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Book Review of How to Wash a Cat (Cats and Curios, Bk 1)

How to Wash a Cat (Cats and Curios, Bk 1)
redwingsgal avatar reviewed on
Helpful Score: 12


As a fan of both cat cozies and mysteries based in actual history, I was delighted to find How to Wash a Cat. It seemed like it was tailor-made for me--until I started reading it.

The cats and the history did, in fact, prove charming. The rest of the tale? No so much. The main character is nameless throughout the bulk of the book, which was irritating, and the resolution of that issue was equally obnoxious. There is also a lack of description of the main character. The only certainty is that she's passive to the point of being wishy-washy. The other characters, however, are described in detailed, rather snotty ways. Most of them, for instance, are smelly and/or childish.

The deal-breaker, however, was that the mystery simply wasn't very good. Like the rest of the book, it had lots of potential with very little follow through. Aspects of the tale originated only to go nowhere, leaving parts unresolved, while other aspects skewed dangerously close to deus ex machina territory.