Fans of dystopian stories, who are a little burned-out on the genre, may enjoy the futuristic, flawed world in Your Robot Dog Will Die. Readers don't have to learn the rules for an entirely new universe, so anyone hesitant to explore sci-fi type stories could jump in and not feel overwhelmed by the robot-dog technology. The plot unfolds at an odd pace, taking a while to find the puppy, zipping to a new venue and back and the a quick wrap-up.
I think the relationship aspect was unnecessary to the story, and the Nano, Wolf, Jack friendship could've have still been compelling. The title is awesome, but I was a little concerned about the representation of the Dog Island inhabitants. People who are animal-rights activists, vegans, or live in intentional communities are often viewed as fanatics or extremists, and this story reinforces that negative image. Not everyone who picks this up will stay with it, but for those who do, I think it would provide an excellent discussion for a YA book club.

I got an advanced readers copy of this book for a honest review from NetGalley.
Generally, I am all on board for a young adult dystopian novel. Unfortunately, this was not my jam. The characters all felt a little trite. While I can also appreciate the dog puns for a little bit it ended up feeling like overkill and took me out of the book. I would probably suggest this to someone who has just aged out of the young readers section but is not quite old enough for teen either.

This is a fun, quirky take on the typical YA sci-fi/dystopian novel, perfect for animal-loving fans of either genre.

Thanks to NetGalley and Soho Press for a digital ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Nano lives on Dog Island, where dogs are revered, yet caged and studied. You see, a previous genetic experiment on our canine companions went awry, and dogs were thus labeled deadly and dangerous. All the remaining dogs were euthanized with “Kinderend,” a euthanasia drug, and a select few were kept on Dog Island to be examined. This isn’t the only strange thing happening on Dog Island. Instead of keeping “organic” dogs as pets, people on Dog Island are given robot dogs, which are replaced yearly when the new model comes out. Nano can’t help but get attached to her robotic pets, and cries whenever one is taken from her. This is life on Dog Island.

Things go awry one night when Nano is feeding the organic dogs with her mom. Nano discovers a litter of puppies who are quickly euthanized by her mom (we can’t have dangerous dogs breeding, now can we?). That is, all except one that Nano hides meet their “kinder end.” And this is where the wild adventure into dog smuggling, animal abuse, and secret underground worlds begins.

When I read the premise for Your Robot Dog Will Die, I was excited to jump into this book. Dystopia is my thing, and I hadn’t read a book about a dystopian dog world before. However, Your Robot Dog Will Die suffers from poor execution, outlandish plot points, and confusing storytelling. Through much of the book, I couldn’t tell if everything I was reading was a “big joke.” I was waiting for the wool to be pulled from my eyes, to get some sign that this novel was satire. I felt this way because there is essentially no world-building, and readers are thrown into a world where dogs have gone rogue, people say “thank Dog,” instead of “thank God,” water is scarce, and people actually print their clothes. There was some background provided on the dogs, but I was given no other points of reference for any of the other odd turns of events. This made it very hard to “get into” the story and really find it believable. As an adult, I honestly felt confused through much of the book, and can imagine young readers feeling equally muddled. There were also descriptive passages about animal abuse that were uncomfortable to read. That is probably the point, but for a book being marketed as a must-read for dog lovers, I found it very upsetting to have the images and descriptions of abuse thrust upon me. Lastly, the climax involving the book’s villain was so out there ... no spoilers, but I just wasn’t buying it.

I think that if this book took itself more seriously, did some major world-building at the beginning, and had a more believable and knowledgable narrator, it could be so much more than it unfortunately is.

Funny, yet thought provoking YA novel. I loved Nano and her love for dogs--both the robots and the organics.

This did not turn out at all how I thought it would. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. I thought it was going to be relatively fluffy, but this book has claws. This book injured me.

Poor Nano is buffeted from side to side, has everything she believes torn into shreds and flipped over, and still manages to be true to herself. There's a romance, but it's not the focus, and a disturbingly cult like operation that, like the best dystopias, doesn't reveal itself until almost the end.

I'm taking a star off, though, because I'm not sure what age this is being marketed to. It reads too young for teens, but certain scenes might be very upsetting for younger kids. However, it would be a great starting point for a discussion about treating animals ethically and kindly, and about euthanasia, and these are not subjects I think children should be shielded from. Well done, Arin.

Receiving an ARC did not alter my review in any way.

I was excited about this book as the premise was great and I love dystopian fiction. Unfortunately, I didn’t love the execution. The characters fell a bit flat and the story didn’t seem fully developed. I still think some of my students will enjoy it so will add it to my classroom library and book talk it, but it wasn’t what I had hoped for.

Living in a post-apocalyptic world where true “organic” dogs are basically extinct, the people of “Dog Island” are constantly getting new robot dogs to hold their affections. However, one day while feeding the only six living dogs that run wild on the island, our protagonist, Nano, is astonished to find four living, breathing puppies. But newborn puppies must be euthanized for their own protection in this world, and Nano, in awe of seeing a real-life pup and wanting to protect it, fails to mention just how many there were, leaving one lucky survivor.

I thought that this book had a lot of potential; it was a really cool idea that, unfortunately, was poorly executed. When writing a dystopian novel, world-building is incredibly important, but this book seems to bounce between “I’m going to explain every single detail in an unrealistic fashion” to “I’m going to casually mention some weird facet of our world without explaining in the slightest until way later.” The writing style was quite choppy and hard to get into (not to mention a few glaring typos), and combined with being restricted to a first-person perspective, it was really isolating as a reader. Descriptions were “told” instead of “shown,” which is what constitutes really great writing in my opinion. In fact, the descriptions were so vague that I didn’t realize Nano was a female until about a chapter in, and even then the “voice” that was portrayed combined with her two male friends and an obsession with her older brother really had me refusing to believe she WASN’T a guy. Maybe I’m subconsciously sexist. I don’t know.

The conflict of the puppy isn’t introduced until about a quarter of the way in, which made the book feel really slow. Following FINALLY establishing some sort of plot, the author goes right back to explaining what happened in society to lead to Nano’s present day, and it was... not quite believable. I get that it’s a dystopian novel, but the background has a lot of flaws that are too far-fetched. Overall, the organization seems kind of slapped together, almost like Greenwood is a bit too ambitious with the subplots of her novel: romance, missing brother, and a secret puppy all within this haphazardly constructed world.

Nano is seventeen, just discovering what lies beyond best friends with her guy pal Wolf, and lives on an island off the South Florida coast in an overly zealous community that’s keeping the last dogs in a protected “ruffuge” for their, and everyone else’s, safety. Of course, this is also the group that led the drive to euthanize all dogs after an unfortunate attempt at boosting their intelligence made turned them from tail thumping companions into something from a horror movie.

Nano loves dogs, though she’s too young to have known the 1.0 version, and she loves being allowed to go to the ruffuge to feed the small pack sequestered there. She’s also more than willing to love the robot dog replacements that she’s given as part of the product testing group, at least until they’re taken away from her at the end of the year and a new model arrives. That part sucks.

When she discovers that one of the real dogs has had a litter, despite the contraceptive chemicals they’re fed, one of the pups wags its tail when it sees her, behavior that’s no longer supposed to exist in dogs. She hides the pup from her mother, who took her along to do the feeding and watches while her mother lovingly euthanizes the other pups. So they won’t suffer.

Nano and her friends embark on the expected course of action, hiding the pup from the adults and ultimately getting mixed up with an underground movement to protect animals from the kill happy protections of the Dog Island group. As their story develops, they’re faced with realities of animal abuse as well as the conflicts within the animal rights world, and ultimately must decide where they stand on some pretty thorny bio-ethical issues.
The characters are engaging, including, of course Donut, the pup, but also Billy, Nano’s latest robot dog, named after her older brother who went missing from the island a year ago after questioning the leader’s ideas. There’s a real Jonestown cult vibe towards the end that makes Nano’s choices more critical.

There are a few points that I think could have been made clearer, including what happened to change the dogs originally, and what’s changed since then, but all in all this was a great read and a good place to start a dialog about humans and animals.