Taking the Cafe on the Road for a Cat Lit Fest
I’ve often said that books that take a series outside the usual setting walk a fine line. Claws Out did that wonderfully for me, and I appreciated the creativity in the set up as well.
This is book nine in the Cat Cafe series, which is usually set on the fictional Daybreak Island. But in this book, Maddie James and her family and a couple volunteers are taking the show on the road, literally. They’ve been given an extra-large food truck they are turning into a mobile cat cafe and heading to Provincetown, Massachusetts. They are heading over to a literature festival that features authors who write books that prominently feature cats. The weekend is benefitting a charity that helps cat shelters. Seems like a good fit, right?
When Maddie and the rest arrive, Maddie finds herself in the right place at the right time to hear bits and pieces of things that lead her to believe there is drama around one of the headlining authors. But she never imagines that the author will be found stabbed to death on the second morning of the festival. Will she figure out what is going on?
This book took its time getting to the actual murder. However, in this case I didn’t mind because the book was doing a good job of setting up the suspects and motives so that once the victim is found, we are off to the races. There are some nice surprises and red herrings on the way to a logical climax, although I did feel like Maddie was abandoning her responsibilities to investigate. I know it’s a feature of cozies, so I’m not sure why it bothered me more here than usual. I did feel the ending was rushed, leading to lots of exposition to explain everything.
I must praise series author Cate Conte for figuring out a way to take the characters on the road without completely leaving the cat cafe part of the series behind. I loved that creativity! I also had to smile at the talk of these cat books. The focus is on some romance authors, but we did get a couple mentions of a cozy mystery author who was also attending.
On the other hand, I was really bothered by a couple of very misandrist comments that were in the book, both in Maddie’s first-person narration. They didn’t add to the book, but instead took away from it, at least for this male fan of the series. Especially since taking those lines out of the book wouldn’t have impacted the story at all.
There were also a few things that I couldn’t quite tell if were poor editing or some rushed writing. Either way, it threw me out of the book.
In addition to the creativity in bringing the characters off the island, I also appreciated that so many of the characters made the trip. Of course, one subplot involving two of them seemed to get forgotten for much of the book. Still, it was great to spend so much time with them in a fresh setting. And the suspects came alive for the page time they got.
There were enough small issues with Claws Out to keep it from getting my full recommendation, but I did enjoy the book overall. If you want a mystery filled with cute cats, you’ll be glad you picked it up.
Check out the rest of the Cat Cafe Mysteries.
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