Somewhere between the third foster dog and the second heartbreak, Isabel Klee realized the two were more connected than she’d ever admitted. That quiet realization runs through “Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I’ve Cried About,” a memoir that turns a decade of bad dates and good rescues into something genuinely moving.
The book follows Klee through her twenties in New York City, tracing a string of relationships that ranged from forgettable to outright damaging, set against the parallel story of her growing devotion to fostering rescue dogs. Rather than telling the two threads in strict chronological order, Klee organizes chapters thematically, letting a particular dog’s arc bump up against whichever boyfriend was in the picture at the time, so love and heartbreak accumulate in layers rather than a straight line.
What makes the book work is Klee’s voice: self-deprecating, funny, and unafraid to admit when she was the problem. She writes about her dogs with an intimacy and specificity that never tips into sentimentality, capturing the unglamorous realities of fostering, the accidents, the vet bills, the animals who don’t make it, alongside the moments of genuine transformation they offer her. The men come and go with far less ceremony, which turns out to be the point: they’re supporting characters in a story that was never really about them.
Early reaction to the memoir has been largely warm, with many readers and critics singling out Klee’s ear for a good line and her honesty about her own missteps in love. The dog material tends to draw the strongest praise; several reviewers have noted that Klee is at her most affecting when writing about the human-animal bond rather than the human-human one, with some finding the relationship chapters comparatively thinner. A handful of readers have also flagged the nonlinear structure as occasionally disorienting, since jumping between different dogs and different years within the same thematic chapter can blur the sense of forward momentum in Klee’s own growth. The book has already been optioned for a television series, a sign that its blend of humor and heart is resonating well beyond the page.
“Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I’ve Cried About” isn’t really a book about romance, whatever the title suggests. It’s a book about learning to show up, first for a foster dog who doesn’t trust you yet, and eventually for yourself. Readers looking for a tidy love story should look elsewhere; readers who want something funnier, messier, and ultimately more honest about what your twenties actually feel like will find plenty to love here.
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