By Melvin Burgess
HarperTempest
Hardcover and Paperback Editions

Sandra Francy is a seventeen-year-old girl that’s just been turned into a dog.

She’s been hanging out with a bad crowd and getting more impatient with life each passing day. Then she inadvertently finds out that an alcoholic with an unbelievable anger management problem has the power to change her whole outlook on life...literally.

Terry has the ability to turn anyone into a dog when he gets extremely angry. He considers it a great curse as he has turned more people than he can count, some of which were his own family members. Sandra is his latest victim.

Lady, My Life as a Bitch Excerpt But I was determined to keep my memories of her alive. I spent hours practising growling and barking human words to myself - the names of my family and friends, catch phrases from my favourite programmes on the telly, things we used to eat for dinner - anything to try and keep my memory alive. And night after night, Fella and Mitch would come to visit me and try to entice me away from my master to run with the pack. I was tempted. A night out with the dogs! Oh, there were so many promises, so many temptations. © Melvin Burgess Published with permission from HarperTempest

Faced with this new challenge, and finding it difficult to accept, Sandra mopes around trying to eat, find shelter and just make general adjustments to a form she can’t believe she’s taken. A life that seems so much worse than what she had before.

Desperation leads her back to Terry with the hope that he will also be able to turn her back. In the meantime, she begins to explore all that the life of a dog has to offer - running with the pack, chasing other animals, forging new relationships.

She goes back and forth between thinking a dog’s existence is an improvement and missing her family, friends and even the life she once knew. Until one day when she is forced to make the ultimate decision.

Bookworm's Briefing
Lady, My Life as a Bitch offers an inimitable look into the teen-aged psyche. Melvin Burgess has taken the common discontent of many juveniles, turned it - and the protagonist - into a whole new form and given a relatively insightful, albeit bizarre, account of the results.

Sandra Francy is at once vain, sometimes appalling and, on rare occasions, worthy of sympathy. However, the alcoholic Terry appears to be more of a victim than Sandra will ever be. In view of some content, a serious lack of moral fiber and strength of character, this is not a book that many teens should necessarily read. Nor one that many adults would care to.