Off the Shelf Media

Growing up, my family not only had a few dogs of our own, but for well over a decade, we had a revolving door of foster dogs coming in and out of our New Jersey home. Sometimes, those dogs came and went in a few days, especially the puppies. Other times, they stayed with us for months on end, going to adoption event after adoption event until the perfect family came around. 

Sometimes, they came to us sick; they came to us broken. Othertimes, they came to us happy as ever, completely unbothered by the chaos and turmoil we knew they had just undergone. No matter the state, we loved and cared for them all. As a family, we had our handful of “foster failures” as well, where a temporary foster dog is adopted by the foster family. They happened to have found their perfect home with us, and though it’s called a failure in jest, it is anything but. 

So, as you can imagine, my family sends a million happy (and sometimes sad) stories about shelter dogs back and forth to each other. I had originally come across @simonsits, aka Isabel Klee, from a TikTok my mom sent me about her foster, Tiki. 

Though our family had taken a pause from fostering after one too many foster failures, adopting a pitty-mix, Ruger, from the shelter was one of the first things my husband and I did when we finally moved out and got a space of our own. While he’s no longer with us, I wouldn’t have traded that experience of rescuing a dog from the shelter for the world. For the past few months, we’ve also been fostering dogs ourselves with ACCT Philly. 

As it would so happen, I also work in the publishing industry. For transparency’s sake, I have no affiliation with this title or any of the teams that were involved in publishing it, but I certainly take notice when a book launch has a particularly strong campaign around it. 

When I saw an early promotion for Klee’s debut book and #1 New York Times bestseller, Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I’ve Cried About, I knew I’d have to read it. This book also came to me at a time when we were freshly experiencing the loss of two of our own dogs, Ruger and Amber. 

So, to be transparent, this is unlikely to be an unbiased review. Let’s dig in. 

Who is @simonsits?

There is a lot to hate about the world we live in, the role social media plays in it, and the people it makes famous. 

Isabel Klee is one of the few positives to come out of the social media craze. 

For a bit of background, as I understand it, Klee started documenting her work with foster dogs around 2019, though the now 32-year-old has been fostering since her mid-twenties. As of writing this review, she’s fostered and homed about 35 dogs out of New York City, according to her interview with NPR. 

@simonsits

Day 13 with Tiki: to be loved is to be changed 🥹 @Muddy Paws Rescue @ASPCA

♬ Blackbird – 🪲🎸/🌊🌴/🐵🪖

The account, @simonsits on Instagram and TikTok, is named after her own foster failure, Simon, a Jindo mix with epilepsy. And, unfortunately, Klee most recently shared on social media that he was also diagnosed with cancer. She didn’t know about Simon’s condition when she first took him on as a foster, where he shortly after became her permanent resident. Nonetheless, Isabel chose to stick by him and has since grown even more inspired to help dogs with hard-to-place conditions find ‘forever homes’ by making them famous on social media. 

Weirdly, her rise to content creation stardom is not one of the primary focuses of her memoir. 

An on-the-nose title

In case you couldn’t guess from the title, this memoir is primarily about boys and dogs. Though perhaps a bit critically, I would’ve appreciated more storytelling about the dogs than the boys, but I digress. If you aren’t interested in either of those topics, it isn’t the book for you (duh). 

Klee’s voice and narrative are compelling. It’s all too easy to sink into her words and envision yourself in her shoes. Her personal turmoil, her eye-catching but emotionally manipulative exes, and her tearful but inspiring dogs all come to light with perfect clarity. Even when she reflects back on the dog of her childhood, a golden retriever named Ruby, it’s easy to envision her and her life outside of what most readers know from her social media accounts. 

However, if you haven’t followed along with Klee’s content creation journey, it’s a bit difficult at times to understand, as a reader, where you are in her journey. She mentions losing her job twice, but doesn’t specify if she was referring to her pet photographer gig both times. She talks about lockdown but jumps to foster successes in between, despite making it clear that she definitely followed all pandemic procedures. 

Perhaps I should have simply paid better attention while reading this book on trains or in public, but if I have to double-check and flip between pages to be sure I didn’t miss something, we may have made too big a leap between paragraphs. It’s a small criticism, but it’s one that took me out of the moment nonetheless. 

Importantly, on the topic of careers, she doesn’t dive into at all what it was like to acquire Internet fame with her dog. If I can be nitpicky, that seems like a pretty important part of a life story to share, especially considering it was part of the memoir’s marketing materials.

The lack of insight into her career isn’t necessarily a critique in itself, but it simply seems like an odd omission to me. 

In all, though, it’s a well-written and relatable narrative about life in your twenties, which is often messy, complicated, stressful, and nomadic. 

Parting thoughts

Not every celebrity or influencer needs a memoir. In truth, Isabel Klee probably didn’t need to write a memoir. Aside from the content creation, which she doesn’t delve into, her story isn’t one most twent-somtheing women don’t know of themselves or haven’t watched a friend go through. 

She’s the college roommate you had who jumped from messy relationship to messier relationship. She’s your friend who recently went through a tough breakup and is starting life over again. She’s your favorite social media creator that you’ve formed a parasocial relationship with. She might even be you. And maybe that’s why this book, ultimately, despite its flaws, resonated so highly with me. I’ve either lived or stood witness to Isabel Klee’s life through all the women I’ve known, past and present. But one thing Klee has done better than most of us is she’s invited us all to experience it along with her. Messy or not. And she’s been able to do some good while doing it. 

All my dogs, past and present: Blitz Sr., Blitz Jr., Timber, Copper, Leah, Penny, Amber, and Ruger. I thought about each of them with every turn of the page. If you’re a dog-person, you’re likely to do the same, and you’ll probably shed a few tears for them along the way. 

If you take nothing else from this book (or this review), let it be this: you cannot fix an unfair world. But you can make it better. Not being able to save each and every animal isn’t a reason not to save one. And adoption or fostering isn’t the only need to fill. 

Take to social media. Share the shelter plea looking for fosters or financial pledges for medical care. Take a free Saturday and volunteer at the local shelter. And maybe, finally, block that terrible ex who won’t leave you alone while you’re at it. 

“Love and patience can heal a broken dog, but, most of the time, it wasn’t going to heal a broken man.” 

Amen to that, girl.