it is going to end but wish it were about 10 times shorter than it is? A book that starts each chapter with a seeming summary of the previous one? A book that goes over every point and every thought of the two protagonists ad infinitum?

That’s how we felt about Please Don’t Feed the Mayor.

The Plot

Fossett (pronounced, Faucet), Oregon, is a dying town since the lumber mill closed. As a publicity stunt, Melanie, the proprietor of Fossett’s coffee shop – the Ground Central - decides the town needs a mayor and a canine one to boot – specifically her border collie, Shep.

She calls upon her ex, an attorney in Portland, to help make the election legal but why does he arrive in Fossett to run Shep’s campaign in person and why a campaign anyway since nearly the entire town loves Shep?

80% of the way through, Shep finally wins the election (it takes only one sentence while the build-up takes a couple hundred pages) but a kidnapping ensues and I had to stay up til well past midnight to finish the final 50 pages.

So, if we were to diagram the plot, it would be a line with a slope ever so small until it slowly increases to a fast pace before running out of room on the page.

The Questions

Will Melanie and Bryce reconcile? Will Shep accept Bryce? What (who) is Bryce deathly afraid of and why is he hiding from that person? Who will win the election – Shep or a guy nobody likes (but he is a human)?

Why does Shep the dog put Bryce the attorney through trial after trial? Why can’t they bond? Is it because “Bryce had experience raising dogs. They were pack animals, quick to fall in line behind the alpha. Once Bryce showed him who was boss, the rest would be smooth sailing.”

Can a dog in Fossett really get a job as a greeter in a café?

Cute Turns

However, there are some cute episodes that the reader will not anticipate – a bee sting, a (contrived) injury on a walk in the woods causing Bryce to carry Shep the dog several miles back to the car. But there are also some episodes that merely fall flat and are drawn out (but better left out).

Character Development?

Please Don’t Feed the Mayor is not exactly a romance novel of the bodice-ripper kind but definitely a chick-flick novel - plus both characters talk and think alike.

Cute cover, though, which is probably what drew us to read and review Please Don’t Feed the Mayor.

  

However, the human people in the book like blue [sic] cheese salad dressing.

On the other hand, Melanie probably uses the correct method of having Shep gather in the goats. Goats?

However, some details about the military were a bit off. Etc.

Fainting Goats?

Fainting goats are so preposterous that we had to google them and they do seem to exist! Score one for the author.

Boomer’s Bucket List

Perhaps you are familiar with bucket lists or even Boomer’s Bucket List. Or even have a bucket list yourself. We purchased Boomer a couple of years ago, probably because of the cute golden retriever-type dog on the cover, but promptly buried Boomer in the books yet to read and review. And now, after our experience with Mayor, we will most likely donate Boomer when we do locate it in our stacks.

The first three chapters of Boomer are a book-end bonus in Mayor. We chuckled when we read that Boomer is a Lab/retriever mix, as if Labrador Retriever was not a breed in and of itself. Hmmmm, wonder how a Labrador Retriever can be mixed with a retriever? 

And to pick up something in a store in Chicago while your dog is tied up outside? Really? In this day and age?

Nevertheless

Author Sue Pethick (or sue pethick [sic]) is a good writer with a streak of creative humor and a plot that is eventually interesting (after a couple of hundred pages). And there is a niche out there for her readers who like dogs and slow romances. Unfortunately, one never really gets to know the dog and one has probably picked up the book, thinking it is primarily about a dog.

Oh, well, back to the drawing board to read another. . . .