A singular, devastating debut novel, Dogs traces the fallout of one catastrophic night in the lives of five high school wrestlers, asking what can survive in the blast radius of latent trauma and violence.

As night falls on the city of Carbon, Hal and his friends are cruising the backroads in their terrible car. From the wrestling gym to the gas station, from his mom’s kitchen to the mall parking lot, Hal bears quiet witness to the beauty and the horror he perceives in the slow, lonely world of his hometown.

Withdrawn and reticent, Hal is haunted by the specter of violence. Safety and comfort are hard won in Carbon, a town dogged by stories of desperation and brutality, and his own home is a dark vault of troubled and unspoken memory. Hal’s greatest peace is found in the company of his dearest friend, Cody John, whose true compassion offers him a window to a better life.

Over the course of a single night, a catastrophic chain of events is set into motion. Its devastating conclusion will explode the fragile balance that once kept the boys together. Unflinching, resolute and beautifully rendered, Dogs is a stunning exploration of trauma, real love, and the limit of our ability to reach one another.

C. Mallon’s Dogs is one of those slim little books that sneaks up on you. It’s under 200 pages, but it holds a lot of weight, circling around themes of friendship, violence, and the kind of bruised masculinity that comes with growing up in a small town. From the very first page, I felt a flicker of recognition. These boys, restless and reckless, cruising backroads and wasting time in parking lots—I knew them. I grew up alongside them. Which is probably why this book struck such a chord, even though I wanted more from it.

The story follows Hal, a high school wrestler whose world is quiet on the surface but haunted underneath. The town of Carbon is your standard small town. Nothing remarkable, nothing flashy, but exactly the kind of backdrop where small moments echo big. Mallon captures that emptiness and longing really well. The pacing is perfect for this type of book. I was pulled along, curious to see where Hal’s night would lead.

About two-thirds of the way in, Mallon drops a revelation about Hal’s past that made me stop. Suddenly, his way of moving through the world all made sense. My heart cracked open for him. That was the moment the book deepened, and I felt the emotional gears shifting. Then, just a few chapters later, another event changes Hal’s life forever. This could have been the book’s knockout punch, the kind of catalyst that reshapes everything. And in some ways, it tries to be. But here’s where the book stumbled for me.

The fallout is rushed. Instead of settling into the messiness, letting us sit with the grief, the confusion, the choices Hal might have made and have him work through them, the story barrels toward its conclusion. I needed more time here. Trauma takes time. Healing takes time. Even unraveling takes time. And I wanted that time on the page.

That said, there’s a lot that works here. The voice is understated but sharp. The characters feel authentic, even when they’re frustrating. The setting is universal; this could be any small American town, which makes the story both personal and collective. There’s also tenderness hidden among the violence, especially in Hal’s connection to his friend Cody John. Those quiet moments, where Hal glimpses something gentler and truer, might be the strongest part of the book.

By the time I closed the last page, I wasn’t dissatisfied exactly, but I wasn’t fully satisfied either. I found myself imagining the book as a full-length novel. Another hundred pages would have given Hal room to breathe, to process, to show us the ripples of what happened instead of cutting them short. A longer version of Dogs could have turned a good novella into a gut-punch of a novel.

If you grew up in a small town, if you’ve known boys like Hal this book will probably ring familiar. Just be prepared: it’ll tug at you, but it will likely leave you wishing for just a little more resolution. So, I’m a little torn here. I liked this book. The fact that I wanted more is, in its own way, a compliment. Mallon has a sharp eye for character and setting, and even with its rushed ending, they leave an impression. It’s not perfect, but it’s memorable. And sometimes, that’s enough.