Reviewed by Silvara on
I received this book for free from Obsidian in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
I loved pretty much everything about this book. It's totally made my keeper shelf, and I'll be going back and reading the earlier books at some point as well. When I received it in the mail, I thought it sounded like a me book. And then when I started reading it, I realized it was perfect.
It has a bit of a fantasy element, in that Kathleen's two cats have magic powers. Hercules is able to walk through walls or closed doors, and his brother Owen can literally disappear. They both appear to be smarter than normal animals, and help Kathleen solve part of the mystery. However, other than the mentions of their otherworldly gifts, and helping her find a few tiny clues, most of their part of the plot revolves around being normal house cats and serving as listening ears to Kathleen bouncing ideas off of them. So if you don't like fantasy/paranormal in your mysteries, that's pretty much the extent of it.
One of the many things I loved, was that unlike a lot of cozy mysteries where the main character ends up in mortal danger at the end as the killer is revealed? Kathleen was smart enough to enlist help, and thus didn't need to be saved at the last second.
I also liked learning about the characters lives in the town. All the characters had interesting personalities, and were fleshed out enough I didn't get any of them mixed together. I liked the minor subplots that were woven in with the main one, and the small tidbits thrown in about past capers made me even more curious to go back and read the series from the beginning.
If you like mysteries, especially ones where animals play a large role in the lives of their humans, you need to read this series.
This review was originally posted on Fantasy of the Silver Dragon
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 8 January, 2016: Finished reading
- 8 January, 2016: Reviewed