The Dust of 100 Dogs by A.S. King

For those of you who regularly take a look at this blog and what I am reading, I am sure you are fully aware that I a HUGE fan of A.S. King.  She is an incredible writer and an even more incredible person.  The Dust of 100 Dogs was her first novel and they just recently re-released it.  And I am so glad they did, because if not I probably never would have known about it and therefore never read it, and believe me when I say I am so glad that I read this one.

This book was so much fun!  It tells the story of a modern day young woman who is fighting to get back to her past.  A past that goes back to the 1600s and her life ans a famous teenage pirate, Emer Morrisey.  As she was trying to escape this dangerous lifestyle, an old nemesis comes back to kill her and curse her with "The dust of 100 dogs."  A curse that will cause her to live the lives of 100 dogs before she can come back to her contemporary form....with all of her memories still intact.

This book beautifully weaves the stories of both the former Emer Morrisey and the present day Saffron Adams, jumping back and forth between the pirate tales of the late 1600s and the present day search for the treasure she buried many, many years ago.  In between these tales, we get tips from our narrator about dogs and why they do the things they do (remember, she lived the lives of 100 dogs, so she has a bit of insight).  This book is full of twists and turns and is another amazing story from the incomparable A.S. King.  

From Amazon:

The first book from LA Times Book Prize and Printz Honor winner A.S. King--a witty, snarky tale of love and family, revenge and reincarnation, and pirates.

In the late seventeenth century, famed teenage pirate Emer Morrisey was on the cusp of escaping the pirate life with her one true love and unfathomable riches when she was slain and cursed with "the dust of one hundred dogs," dooming her to one hundred lives as a dog before returning to a human body-with her memories intact.

Now she's a contemporary American teenager and all she needs to escape her no-good family and establish a luxurious life of her own is a shovel and a ride to Jamaica...