I got this book for free from Goodreads for an honest review: 
 The first chapter of this book is promising as it introduces Ted, a lonely man who has funny conversations with his dog, Lily. I supposed that there would be a degree of magical realism within the book as Lily spoke back to him. Then a tumor growing on Lily's head talks back to him too and Ted begins to refer to it as "the Octopus" and the book slowly loses its charm. The book is well written, but could have been way shorter. It has some fantastic, sweet, and endearing moments, but there are far to few of them to make this a good book. 
 While the moments Ted shares with Lily are some of the books strongest, they consist of 1/4 of the book. The rest are delusions and imaginary conversations Ted has with the tumor, or conversations he has with people about the tumor. Ted's insistence on calling the tumor an octopus gets old quick and detracts from what I assumed was the focus of the story: his relationship with his dog. That I have dogs that I love as much as he loves Lily makes its even more disappointing in that I could not connect with this character. I really wanted to like this book.