Claws For Alarm: A Cat Caf Mystery: A Cat Café Mystery (Cat Cafe Mystery, #5)

by Cate Conte

It’s the heart of the busy season, and JJ’s House of Purrs is booming. Maddie James has given in to her friend Katrina’s pleas to open up the cafe to more than ten felines. In fact, they are up to fifteen, made slightly easier by the renovations they’ve done on the house, and the fact that volunteers are coming out of the woodwork to help with the caretaking.

In fact, Maddie’s cafe is making such a splash that she’s getting national attention. The people from the East Coast Animal Rescue League are quite interested in the cafe, and so Maddie accepts accepts a request to meet with Laverne Gardner, the executive director. Laverne shows up at the cafe and asks Maddie if they can partner on a fundraiser to support the local rescue efforts - and she offers up her celebrity endorser and her celebrity cat to sweeten the deal. Maddie, caught up in the prospect, offers up her sister Val to help plan the event.

But when Val shows up for a site visit at the venue, she finds Laverne strangled with a fancy cat leash - a piece of swag they were intending to use for the fundraiser - leaving Maddie and her rescue pals with a lot of questions to answer. Was her death a tragic one-off event, or is there something more sinister going on? Maddie has to figure it out fast, before anyone else in the rescue community is jeopardised.

• ISBN10: 1250761557
• ISBN13: 9781250761552
• Publish Date: 1 August 2021
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 5 April 2024
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: St Martin's Press
• Imprint: St. Martin's Paperbacks
• Format: Hardcover (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 304
• Language: English
• URL: http://melia.co.uk/page/detail/?k=9781250761552

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Claws for Alarm is the 5th book in Cate Conte's cozy Cat Cafe mystery series. Released 27th July 2021 by Macmillan on their St. Martin's imprint, it's 304 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is a lighthearted island small-town cozy full of whimsy, a cat cafe, and eccentric small-town characters. Out-of-towner celebrity influencer Jillian blows into protagonist Maddie's orbit like a hurricane. Readers are clearly invited to take an instant dislike to her (which is handy since her role is mostly as Victim Number One) and I found my antipathy so extreme as to make me question reading past the first chapter.

The pacing and narrative are cleverly handled and although this is the 5th book in the series, it works well as a standalone. There are some relationships and developments which will slightly spoil earlier books in the series if read out of order, but nothing egregious. I found the dialogue glib and slightly unnatural occasionally but nothing which yanked me out of the story. The resolution and denouement are complete and mostly satisfying. There were some of really out-of-character actions on the part of protagonist Maddie with which I disagreed strongly and it colored much of the read for me.

Four stars. This is a very light and easy cozy and is both entertaining and diverting.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.