The perfect, feel-good holiday gift from W. Bruce Cameron, the #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the A Dog’s Purpose series

The problems fracturing the Goss family as Christmas approaches are hardly unique, though perhaps they are handling them a little differently than most people might. But then a true emergency arises, one with the potential to not only ruin Christmas, but everything holding the family together.

Is the arrival of a lost puppy yet another in the string of calamities facing them, or could the little canine be just what they all need?

A Dog’s Perfect Christmas is a beautiful, poignant, delightful tale of what can happen when family members open their hearts to new possibilities. You’ll find love and tears and laughter—the ideal holiday read.

I get the impression that Cameron doesn’t know kids (even though he apparently has some,) because all three in the book are so clichéd it isn’t even funny. Ello (Ello? Ello?! It took awhile to find out that it’s short for Eloise,) the teenager, goes around yelling at her parents, being morose, and just an all around unpleasant person. For half the book she has no redeeming characteristics whatsoever. And what’s with her and her friends’ names? Their names, but none of the other characters’ names, are oddly spelled. Brittne instead of Britney, Soffea, instead of Sophia, Mourgen instead of Morgan.

The twins are even worse. They’re constantly breaking things, they talk in “twin,” and don’t seem to know any English even though they’re three. Or is this really what passes as parenting now?

Oh, and don’t forget the grandfather, who, though grieving (his wife had died two years before,) thinks he should be waited on. He does everything he can to be an unpleasant person. A lot of the time it made the book hard to read.

What makes the book not totally terrible are the dogs. Cameron does have a knack for bringing dogs to life, so that I totally buy into that what I’m reading are really the dog’s thoughts. Unfortunately, the dogs are in the background through most of the book. Its title is totally misleading.

A completely disappointing book; I hope Cameron never goes down this path again.





Mount TBR 2023 Book Links

( Mount TBR 2023 Book Links 1-50 )


51. Lady in Waiting by Susan Meissner
52. Jackdaw (Jackdaw #1) by K.J. Charles
53. Blightborn (Heartland #2) by Chuck Wendig
54. The Harvest (Heartland #3) by Chuck Wendig
55. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
56. Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig
57. The Change by Kirsten Miller
58. The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas
59. The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #1) by Anne Rice
60. Abandon by Blake Crouch
61. Planet B (Architects of the Apocalypse #1) by Jasper T. Scott
62. Shiver by Allie Reynolds
63. The Starlite Drive-In by Marjorie Reynolds
64. The Snow by Flint Maxwell
65. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe
66. December by Phil Rickman
67. Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
68. Ariadne's Crown by Meadoe Hora
69. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
70. A Dog's Perfect Christmas by W. Bruce Cameron







DECEMBER- White-out
“Read a book with a wintery setting or a book with a mostly white cover.”
A Dog's Perfect Christmas by W. Bruce Cameron

As much as that’s possible, anyway. :-)

The memory is of a certain school, that I, and my older brother and sister attended. Here we are, each of us on our graduation night, posing with our best friends (oddly enough, we’re the ones on the left in each picture.)



Most people probably consider their high school or college years the happiest of their time in school. Mine was the four years (5th through 8th grade,) I attended Edison Elementary. So much so that, when they were tearing it down in 1980, I jumped the temporary chain link fence and collected three bricks. One for me, and one each for my older brother and sister. Which brings me to the idea of bringing old memories to life.

I started collecting Village pieces a long time ago, and for most of that time I had a small school house that pretty much did the job. But after a bought a library for the village, the school was too small, so I went looking for another.

When I saw this, I had to have it.



I imagine a lot of schools built during the turn of the 20th century looked pretty much the same. Two stories, with a large front entrance. Sometimes wings added to the side. So finding a school house created for a turn of the century village that looked a lot like my grammar school was probably bound to happen.

When the ceramic school house arrived, I had my work cut out for me. For some reason, the previous owner had applied what was supposed to be more snow, because, yeah, snow tends to stick to the sides of a building (!)



I managed to finally get it all off, and then started on repainting it. Because I still have the brick, I knew the color the school had been.




The rest was pretty much from memory because, no matter how much I tried, I was never able to find another picture of the school. I even emailed the Phoenix Elementary District #1 office. No dice. The only picture I would ever have would be the blue (mimeographed) photo from the front of my graduation pamphlet.

I asked family members, and the consensus was that the roof was a slate shingle. The windows were white. The front entrance was gray.



Now, every Christmas, I have my school back. In miniature, but still there. And kids are playing in its yard, though there was never snow around the original. But that’s okay. It’s enough.

Well, not quite a tree. In the name of downsizing, I decided to combine my Christmas tree with my Christmas village. I saw this in a magazine over a year ago, and then saw it pop up on Facebook a couple of times.

So, I bought a wooden ladder, and my husband drilled peg holes to hold up the boards on the side opposite the steps. He painted it, I decorated it. I think it came out pretty good.



( More pictures )