{"id":6898,"date":"2026-02-17T07:35:49","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T15:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=6898"},"modified":"2026-02-17T07:35:49","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T15:35:49","slug":"patricia-b-mcconnell-away-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/patricia-b-mcconnell-away-to-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Patricia B. McConnell: Away to Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

Debut<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This is an excellent debut from animal behaviorist Patricia McConnell, whose main character, Maddie McGowan, is also an animal behaviorist who goes to sheepdog trials in her spare time.\u00a0 She takes her beloved dog, Jack, to trials, and he is still learning the ropes a bit.\u00a0 The book opens with a bang.\u00a0 Maddie is at a trial with her mentor, George, who offers her encouragement before her \u201crun\u201d with Jack, and then the worst happens.\u00a0 George is shot and dies, and everyone at the trial feels it must have been a hunting accident.<\/p>\n

Maddie deals with her grief by staying centered and working, so we as readers are treated to her animal clients, and these parts of the book are completely fascinating.\u00a0 If you like animals at all (but especially dogs) you\u2019ll no doubt enjoy these parts as well.\u00a0 Like fellow \u201cdog\u201d writers Paula Munier and Margaret Mizishima, McConnell obviously loves dogs and understands them.\u00a0 It shines through in her writing.<\/p>\n

Maddie also volunteers at the local animal shelter, and it\u2019s there she meets a bag of bones named Cisco.\u00a0 The shelter is about ready to put him down, but they call on Maddie as a last resort.\u00a0 He won\u2019t let anyone get near him \u2013 however, not only is Maddie able to get near him, she falls in love with him and wants to take him home as a foster.\u00a0 She also realizes that Cisco must have been some kind of drug detection or K9 dog.<\/p>\n

McConnell is excellent at setting up Maddie\u2019s matrix \u2013 the people around her that she works with as well as her dog related friends and her neighbors.\u00a0 After a life trauma, Maddie has found a Wisconsin farm to call home, where she lives in isolated beauty with sheep, a horse, a couple dogs and a couple cats.\u00a0 Cisco is added to the mix.\u00a0 And then there are the flashbacks to what happened to her in the past \u2013 these are teased out throughout the narrative, adding complexity to the mystery of George\u2019s death but to another later death as well.<\/p>\n

The mystery part of this is not as strong as the characters and setting, but those parts are so outstanding that I didn\u2019t really care.\u00a0 The resolution was not unexpected, but the path McConnell takes to get to it is.\u00a0 She creates a suspenseful story grounded in her life and the life of her animals \u2013 again, similar to Munier and Mizushima \u2013 but she has a few pacing issues to sort out. \u00a0Still, this was a really enjoyable read and I learned as I read, but in a way that was organic and not shoved in front of me.\u00a0 Maddie is a wonderful character, and I would definitely be interested in her next adventure. —\u00a0Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Debut This is an excellent debut from animal behaviorist Patricia McConnell, whose main character, Maddie McGowan, is also an animal behaviorist who goes to sheepdog trials in her spare time.\u00a0 She takes her beloved dog, Jack, to trials, and he is still learning the ropes a bit.\u00a0 The book opens with a bang.\u00a0 Maddie is … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,4],"tags":[2403,2402,1218,251,162,2401,1276,2404,670],"class_list":["post-6898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-in-series","category-reviews","tag-animal-behaviorist","tag-away-to-me","tag-debut","tag-dogs","tag-kensington-books","tag-patricia-b-mcconnell","tag-robin-agnew","tag-sheepdog-trials","tag-suspense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6901,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6898\/revisions\/6901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}