“Dog says: Come on you’re missing something come on you’re going to miss it. He’s not referring to anything specific, he’s referring to possibility. This is why Cecily needs him.”

If you ever tire with people’s fickle nature and consider that you were possibly born to the wrong species, you will find good company with Cecily.

Smyth’s The Inugami Mochi contains inconsolable beauty reading like a love story in rare form. Cecily and Dog are of a similar soul and their lives, knitted together, by chance or fate, are laid bare. This is not a book with a strong plot, but one with dreamy prose and a hint of mysticism that makes you feel like you’re in a spiritual world without ever being preached to. The connection between a creature and its human is finely wrought as the line between creature and human blurs.

The language breezes through beginning to end, but the content has teeth that dig into society and burdensome truths. The Inugami Mochi is an honest book with surreal surprises, and so it is a peculiar cup of a tea. But if you’re looking for different, you can find it here.