The Dog Stars – Peter Heller

In-between Book Club Reads – The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller

Since our August book club read is on The Painter, also by Peter Heller, it made sense to go back and read an earlier book by the same author. The Dog Stars was published a couple of years earlier than The Painter, and it’s a pretty apocalyptic story about survivors of a flu pandemic. Let’s just say there are not a lot of them and as you can probably guess, there are good guys and bad guys. It’s an interesting premise, even more so because there’s a dog (yes, I’m a dog lover!) as one of the characters, albeit his part is “small”. It sure gets you thinking about what the end of the world could look like and how people behave/misbehave when there’s no world order anymore. Heller’s writing style is a little different and might take a bit to get used to but trust me, you’ll fall into the groove of his cadence. Not to give away the end of the book but I must admit I’m a little mystified by part of it and left wondering why it ended like it did. Feel free to add comments or insight.