Wednesday, October 5, 2022

Review - - A Cat Café Christmas

A Cat Café Christmas
by Codi Gary
Publisher: Forever
Release Date: October 4, 2022
Reviewed by Hellie


Veterinarian and animal lover Kara Ingalls needs a Christmas miracle. Opening the Meow and Furrever Cat Café to find loving homes for adorable, adoptable cats was a dream come true—but with more cats than customers, it’s quickly turning into a nightmare. If Kara can’t figure out some way to get the café out of the red, it won’t last past the holidays.
 

Marketing guru Ben Reese may be annoyingly smart and frustratingly bossy, but when he hatches a plan to put the café in the “green” by Christmas, Kara realizes that she’d be a fool to turn down his help. And so what if he turns out to be an excellent problem solver and nerdy-hot—he can’t even handle fostering one little kitten. She needs to keep their relationship professional and focus on saving the café. 

But if Ben and Kara can set aside their differences—and find homes for all the cats by Christmas—they might discover that, by risking their hearts, they’ll have their own purr-fect holiday . . . together.

 

Hellie’s Heeds 

In a world of dog lovers, I’m a cat person–and this book was a delight from beginning to end. I wanted to adopt and pet every one of the cats “featured” in this book–except Chaos–Chaos can remain with Ben, for the sanity of everybody. Now, being it was a romance with a happily ever after, my favorite happily ever after was all the happily adopted cats at the end of the story, including cats who are more challenging to adopt (i.e. seniors or cats with disabilities.) That just made the story PURRFECT.  

Of course, we’re here for the romance–the grumpy hero and the snarky veterinarian–and they do not disappoint. They both have their own “tragic” pasts that do a number on keeping them apart and wary of each other. Trust is something that definitely has to be earned with these two. They are both very stubborn and it takes some heroic efforts on their mentoring BFFs to turn them around and get them back on the path of happily ever after.  

I was very sympathetic to Ben’s tragic past–and very put out with his family who seemed to constantly be telling him, “Just get over it already and make mom happy again.” (I wanted to shake his mother; but I’m not sure if other readers would feel the same. They might be in the mom’s corner.) Kara’s past was more horrifying, but her friends were more sympathetic on the whole, though there was a point where Kara also needed to “let it go” and trust again.  

The heroine is more on the curvy side, but this is not treated as a plot point. There are a couple scenes where I believe Kara feels that her friend Charity is the more attractive one, et al, but when the hero does show interest in Kara, she doesn’t question it or hide herself (body wise) from him. I only mention this because I’m very used to books featuring characters on the curvier side and the weight being a plot point–so I’m enjoying books now featuring a more varied selection of characters and using other aspects for conflict and growth.  

Now, if you’re a dog lover, I think you’ll still enjoy this book. And knowing dogs as I do, I know they won’t mind you reading a book in which all the animals waiting for their forever home finally find a place to call home–they too enjoy a happy ending. And if you get to enjoy that with a side of steamy kisses and hunky man candy, all the better. This book is so Christmas, it even has a Love Actually airport scene. This book is definitely a lovely kick off to the Season.

 

5 comments:

  1. I love the airport scene in Love Actually. I always cry because of the love and joy I see.
    Thanks for the terrific review.

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    1. There are a lot of scenes in Love Actually where I cry--but yes, the love in the airport always gets me in the feels. I hope you have a chance to read and enjoy. :)

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  2. Argh! I am the Anonymous post above...I don't want anyone thinking a random stranger is stalking poor Annette...just me. :)

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  3. I never thought I was being stalked....I am not that interesting. But, thanks for the smile.

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  4. Thank you for the review. We are animal lovers and have had both cats and dogs, among other things. My husband, son, and I prefer dogs, but our daughters prefer cats. our youngest has 4 upstairs cats, 4 downstairs cats, and 4 barn cats. The other daughter has 2 large cats. We have volunteered with animal welfare and placement groups. This books sounds like the perfect read for us. I am curious to find out how they places all those cats. There are always so many who need good homes.

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