Review of the Day: The Hitch

I first heard of Sara Levine from Emily Temple who published an article on LitHub dot com called The 50 Best Contemporary Novels Under 200 Pages. One of those books was Levine’s Treasure Island!!! Temple said:

”A truly insane novel about a young woman who decides to live her life by the principles of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, those principles being Boldness, Resolution, Independence, and, of course, Horn Blowing. One of the most fun reading experiences I can remember.”

Treasure Island!!! was a fun book. It has been nearly fifteen years, but Levine has written another comic novel which, at least in my opinion, is worth your time.

The Hitch is narrated by Rose Cutler, a single woman living in Chicago who has built her own successful yogurt business called Cultured Cow. This passage gives some idea of the way Rose thinks about the world:

“In my twenties, I had an obsession with Mollie Katzen and the Moosewood Collective. Not that I joined the Collective—or ever visited the restaurant—but I believed in Mollie Katzen, particularly her cookbook The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, and threw myself into making healthy meals out of vegetables, grains, and dairy. For reasons I can no longer fathom, I was particularly keen on serving friends the Moosewood Mushroom Yogurt Pie with Spinach Crust. I also remember a socially strained dinner party at which I served crumbling tofu burgers, baked not fried, in an apartment that had no dining room table; I expected people to eat them in their laps. It was precisely at the height of my fervent Enchanted Broccoli Forest phase that I started an artisanal yogurt business, believing yogurt was a health food” (location 214).

Rose has agreed to watch her six year old nephew Nathan while her brother Victor and sister in law Astrid go on a vacation to Mexico for a week. On the first day, Rose’s dog, Walter, attacks and kills a neighbor’s dog, Hazel. Somehow the boy Nathan finds Hazel living inside him. How this happens is never really explained. The Hitch is not a realistic novel.

Overall I thought Levine’s book was a great example of satire and humorous writing. If the book has one flaw it is the fact that somewhere between the halfway point and the two thirds point, Levine seems to take the plot a little too seriously.

The title of the book is never really explained except in this brief exchange between Rose and her brother Victor toward the end of the book:

“What’s the hitch? There’s no hitch. There’s always a hitch” (location 3518).

A better title for the book would be Inside Dog. This book will appeal to people who enjoy reading about someone who takes herself way too seriously.

epub. 304 pgs. Read 5 September 2025. Scheduled for publication 13 January 2026.