Michele Piumini www.michelepiumini.it Male, 34, In a relationship. Italy

What a slow, pointless and plodding story. The dog-stealing happens after 70 pages of exhausting hesitation, and nothing of the least interest happens thereafter until the all too predictable happy ending.
While the author tries to picture her as a poignant figure, Georgina comes out as one of the most irritating and, yes, mean young characters I've ever dealt with. The very idea of stealing a dog for your own needs (and writing a story about it) seems no brainwave to me, but Georgina's long overdue final repentance takes nothing from her utter selfishness: not only does she inflict excruciating pain to the innocent dog's owner, but she even goes as far as actually going along with her desperate mother's threat of committing suicide, in one of the most questionable moments of the story.
As if that wasn't enough, the book reads like it was hastily written by someone who doesn't care about giving her readers anything in the way of a fresh and varied language. Her range of linguistic items - often vague and/or out of register - is appallingly limited and endlessly repeated: "and all", "and stuff", "liable to", "mad as all get-out", "I like to died".
All in all, a book I wouldn't recommend to any young reader who is looking for well-written and exciting stories.