I just finished reading Rich Amooi’s Dog Day Wedding, a cute romance with a happily-ever-after ending. (I love a good HEA!)
It starts with a jilted groom—yes, a groom left at the altar, not a bride—who is having the worst day of his life, and that’s before he gets a traffic ticket as a result of helping an elderly woman retrieve a runaway dog. (This isn’t a spoiler, it’s part of Chapter One.)
I’ve often seen dogs in romances, both as integral parts of the plot and as scenery. Precious (the dog in Amooi’s book) is both, and the dog park scenes show a familiarity that, as an owner of three dogs, made me smile.
Goodreads has a list of 100 romances featuring dogs. Cats are fairly common, too. The “wrong” guy has an allergy to cats, the right guy has an affinity for them, although he never seems to have a cat of his own. And you know if there’s a bird, it will escape its cage.
Horses, either racing or under the butt of a handsome cowboy, are practically their own genre. Lisa Kleypas’ Love in the Afternoon features a hedgehog.
Every book (so far, anyway) in my Extraordinary Days series contains at least one animal, often more—two cats, an Australian Shepherd therapy dog, a classroom turtle, ailing racehorses, soon to be joined by many more. Sloane Wallace in Wednesday’s Child: Full of Woe has the only chinchilla I’ve seen in a romance novel, a sweet, spoiled little creature named Pfeffernusse. Their inclusion as characters is not scenery—for me, it’s a sign of the natural importance of animals, pets and otherwise, in making our lives richer and happy.
What book features your favorite pet?
