This book is arguably one of the worst I have ever read, as a student. This is for a variety of reasons. Firstly, This book practically ends on the first half, as the murder is practically solved by then. The rest is an extremely elongated and unnecessary epilogue, with character development that leads to nowhere. Every time Christopher goes through a small stressful event, he goes on endlessly yapping about math and science. Every math and science rant combined, the number of pages in this book would halve. Honestly, I think more of the book consists of math and science rants compared to the development of an actual plot.
Secondly, this book has no actual description whatsoever. I do recognize that Christopher may have "written this book himself", and that it may slightly contribute to a more personal connection to the reader, but I find none of that unachievable through third person and some more description.
Thirdly, and adding onto #2, this book uses the most basic, 5th-grade-level vocabulary. I thought Christopher is a genius? Apparently not. I honestly feel like a 11 year old could have written this, if they had known all the mathematics and scientific facts included in this book (even if they didn't, they could do a quick Google search). Sure, a young boy solving a murder of a dog and coming to acknowledgement with family issues is quite a unique plot/story idea, but the book could have been 100x better if it was, for example, written more beautifully. A good book like Animal Farm has, at least, some description of the farm. However, I still do not know what Christopher's living room looks like, what the train station looks like, etc.
While attempting to complete a workbook and essay on this novel for my English class, I have found my writing capabilities to decrease substantially while and after reading this.
I would give 0 stars if I could.