Rating : 3.25🌈
Pet Delivery is another tale from Ofelia Grand that showcases her ability to create and deliver characters and relationships a reader can connect with in a short story.
Her characters are usually outside of the main character format and often have body types that are also very relatable and realistic.
If there’s an issue, it’s that the story length doesn’t leave time for full development or attention to the characters resolving any drama that’s been introduced.
Both of that happens here but the characters are so engaging that the issues surrounding them with the plot (holes, etc) sort of but not completely make up for that.
There’s Gabriel Miller, recently a witness to a murder and now stashed by the cops in a freezing cold cabin in a small town where he is a stranger. Gabe is frightened, missing his cats and sister. He’s so scared and we connect to him immediately, no matter his actions.
Then there’s Chris Hart, whose family owns the cabin and comes to the rescue. Small town is written all over Chris but in the best of small town ways.
Grand’s writing lets us watch them connect and interact with each other over the situation and bond with each other as they grow together.
It’s a lovely story, plus cats and a sister we don’t see enough of.
Pet Delivery needs fleshing out, more development and details to really work and feel satisfying but the heart is there.
Buy Link:
JMS Books :: Amazon :: books2read.com/PetDelivery
Blurb:
Chris Hart owns the only grocery shop in Nortown, but he isn’t exactly overrun by customers. Some days he wonders why he bothers to open the doors at all. Spending his days smiling at the few people trickling in and his nights alone in bed isn’t the most interesting life a man could lead. But when Chris suddenly gets the excitement he’s been craving, it may be more than he bargained for.
Gabriel Miller loves his life. He’s close to his sister, has a job he adores and is the proud owner of one and a half cats. But all of it is taken away when he witnesses a murder. To keep him safe, the police place him in Nortown, of all possible locations.
Chris can’t believe they’re letting someone live in his gran’s old cabin in the middle of the winter. It’s too cold. When the poor man shows up in his shop looking to buy clothes, Chris’s heart melts, despite the freezing temperature. Gabriel notices the way the shopkeeper looks at him, but it can’t be right. No one looks at a heavyset man with heat in their eyes. Do they?
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 