A Dog in Georgia

by Lauren Grodstein

Amy Webb is a chef. Or rather, she was a chef.  Somewhere along the way she also became a wife and a stepmother and an emergency contact, and the part of her that was a chef disappeared entirely– along with her sense of self.  Which is why she is currently in the republic of Georgia, on a mission to find a lost dog named Angel, and, more importantly, the life’s purpose she once took for granted.
 
For months, Amy has escaped by watching Youtube videos of Angel walking the children of Tbilisi to school.  When Angel goes missing, Amy volunteers to go find him. The fact that her husband may be having (another) affair and her stepson is away at college probably has something to do with it.  Who is Amy, after all, if she’s not taking care of other people?
 
But to her surprise, Angel proves elusive, and while she does make friends with a number of stray dogs, what she finds in Tblisi is entirely human. Is she happy in her marriage? What happened to her career? Why doesn’t she ever cook anymore, even just for herself? 
 
Helping her on this journey of self-discovery is a rebellious teenager, a mysterious and attractive Russian, and several post-Soviet grandmothers. And, of course, the rich food and culture and complicated politics of Georgia itself.
 
After a lifetime of looking away from her own needs and appetites, Amy is forced to confront what she really wants and how to finally find herself -
 
And a dog.
 
 

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Animals, Audiobook, Novels, Dogs

304 pages, Hardcover

First published August 5, 2025

About the author

Lauren Grodstein is the author of the upcoming A Dog in Georgia, the Read with Jenna pick We Must Not Think of Ourselves and the New York Times bestselling A Friend of the Family.. She directs the MFA program at Rutgers University-Camden.

Reviews

[Julie K. Reads · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm really tired of these stories that feature willfully ignorant middle-aged women with dark humor and cheating husbands. It's repetitive, not funny, and exhausting.

The main character was absolutely insufferable and insensitive. At the beginning, Amy is portrayed as empathetic, constantly volunteering at animal shelters and adopting her husband's son to raise him as her own. So all her actions and dialogue that follow are so confusing and honestly offensive. The conversations she has while meeting her Georgian hosts had me scoffing and rolling my eyes.

She's supposed to be a food writer but flinches multiple times throughout the story at the cultural foods of other countries. By the end of the story, she's so "inspired" by the persistence of Georgian people protesting Russian occupation that she...cheats on her husband, immediately leaves Georgia, and starts a new life in Paris? Literally what was the point.

At no part in the story did I understand what the author was trying to convey. It was so politically and morally ambiguous and just left me absolute hating Amy and all she stood for.

Don't waste your time.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Zibby Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

This heartwarming new novel follows the journey of the protagonist, Amy Webb, a once-passionate chef and writer. Feeling that life in New York has become stale due to routine and suspicion, Amy becomes fascinated by a YouTube sensation, a stray dog named Angel, who helps schoolchildren cross the street in Georgia. However, when Angel suddenly disappears, Amy hops on a plane to Tbilisi, determined to find the famous pup. In the process, she also rediscovers a spark in herself that she has been buried beneath years of caretaking.

In Georgia, through shared meals with rebellious teens, post-Soviet grandmothers, and a drifting Russian émigré, Amy learns to cook and begins to claim her own identity in terms of love and self-discovery. What starts as a story about a middle-aged woman impulsively traveling to Georgia to help find a lost dog evolves into a deeper exploration of marriage, midlife, identity, and the search for meaning.

I love how the author uses the quest for a dog as a mirror reflecting a woman’s search for herself. Amid the dusty streets, stubborn politics, and chaotic dog encounters, Amy peels back layers of obligation until we finally hear her true voice. By the end, you find yourself rooting for both Angel and Amy because they are both lost in their own way until they find their way home.

To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://shows.acast.com/moms-dont-hav...

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spoiler alert: dogs are a bit incidental to this late in life coming of age story. Amy Webb used to be a model and a chef, but for the past decade or more she has taken care of her restaurateur husband's son Ferris, and Ferris's drug addicted mother. Confronted with the evidence of yet another affair between her husband Judd and a nubile young hostess at his restaurant, Amy escapes into YouTube. There she finds the story of Angel, a dog in Tbilisi, Georgia, who adorably walked children to school, until he disappears. Amy is drawn in and convinced that she can find this dog, so she impulsively gets on a plane for the long journey to Tbilisi. Amy's host is Irine, the principal of the local school, and she finds herself in a household with soviet era grandmas, a rebellious teenage daughter, an attractive Russian boarder, and 11 stray dogs. During her visit, Amy is forced to confront her feelings of aimlessness, learns about and witnesses Georgia's anti-Putin protest movement, and begins to turn toward learning who she is and what she wants. This is a deceptively simple story, engaging and beautifully told.

[Allison Meakem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tbilisi, Georgia, is not the most obvious getaway destination for an American woman in the throes of a midlife crisis. But it is where the protagonist of Lauren Grodstein’s latest novel, "A Dog in Georgia," chooses to escape her uneasy existence in New York.

One morning, 46-year-old Amy Webb wakes to discover texts on her husband’s phone that all but suggest he is cheating on her (again). The revelation comes just as Amy feels especially aimless in her career and family life. Trained as a cook, she married into wealth and hasn’t worked a line job in years. And although she is a dutiful stepmom to her husband’s son, he is now off studying at Cornell University and thriving on his own.

Whenever Amy enters an anxious spiral, she watches animal videos on YouTube... [[READ THE REST IN FP: https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/08/01/...]]

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let’s start with the positives. A DOG IN GEORGIA starts off with a strong premise: A middle aged woman sets off on an adventure to reinvent herself after discovering her husband has been unfaithful again. The adventure takes her to a Tbilisi, Georgia (the country, not the state) where she explores local food, culture, and customs. Amy is driven by her love for animals and a lost dog is the reason for her whirlwind decision to head to Georgia.

Now, the less than positive: Once Amy decides to travel to Georgia in search of Angel, the dog, the story takes a complete turn. Amy started out as a sympathetic character and quickly lost her appeal as she made questionable choices and often behaved disrespectfully with regard to her host country. The book became heavily focused on politics and less on Amy’s journey.

I came away from this book feeling like I didn’t read what I expected to read. It was interesting and well written, just not what I was anticipating. I liked it; just didn’t love it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for the advance copy. All opinions are my own.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first novel I've read by Lauren Grodstein, but after reading "A Dog in Georgia", I will be adding her other books to my TBR list. I loved this novel. It takes place in NYC and the country of Georgia. The main character, Amy, is a New Yorker who is going through something hard. Let's generalize and call it familial. Georgia is also going through hardship, also familial--if you cast the current autocratic government as the tyrannical parent and Russia as the evil stepmother. Lob in a sexy and mysterious Russian, a multi-generational houseful of strong Georgian matriarchs, a spitfire of a teenage girl with revolution on her mind and few dozen dogs with big personalities and you get a story that is both charming and intense. There's also quite a bit of delicious detail devoted to food. You might get hungry reading. It scratched all of my good story itches. It made me sit up straighter as I saw looming similarities with our Country's own newly elected autocratic wannabe. But mostly, I missed the DoginGeorgia world and the characters who lived in it. Really good writing. Really good story. Really good book.

[Blue · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a sweet little book about a 46 year old woman whose life didn’t go how she had expected it to, who finally decided to find her way again down an unexpected path. Very sweet little book. I loved the maturity the characters and conversations were written with. Very thought provoking and connecting in exploring themes of later adulthood.

[Bonnie Goldberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about a search for a lost dog. This book is also about the political instability in Georgia in the Caucuses and its relation to notions of American democracy. It’s also about Amy from the East Village NYC who lost the spark in her marriage but remains fiercely devoted to her step son. That Grodstein ties all these disparate pieces together into an enjoyable and fast paced story is a testament to her skill as an author. Come for the dog, stay for the story which as a bonus is a bit of a travelogue too.

[Tanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this, I see some people did not but I didn't have a problem with Amy, our protagonist.

Was she naïve about how the government works in Georgia? Yes. Was she adrift? Yes. Even her name can make you think of aimless.

But ultimately she is a good person, who loves animals more than people (I see you, sister) and loves her stepson intensely.

Will she figure things out? I don't know. I don't know if I will, either. But reading this helped a little. And yes, I can see the movie in my head already but I think this one could be goooooood.


"Her life in human years was probably more than halfway over but she knew that she had yet to really get started. It was galling, really, the parsimony of the human lifespan."

"She was still a person worth seeing. She knew she was. She had to be."

[Angel wells · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks to Goodreads for the arc copy. Hmmm, where to start? This book just wasn’t for me. It was a little misleading in the synopsis, I had no idea of all the political content in this book. It’s not something I enjoy reading about at all. I didn’t connect with the characters and felt their relationships bland and then hurried at the end. I felt what happened with Amy and the man in Georgia was unnecessary and just not needed. It didn’t suit her character at all. It would have honestly been a DNF if I just picked it up and not won for an honest review.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The main character of this novel, Amy, is a middle aged woman in NYC who escapes her mild dissatisfaction with her own life by watching animal videos on YouTube, especially ones of a dog named Angel in the country (not state) of Georgia who serves as a crossing guard of sorts to the school children there. When Angel goes missing and Amy suspects her husband is cheating on her, she spontaneously books herself a ticket to go there and search for the dog. Exploring this new country, she also finds herself getting to know the family she is staying with, and maybe she’ll get to know herself as well.

I just loved this book, so unique. I have only read one other book by Lauren Grodstein, the historical novel We Must Not Think of Ourselves, and this one was so different in tone but I loved it even more. The writing style and the quirky characters reminded me a bit of Meg Wolitzer or Laurie Frankel, and that’s a big compliment! And the characters were truly interesting and complex and felt like real people. My knowledge of the country of Georgia pretty much begins and ends with the fact that it is a former Soviet republic, so I also loved learning a little about it through this book which really made me feel like I had travelled there myself. And even a non-dog person like myself loved the dogs throughout the book, plus the interesting idea that it can be easier for people to be kind to dogs than to other people. I couldn’t put the book down and tore through it in a day.

4.5 stars

Thanks to the publisher for both a physical and e-ARC; all opinions are my own.

[Heidi Bowman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated how this book made me think of The Awakening, even though it's mostly set in the European country of Georgia in modern times. And how could I not love a book where a woman in her 40s flies off to find a missing dog? Book after my own heart. Of course, the American Amy's ability to make this intercontinental trip shows her privilege, which a lot of people in Georgia do not share. I realized that I have a lot to learn about countries in this part of the world and Russia's ongoing impact on people's lives.

[Sasha Gillespie · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite part about reading Grodstein is how her language is so self-assured and every turn of phrase pacts a punch without being overly showy. Her characters are well developed but fluid and complicated. Amy here is a character grappling with the changes of midlife and how she wants to position herself relative to those around her and in the larger picture, with her trip making her reflect on everything she has back home. Along the way I learned a lot about Georgian history and current day politics.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

46 year-old Amy has been married to restaurant owner Judd for years and has raised his son as her own. Now that he's in college, she has found herself spending much of her time watching YouTube videos about a special dog in the Republic of Georgia, who has gone missing After she has spent Years helping school children cross the street in the small town. Since Amy has a background in dog rescue, she decides to fly to the Republic of Georgia to help find Angel with her drone and traps and American know how, hosted by the woman she has been corresponding with on line.

Once Amy gets to Georgia, it's obvious she's there not only to look for the dog but to try and
figure out what she wants to do with her life and her marriage. The reader is also introduced to the political unrest in Georgia
and there is much knowledge to be gained here for those of us who have little knowledge of the politics in this area of the world. Amy gets pulled into conflict between her host and her politically active and protesting teenage daughter which is used as a storytelling device to educate us.

I learned quite a bit in this novel but it wasn't really what I was expecting from the synopsis and title. Yes there are dogs, but not as much as I had anticipated, and Amy's character seemed to be pulled in SO many directions. There are plenty of great reviews allready so I may just be the outlier saying this one was fine but just not for me.

Thank you to net galley and Algonquin Books for the egalley of this book.

[Tiffany Curren · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the balm that I didn’t know I needed. The timing was perfect. I’m stunned by the ending. I need a few minutes to breathe before I can fully process this book.

[Zoe Zeid · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book didn’t really do it for me. It was slow and boring and the main character was insufferable. There was also too much politics for my taste.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audiobook review - Katie Koster did a wonderful job on this one, and the overall production was top notch. There are multiple characters she voices and they were each very distinguishable. Their personalities really came out. I would happily listen to another novel she narrates. Here's a bit about the novel: A middle aged woman escaping New York to Tbilisi (in the county of Georgia) to help search for a missing dog. Not a lot is going right at the moment for Amy so she figures why not go on this kinda crazy trip to help search for Angel, a sweet dog who was walking kids to school. When she arrives however she soon discovers what a daunting task she signed up for and she also arrived during many political rallies, issues, and confrontations. I enjoyed the storytelling but this book is a lot more politically focused than the synopsis lets on, as other readers have mentioned. In the current state of the world, reading about more politics in my spare time isn't as enjoyable as general women's fiction which I thought this was. Great story just not the right time for this reader! Thank you Hachette Audio for the gifted copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Rachelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Dog in Georgia (thank you #gifted @algonquinbooks ) is not what it seems.

At first glance, it's about dog-lover Amy whose marriage is falling apart. Who takes an impromptu trip to Georgia (the Eastern European country, not the US state) to help find a missing dog who's become an internet sensation.

I knew it would be about finding yourself and reinvention.

What I did not expect was the politics of this formerly communist country, the turmoil that neither Amy nor I embarrassingly knew anything about. The arrogance of some Americans, the wealth we take for granted, the risks others are willing to take to have a say in their government- or the things they're willing to sacrifice in order to have a quiet life.

Plus, there's some amazing food writing. Excuse me while I go google the nearest Georgian restaurant.

But I felt like the book lost a little steam about 2/3 of the way through. Amy made some choices I didn't agree with. And the ending is ambiguous. Which I used to think I liked, but after two books in a row with that type of ending, I've decided is not for me.

I still enjoyed the writing and this look into another culture. 3.5 stars

[Celeste · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was OK. Strong premise. Lady looking for something….maybe a dog. But when she gets to Georgia (not Atlanta) the politics get too heavy. I don’t mind a little history and current events lesson, but it was too much. Like a few others here have said, we, the readers, are set up for maybe a more lighthearted story. I went to an Author talk on this book, and she had said she was lobbying for a moodier cover, and maybe the publisher should have listened to her. It was all summed up by the dog psychic early in the book “Anyway, something truly metamorphic is coming for her, but it’s going to be very difficult. Very heavy. I think she knows it too”. So we know now, it wasn’t the dog she was sensing, but Amy. This book may be rated higher if people know what to expect more going in.

[Max Heimowitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tavisupleba, tavisupleba

This book was kind of wild: Amy, a mid-forties woman from New York, believes her husband Judd is cheating on her with a 23 year old. After confronting him and feel dissatisfied with the resolution, and after sending a lot of money to help find a missing dog in Tbilisi (and watching plenty of animal videos on social media), she books a flight to go and find said missing dog in Georgia. The country.

She’s kind of nuts, and people tell her she is, but she doesn’t care? And she arrives in Tbilisi amid the protests surrounding the foreign agents law, and an influx of Russian “refugees.” She somehow ends up at the protests, too. And all the while, she’s searching for the dog (named Angel), learning about the Russia-Georgia political tensions, wrapping her head around the divide between the older Soviet generation and the youth… there’s a lot going on and a lot of the book was actually really fun.

Until the end. With Andrei and Irine and Angel the dog and Judd. I just didn’t love the resolution.

[Zehava (Joyce) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strange book with a strange ending but I did really enjoy most of it. At times I felt like I was reading a modern history of Georgia (the country not the state) which seemed neither here nor there and it also seemed like the author was preaching about her feelings on freedom, authoritarianism and Vladimir Putin (again, strange.) The actual story, including Amy’s family life and the exploration of Tbilisi Georgia and its culture, were pretty beautiful and some of the insights really took my breath away. If you are looking for a book that’s really different and quirky and interesting (and yes somewhat bizarre) this might be the book for you.

[Bell (wicked era💚🫧) · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you want to read about a middle-aged white woman on the brink of divorce, who goes to another country and becomes the stereotypical entitled American tourist with no respect for the culture, then this book is for you!

Also, as other reviews have mentioned, there is only a sprinkle of said dog in the book, wouldn't really consider it a book about a dog.

[Desi A · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book off the New shelf at Northside, not having heard of it before now. It was … interesting and perplexing at times, humdrum and boring at others. It seemed like a story that wanted to be so many different things all at once and didn’t always succeed.

That being said, I enjoyed the journey to Tiflis/Tbilisi and the efforts the author made to engage with its complexity (of which I know little).

3.5 stars.

[Kathleen Faubion · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of Amy dropping everything to trundle off halfway across the world to look for a dog was totally implausible to me. I kept reading though, and was glad to see it wasn’t really about the dog. It was about the women (and yes, like other reviewers, I found the Andrei interlude annoying and unnecessary). My favorite part of the story was the relationship between Amy and Ferry, very sweet and very special.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Jean Pyzik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really sure about this one. I had great hopes and was disappointed but I’m not a dog lover nor a foodie so maybe that’s why. I need someone to explain this one.

[Irene Marston · Rating 4 out of 5]

its a very interesting mystery but has very strange ending

[Cynthia · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF-ed. First chapter was good but the conversation in the car was awkward and I gave up

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for a dog story, but I also enjoyed learning more about the country of Georgia and their struggles to maintain their freedom from Russia.

[Nancy Dardarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book