Cat Playing Cupid

Book, 2009

Premise - A 10-year-old cold case reopens as a body is found in a nearby hiking area. With the local PD, secret consultant Joe Grey attempts to solve the mystery. The thing is - Joe Grey is a cat. A very special talking cat who solves mysteries, along with his other talking cat friends, Dulcie and Kit. Outside of the few family and friends who know Joe Grey's secret, he must solve the mystery without alerting any humans to his true nature.


Review - Ummm.... so..... I got this book as a gift, which makes it very precious to me. I 100% understand why this friend bought it for me. I love cats, and I love reading, and I love stories. I tend to enjoy mysteries. This is a book about a mystery-solving cat. It seemed so ridiculously "me" that of course she picked it up. And, as a gift, I had to finish it. But my goodness, what a terribly written book. I will keep it forever because of how ridiculous it is, but I would not recommend it ever.

I mean... let's start with the actual writing itself. It bothered me. I'm not one to talk, because I never really edit or proofread these blog entries that I write, but oh my gosh the use of commas in this book IRRITATED ME. There were so many grammatical errors and inappropriate, excessive uses of commas that I was just irate.

Next, let's talk about how cheesy this concept is. I like the idea of mystery-solving cats, but something about the execution was just ridiculous. It's hard to imagine cats that can talk, by actually moving their mouths and sounding like humans, to not be ridiculous. And there were so many times where the cats were personified, like "Joe smiled" and I'm like WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? HOW DOES A CAT SMILE? The mechanics of the mouth movements just weird me out.

Then there's the fact that the mystery is truly irrelevant to the novel. This is part of a series of books, and each book has a human mystery within it, but really the core crux of the novel is this cat's double life. There's no point to solving the mystery, no clever aha moments, or anything, we just kind of find out who did it. I did read online that some reviewers said that this book's human mystery is tiny in comparison to others. I thought that perhaps the two storylines, the one about the talking cats' secret and the one about the secret of the murder, would overlap, but they really, truly don't.

There's a lot of attempted drama in the book too. There are romances between the cats, and ancient books containing the cats secrets that they have to hide, and like bodies discovered with bracelets hinting at the secret of the talking cats, and maybe it all connects in some bigger picture of the entire series, but I'm not sure. I just read this one book and I have no desire to read more. (11/100)

Quote - Honestly... I really don't have one. I just want to remark how often the word "clowder" is used.

What to look out for - The freakin' word "clowder."

If you liked this book, I'd recommend Scooby Doo?

Written by Shirley Rousseau Murphy
Published by Avon, An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers