[Review] Guiding Emily by Barbara Hinske

Title: Guiding Emily
Series: N/A
Author: Barbara Hinske
Genre: general fiction (adult), literary fiction, women's fiction
Format: audiobook from the publisher on NetGalley
Publication Date: December 1 2020 (audiobook)
Published By: Podium Audio (audiobook)
Source: audiobook from the publisher on NetGalley

Synopsis from Publisher

Sometimes the perfect partner has four paws…

Emily Main had it all: a high-powered career with a leading technology giant and a handsome fiancé bounding up the corporate ladder. Their island wedding and honeymoon were idyllic—until a tragic accident causes her retinas to detach.

Her well-ordered life is shattered as all treatments are unsuccessful and she slips into blindness. How will those around her cope with her tragedy? Can she rebuild her life in this most unwelcome, new normal?

Meanwhile, a black lab puppy named Garth fulfills his destiny to become that most esteemed of all creatures: a guide dog.

Guiding Emily is a heartwarming tale of love, loss, and courage as Garth and Emily make their way to each other.

About Barbara Hinske

Barbara Hinske is an attorney who recently left the practice of law to pursue her career as a full-time novelist. She inherited the fiction gene from her father who wrote mysteries when he retired and told her a story every night of her childhood. Barbara is the bestselling author of the beloved ‘Rosemont’ series and has recently launched a collection of murder mystery thrillers in her "Who's There?" collection.

She and her husband share their own Rosemont with two adorable and spoiled dogs. She is besotted with decorating, entertaining, cooking and gardening. Now that her novel The Christmas Club has been made into a Hallmark Channel movie, she is completely star-struck and thrilled to have her work on the screen.

My Thoughts:
Guiding Emily is my favourite book of the year so far. Yes, I know it's only early February, but it was very enjoyable. I found myself impatient to get back to my audiobook, damn that silly thing called work getting in my way.

Guiding Emily is really two separate stories that join together at the end. First off we meet Garth. He is an adorable and smart black lab puppy who is in training to be a guide. Secondly we meet Emily, a head programmer at a firm who is just getting ready to leave for her wedding and honeymoon. We already know from the synopsis the Emily will have an accident that will take away her sight and so we know that Garth will obviously end up as her guide.

Even though we already know what is going to happen, there is a lot of extra foreshadowing at the beginning of the story, and I found it a little annoying as it went on. For example Emily kept mentioning to her husband how she is afraid to do certain things because her retinas might detach. Later we have her mother going on about it as well. We get it, she has to be careful, but we also already know it's going to happen. That was one of only two things that annoyed me about the story, and they were so minor I didn't even deduct a point for them.

The other slightly annoying thing was how Garth just happened to keep running into Emily and her friends before Emily was even partnered with Garth. Dhruv at the dentist. Zoey at the center. Emily and her group at the restaurant. It kind of gives the impression it's a very small town they all live in, but we know that's not the case. So I just found all that a little too coincidental, but again, not a major issue. Even though the meeting at the restaurant highly coincidental, I did like how Garth was immediately drawn to Emily, and the way he described her. 

The story as a whole sucked me in. Even though I knew she was going to be blind, the whole time she was fighting to get better from her surgery, and keeping her head down, and sleeping on the massage board, I just felt all of that. The hope, and the agony of being so uncomfortable but having no other choice. I was frustrated right along with her when things didn't work out, and I understand the anger and the resistance to acceptance and moving forward, and the depression that followed.

The story is very realistic, and I love how they easily work in all the terminology and explanations around living as a blind person and all the assistive technologies and personal trainings they have to help the blind. I was intrigued by the differences between a guide dog and a therapy dog, and all the different things they can actually help out with. One of my favorite sections, but also the most traumatizing, is when Gath has an incident with a fake service dog in a restaurant and how the handler goes on her rant about how dangerous fake service dogs are. It was very eye opening. 

Garth was adorable! I loved his parts of the book the best. Seeing things through his eyes made me wish even more that I was able to communicate with my pup. One of my favorite parts with Garth was when he was trying to help clean up the spilled soda and accidentally ruined the child's homework and everyone was so upset with him but he doesn't understand why because in his mind he was just trying to help. It made me wonder if there were ever times I got mad at my own pup when he was just trying to help out. My only issue is sometimes he would say things that he obviously couldn't know, like when he described the pop spill and compared it to Niagara Falls. How would he know about Niagara Falls? But most of the time his parts fell well within what he would actually know, which made it easy to submerse myself into the story. Garth meeting the puppy raiser's cat for the first time was truly hilarious!

The characters were all pretty amazing, with Dhruv, the autistic coworker and Zoey, the young girl neighbor who befriends Emily after her accident, being my top secondary characters. Dhruv was just so sweet always doing research to help out his friend, and doing what needed to be done, unlike her husband who just can't seem to wrap his head around his wife's blindness and how to help her. Both Dhruv and Zoey help Emily in different ways come to grips with her blindness and gently help prod her towards next steps like the blind lessons at the center, and eventually applying for a guide.

With regards to the audiobook presentation itself, it was wonderful. The two narrators, Fred Berman and Julia Whelan were perfect fits for this story. Both of them are well known audiobook narrators with over a dozen pages of choices for each of them over on Audible. I have actually listened to a book with Fred before, the Time Traveler's Wife, and even though I didn't enjoy the story, I did enjoy the narration, and he makes an awesome Garth. 

The whole story was very visual. I could see this as a movie I would enjoy watching. As I already mentioned I didn't like stopping. If I could have just sat in a quiet corner somewhere and indulged in the whole book, I would have. Sadly all my audiobook listening comes during my commutes to work, and I only travel about 20-30 minutes each way, so I don't get a whole lot of listening in on each session.

The overall impression of the book, that life sometimes changes, even if for the worse, but that life can still be a full life if you just make some adjustments, resonated a great deal with me. I have been a chronic pain sufferer for many years, and finally last year I took matters into my own hands and changed my diet and activity and made things so much better. I now how a much better outlook on life, and so does Emily.

The Pros:

• Garth is adorable and I could listen to him describe his life forever
• The story was very immersive and informative.
• The secondary characters were big additions to the story, very realistic, and very loveable.
• The narrators were amazing.

The Cons:

• I wish there would have been more time spent with Emily and Garth together.
• Some of the meetings with Garth and the other characters beforehand were too coincidental.
• It was very predictable, but that still didn't take away from the story at all.