Wow, that’s a kinda passive-aggressive pull quote for the cover… “Cat lovers”, “prolific” and “cozy”. I think the subtext here is that no sane people would ever read this kind of churned-out rubbish.
“Enjoyable”. Wow. High praise indeed.
Anyway, I wanted to read something that’s easy on the brains, once again, so here we are.
I guess you could say that the setup here is pretty original. A murder has taken place, and there’s an accused at a trial, but the point-of-view character is a cousin who has returned, and is totally stressed out and exhausted for reasons we’re not told until late in the book. She’s not trying to investigate, either, but is instead just whirring around wringing her hands.
So that’s original, but it’s also really annoying. So while this is a short novel, it feels like it could have been half the length, really — there’s a deadly stasis to the book… until we get to the last quarter, and things start happening. The ending is so eyeroll inducing that it almost makes up for the rest of the book.
The Cat Next Door (2002) by Marian Babson (buy used, 3.54 on Goodreads)