Other People's Pets: A Novel

by R. L. Maizes Narrated by Devon Sorvari

Overview

"Maizes's debut novel is brought to life by Devon Sorvari's engaging narration. Her delivery is well matched to the story's short declarative sentences as she makes listeners care about La La in spite of her bad choices." -- AudioFile Magazine

R.L. Maizes's Other People's Pets examines the gap between the families we're born into and those we create, and the danger that holding on to a troubled past may rob us of the future.

La La Fine relates to animals better than she does to other people. Abandoned by a mother who never wanted a family, raised by a locksmith-turned-thief father, La La looks to pets when it feels like the rest of the world conspires against her.

La La's world stops being whole when her mother, who never wanted a child, abandons her twice. First, when La La falls through thin ice on a skating trip, and again when the accusations of “unfit mother” feel too close to true. Left alone with her father-a locksmith by trade, and a thief in reality-La La is denied a regular life. She becomes her father's accomplice, calming the watchdog while he strips families of their most precious belongings.

When her father's luck runs out and he is arrested for burglary, everything La La has painstakingly built unravels. In her fourth year of veterinary school, she is forced to drop out, leaving school to pay for her father's legal fees the only way she knows how-robbing homes once again.

As an animal empath, she rationalizes her theft by focusing on houses with pets whose maladies only she can sense and caring for them before leaving with the family's valuables. The news reports a puzzled police force-searching for a thief who left behind medicine for the dog, water for the parrot, or food for the hamster.

Desperate to compensate for new and old losses, La La continues to rob homes, but it's a strategy that ultimately will fail her.

A Macmillan Audio production from Celadon Books

"...Maizes possesses such magic. This examination of family, across all lines and definitions, will open you up in such necessary, beautiful ways."-Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here and The Family Fang

Editorial Reviews

AUGUST 2020 - AudioFile

Maizes’s debut novel is brought to life by Devon Sorvari’s engaging narration. Her delivery is well matched to the story’s short declarative sentences as she makes listeners care about La La in spite of her bad choices. In a straightforward delivery, she recounts La La’s dysfunctional childhood, when her mother abandons her after a near tragic skating accident and her father trains her as an accomplice in his burglary business. Then she discovers her skill as an animal empath, and her life changes. But now all her hopes for working with the animals she loves and marrying the man of her dreams are in jeopardy because she’s returned to her thieving ways to rescue her dad. Sorvari injects clear tones of defensiveness as La La rationalizes her return to burglary. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2020 - AudioFile

Maizes’s debut novel is brought to life by Devon Sorvari’s engaging narration. Her delivery is well matched to the story’s short declarative sentences as she makes listeners care about La La in spite of her bad choices. In a straightforward delivery, she recounts La La’s dysfunctional childhood, when her mother abandons her after a near tragic skating accident and her father trains her as an accomplice in his burglary business. Then she discovers her skill as an animal empath, and her life changes. But now all her hopes for working with the animals she loves and marrying the man of her dreams are in jeopardy because she’s returned to her thieving ways to rescue her dad. Sorvari injects clear tones of defensiveness as La La rationalizes her return to burglary. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177970479
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	07/14/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

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