A long time has passed since I requested this title and my tastes have changed. If I come back to it in the future I'll edit this review!

New to me author Susan Wilson pens a delightful and heartwarming tale about two lost souls who find their way to one another. One is traveling psychic, Ruby Heartwood and the other is a stray dog she calls The Hitchhiker, or Hitch for short. What makes this story all the more interesting and intriguing is Ruby and Hitch can communicate. Ruby hears the dog’s thoughts as clearly as she can hear her own and this opens a door for Ruby to communicate with other animals. Ruby decides to stick around the small town of Harmony Farms for a while longer than she normally would to explore this new addition to her psychic abilities and soon learns that home is much closer to her heart than the physical geography of the location.

I really liked Ruby and felt great empathy for the life she has lived, starting as an abandoned baby growing up in a convent, trying to come to terms with the ability to foresee future events and trying to help those these events affect, even though it isn’t always accepted or received by everyone around her. As a result, Ruby runs away and makes her way in the world surviving horrific events and struggling to raise a child on her own. This woman is a survivor in every sense of the word and having to rely on herself for her entire life has not hardened or embittered Ruby. She has a heart of gold that is shown in how she treats the people she meets in Harmony Farms.

The locale of this book is nearly as engaging as Ruby was. There are several secondary characters that bring a lot of vibrancy and charm to the story, both animal and human. Ruby doesn’t stay long in one place and though the reader has full disclosure of Ruby’s reasons for wanting to move on, I secretly harbored Hitch’s desire that they stay. I especially enjoyed the scenes where Ruby is giving a reading to help an animal’s owner identify a behavioral problem and hearing it from the animal’s point of view was equal parts refreshing and entertaining.

I listened to the audiobook and very much enjoyed the pace of the narration and the various voices and accents she used for both the human and animal characters.

My Final Verdict: Readers who enjoy stories that are relationship driven will enjoy this book quite a bit as this story abounds with relationships. Friendships, adversarial relationships, romantic relationships, family relationships and the special relationships we have with our pets and animals are all present in this book. I highly recommend this book to all readers who enjoy stories that feature animals and the lessons they teach us.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of What a Dog Knows from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* i put off reading this book because i wasn't sure i would like it, turns out i wish i would have read it way sooner! really liked this and it was super cute lol

I am truly grateful for the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook.

Upon reading the synopsis, I got The Art of Racing in the Rain and Lily and the Octopus vibes. I adored those books. They are stories full of wisdom and growth. They made me feel things from page one. They’re beautifully written.

So I needed this story in my life, too. I absolutely expected the same outcome.

I know expectation can kill an experience, but I’m terribly disappointed in this and I dread turning the audiobook on. I will not be able to finish. What I can tell you is that the writing felt stilted to me. The emotion I’ve adored in previous dog stories was absent. And I’m mostly bored by the tale. I’m sure that this is meant to be a touching book, but it isn’t grabbing hold of my heart at all. It seems I’ve made the wrong decision and that I am not the right reader for this one.

This book was full of colorful characters, animals, and a little magic in the air. An adult on the cusp of deciding just how much she can grow up without losing the essence of who she really is. A wonderful story.

P.S. And the cover? Is that Lindsey Vonn and her dog Lucy?! :)

What A Dog Knows by Susan Wilson
Genre - Fantasy
Narrator - Christina Delaine
Rating - 5 out of 5 stars
Narration - 5 out of 5 stars

This was a nice light hearted book about a psychic that has lost her spark and is losing interest in the craft. Then she discovers that she can read dogs thoughts and talk to them.

She never met her parents so as the book progresses she is looking for her mother. She is also a traveler that likes to wander from one place to another but keeps finding herself stuck in a certain small town. Always coming up with problems with her vehicle or something that she thinks she needs to stay in town for.

The narrator is great, she just adds to the light and cheerful mood through out the book. I really liked the way she did the voices for the dogs thoughts.

With a little romance and drama thrown in it is all in all a great book. Will she stay in the small town or move on? Will she find her mother and find answers to questions she has had for years? Well I guess you will have to read/listen to the book to see!

what a charming and thoughtful story - i loved it from beginning to end - of course, i do have a profound love of dogs and always do wonder what they are thinking - what a joy it would be to be able to communicate with the family pet !
i enjoyed all of the characters - the narrator did a wonderful job portraying the different voices, especially the dogs!
I am going to look into other books by this author!

Ever wonder what your pet is thinking? That is what Ruby Heartwood , a psychic/nomad finds out when lightening strikes, and a little dog she names Hitch enters her life. Ruby and Hitch heads to Harmony Farms , where Ruby discovers she is not wanted by various towns people there ,almost loses the dog after she finds the real owner, and finds herself on a journey of why she was given up for adoption.

Cute little story about friendship, self discovery, and who one really is. I liked it, but not wowed. Do recommend. Good narrator.

My thanks to Net Galley, the publisher and the audio company for the chance to review.

Ruby is a psychic, a fortune teller. She has spent most of her life working at street fairs, carnivals, and the odd Renaissance Faire. She has spent her life running away. She has run from the orphanage where she was left as a newborn, from those who exploited her, and away from the man who raped her. She ran from child welfare authorities when she was a teenage mother, worried someone would try and take her child from her. She seems to be losing her ability to read people, but when she meets a small dog she is suddenly able to read animals. Remaining in the small town of Harmony Farms far longer than any place before, she begins to make human connections and feel at home for the first time.

I really enjoyed this story about Ruby and her new canine companion "The Hitchhiker". The story is told from both Ruby's and the Hitchhiker's POV which is actually fun and fresh. I really enjoyed hearing how the world looks to this little dog. Ruby is a great character who has had a difficult life. We learn about her past through flashbacks and it showed how strong she really was. She is a caring person, who developed friendships with unlikely people, which demonstrated her kindness and caring. I loved hearing about her animal "readings". The animals in the story demonstrated normal behaviours that could easily be corrected once the cause was known. I liked how the animals were treated in this story and Ruby's low key approach to the owners. There is a bit of a romance, but that is the secondary storyline as it pertains to Ruby's changes in her life. This was an enjoyable story that I recommend to animal lovers and those who enjoy a good story about new beginnings. Christina Delaine does a great job with the narration of this audiobook. The voices she used for the pets were a hoot and the human voices differentiated the various characters. Her expression and tone were right on and I enjoyed this audio story very much.

This was a cute story but I don't really think it was for me. I usually love the talking dog dynamic and in this case it had a cute reason but it just didn't work for me.
The first part of this book was solid and I enjoyed it. The problem came in when the romance came. I am not a huge of romance and this book really did not need it. This book could have been deep and even have a cute aspect but the romantic was completely unneeded. It ruined the whole book for me.

Ruby Heartwood is a gypsy in that she doesn't lay down roots anywhere and prides herself in her ability to move from place to place with ease until one small town gets into her system and a dog finds her and needs her. Ruby has that ability to see into people's future, but a new skill comes her way when the dog comes into her life and she can communicate with animals and tell their owners what they need and want.

While I don't tend to love the art of psychics and mediums, I did love reading as Ruby communicated with the animals and helping their owners know what the animals wanted and needed. I may have talked to my dogs a little differently both while and after reading this book!

I loved reading about Ruby's pursuit for the details of her past and trying to find out really where she came from beyond the convent where she was surrendered. Watching this part of the book unfold was so entertaining and I enjoyed Ruby and her sleuthing as she gathered clues and got some answers. The one part of the plot that made me shake my head or roll my eyes was the continual things that kept Ruby in the small town, some seemed ridiculous and I wish she had come to her senses earlier in the book and admitted that she was finding joy in staying.

This was my first Susan Wilson read and while I have coveted her covers with all the dogs for a long time, I was ready to try her out and experience her writing and characters. I am hopeful to read more of her books with these great dogs on the cover and finding out how she incorporates the dog into each book.

I switched back and forth between reading the ebook and experiencing the audiobook and I have found that I like doing that with fiction books. This narrator was great and was so fun to listen to while I was out and about and it was nice to see progress in the book at moments where I couldn't have been physically reading the ebook. I am going to make a note of this narrator, I hope to listen to more books that she does.

I'd love to know what my dog is thinking. That's the best part of this book - learning what dogs think, feel, that they hate being carried in a bag. The story was interesting enough and the idea that Ruby can help animals is intriguing. My problem was with Ruby herself. Yes, she had a rough start in life and she's doing what she can to make a living. She seems nice enough. I just didn't like how she reacted to so many different things; she acted like a brat at times and it rubbed me the wrong way. Still, the story is good and would make a good beach read.