Top Ten Favorite Animal Characters in Books

Posted May 26, 2025 by Jana in Top Ten Tuesday / 12 Comments

Welcome to another TTT! Today’s topic is Animal Companions (These animals can be real or fantasy!) and was submitted by P.S. I Love Books! I don’t read a lot of books with animal companions because my maaaaajor trigger is anytime something bad happens to an animal in a book, so I usually avoid books when an animal is mentioned just in case. LOL. But if it’s a book I really want to read I will do deep dives and research the animals before I read to make sure they’re ok. Anyone else do this? I’ve even written to authors and begged for spoilers. Most of these books have surprise pets or animals in them that I didn’t even know about, but not all. Some required deep dives and one required an email to the author. Also, I’m bad with names so I don’t remember all the names of these furry friends. Anyway, here we go!

1. The cat in Good Spirits by B.K. Borison
So there’s a cat in this book and the reason I love it is a little spoilery so I won’t say why, but I love this cat.

2. Tairn and Andarna from the Empyrean series by Rebecca Yarros
Legit my favorite dragons in the world.

3. The dog in Holiday Hideaway by Mary Kay Andrews
This is a very good boy.

4. Hennessey the dog in Starry Night by Debbie Macomber
This dog is huge, he keeps the heroine warm at night on the couch.

5. Sienna’s dog in The Christmas You Found Me by Sarah Morgenthaler
He is sooooooo sweet and like a little grandpa.

6. Ulysses the moose in the Moose Springs, Alaska books by Sarah Morgenthaler
This moose loves baked goods and licking windows. He’s amazing.

7. Winter the cat in The Christmas Dress by Courtney Cole
Oh my goodness, this cat is the cutest.

8. Bo from Uncharted by Adriana Anders
I love this dog. He’s the best friend anyone could ever have. And I wrote to the author to make sure he made it out of the book ok. She was so sweet and wrote me back to let me know that he does!

9. The marmot from Enjoy the View by Sarah Morgenthaler
This cute little rodent has a crush on the hero and follows him up a mountain! This little guy had so much personality. I got such a kick out of him!

10. The husky puppy from Christmas at Frozen Falls by Kiley Dunbar
The resort has husky puppies who are in training to become sled dogs, and the heroine falls in love with one of them and goes to visit him when she needs a breather and to think. He’s adorable.

Who is your favorite animal character or companion?

Share this post:

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

12 responses to “Top Ten Favorite Animal Characters in Books

  1. Unlike 99.9% of the reader (and just general) population I’m not the biggest animal person so I don’t really remember animals in books. But they can be a cute addition when I’m “in the moment” reading a book. :)

  2. Ooh nice! I don’t usually read too many books with animal companions either. Not to avoid them or anything, but I guess the books I read just don’t usually have them! It took some deep diving but I was able to find some books that had them where I mentioned it in my reviews. Some are fuzzy on memory recall, but I do know I loved them and pretty sure they were all okay in the end! Some were more magical in origin too! Like Andara! Still need to go back and read the latest books since they all seem to have cliffhangers. Just got to work in those big reads into my queue somehow!

    Great picks!

    Here’s my Tuesday Post

    Have a GREAT day!

    Old Follower :)

  3. I don’t blame you at all for not wanting to read about animals getting hurt. I have my StoryGraph CW tags set up so that it alerts me if other readers have tagged a book as having animals get hurt in the book so that I know when I need to take a deeper look into those spoilers.

  4. For some reason I read the title of your post to the tune of ‘animal crackers in my soup’ 😅. A moose animal companion is amazing, Ulysses sounds delightful. I haven’t read any of these books but this is a great varied list :) !

  5. Vidya

    I haven’t read any of the books you mention here but i have enjoyed Mary Kay Andrews and Debbie Macomber books before so will look for those