Dogfight, A Love Story

Dogfight, A Love Story - Matt Burgess Great premise and the book started off with promise. Alfredo Batista, from Queens, NYC, is in a bit of a conundrum. Because although he is happy that his brother José is returning home from doing time upstate, he also has some major worries. One being that he has to figure out a way to get a pit bull for Jose's homecoming dogfight, and the other is that he's heard rumors his brother (who has converted to Islam while inside and changed his name to Tariq) might think that Alfredo is responsible for him getting locked up and is holding a grudge.

You get the sense that the author is trying to write his heart out in this novel as if this is the last book he'll ever write. Sometimes this earnestness produces great passages, but sometimes the writing seems a little masturbatory and distracting. Good try, but ultimately the book dwindled and I stopped caring.