Family; loving, caring, and loyal. These are all things that come into my head when I think of the word family. Life is like race car driving. People either win or they lose and there's its ups and downs which is what is talked about in the book Racing in the Rain. In 2008, Garth Stein wrote Racing in the Rain, a captivating story about life told through a dog's point of view. It was a New York Times best seller for 156 weeks. This book is a great example that shows me that I should never give up when life gets hard. In this book I learned about the true meaning of family and what it means to lose, love, and fight.

In the beginning of the book the dog, Enzo, starts out by talking about the happily newly-wed couple that are his owners. Recently after getting married, the couple gave birth to a child named Zoe. They where the picture-perfect family; married and gave birth to a beautiful child at a young age. Denny, the husband, loves to race cars and has a dream of doing it professionally. Eve, the wife, is a loving, stay at home mom to care for their daughter, Zoe, and wants some sort of a way to protect her but doesn’t know how. The parents both have successful careers and have just bought a brand new house together.

Shortly after giving birth, Eve thought of a way to protect her daughter by asking Enzo to promise her that for her daughter. Enzo would love to tell her that he can promise that but he cannot communicate with her because he's a dog. Later on Eve starts suffering from terrible pain and symptoms like mood swings and nausea. She screams in pain but she refuses to ever seek medical care. While this was going on, Enzo could smell an odor coming from her head. He could sense that there was something terribly wrong with her. Meanwhile Eve is going through this troubling time, Denny's team won first at one of their car racing competitions. A little while after that, their family was having a mini vacation together swimming at a cascade. While they were there, Eve slipped and hit her head on a rock. She did not want to go to the hospital but Denny drove her anyways. While they were there, Eve found out the worst news she could ever hear. She had cancer. During this time, Eve's parents wanted full custody of Zoe and took Denny to court to fight for her. Now I am not going to give any spoilers away about what happened to them, so everyone should go read the book if they want the answers. Everyone should just go read it anyways because it's a very good book in my opinion. Through this tough time, their dog Enzo loves them through it all and tries to support his family in anyway he can.

After reading this book, I saw that it teaches very good life lessons. It shows a story of a family who is going through a very tough time and how we should always fight for them. Whoever is reading this that loves dogs like I do, then they will definitely like this book. I like this book so much, that I even read it three times. This is a pretty sad book and it ends in a distressing but kind of cheerful way. Many books that I read usually have a happy ending but this one doesn't really. I enjoy this book because it's not your average book. It leaves me sad but wondering what happened to the characters and making me want a part two of the book. It makes me not wanting the book to end and I want to come back for more. 

Overall I loved this book. It makes me want to keep reading and coming back for more. It's a sad book but in a good way because it's different then other books. I love dogs, so being that a dog is telling the story makes it much better. The way the dog thinks and cares so much about his family makes me laugh and feel heartwarmed by him. I think this is a wonderful book because it keeps making me want to come back to read more of it and I don't want it to end.