Rating: WARTY!
I was drawn to this because of the amusing title and the somewhat unusual premise, but mainly by the blurb announcing that the story was about illegal cactus smuggling, which struck me as an hilarious idea for a novel, so I jumped right on board and felt instead rather like I was jumping overboard into ice cold water, because the execution of the idea left me less than thrilled.
This is the eighth in a series. I haven't read any of the previous volumes, being unaware that this series existed, and not being a series fan - with a few prized exceptions. Perhaps this is the kind of series you have to build up to from the start. On the other hand this appears to be an episodic series, so it's not one which you have to have read all the prior volumes before reading this one in order to follow the story in this particular volume.
I have to say that Chet the Eighth did not grab me from the off. Quite the contrary - it was a bit annoying. It's told from the dog's PoV in first person, which is the most irritating voice for a novel, and it doesn't help in this case that the narrator is a dog. There was just something about it which turned me off.
I made it to page sixty, the end of chapter seven, which is about one quarter the way through this, and I couldn't bring myself to read any further. I don't know what it really was, but this novel simply didn't do it for me. I didn't find it interesting or engaging, and I felt neither empathy with, nor liking for any of the characters. The bottom line is that I was simply not interested in these people, much less who the perp was or what their motives were. I can't recommend this based on what I read, and life is way too short to keep on doggedly reading when the story isn't doing it, and there are so many other volumes waiting to captivate and entrance you.
