[Review] A Cat Café Christmas by Codi Gary, narrated by Felicity Monroe

Cover image from the TheStoryGraph Site.

Series or Stand Alone: Stand-Alone

Release Date: 4 October, 2022

Publisher: Hachette Audio

Genre: Contemporary Romance/Fiction

ISBN: 9781668612118

Edition: Audiobook (also available in paperback and eBook)

Rating:★★★★☆ (4.75 stars over all)

Review Written: 13 January, 2024
Content Warnings: Mentions of Fraud, mentions of animal death (not depicted), mentions of infidelity

Summary:  

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 cafe.

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. 

See more by Codi Gary on her website.

This past year I found myself diving more into a genre I haven't touched since high school - Romance. Between a lack of romantic interest and honestly finding most of them cheesy to the point of losing interest, Romance novels have not been my preferred genre. this past year however I discovered a couple of niche romance genres that I truly found interesting, and thus I picked up more of them in 2023 than I have since 2006. 

A Cat Café Christmas is a romantic comedy featuring Kara Ingalls and Ben Reese, both people who have been burned by romance before. Kara, a well meaning veterinarian and animal lover, was swept up into scandal after her previous fiancé Worthy stole personal information from the charity Kara was working for. Though proven innocent of all charges, Kara struggled to find a job after the scandal until she and her best friend Charity opened up the Meow and Furrever Cat Café.  But now the Café is struggling, given Kara's hesitation to have social media of any kind. 

Meanwhile Ben has moved 3000 miles across the country to avoid dealing with the romantic betrayal that crashed his life. His brother and former fiancée have gotten married, and worst still, his brother is considering moving to San Francisco. Far too close for comfort given what they did. To top it off, when Ben stops by the Cat Café to see how the marketing ad worked, Kara lets loose on him due to being overwhelmed by the crowd response.

Slowly though, the pair begin to find more common ground when Ben (who is renovating his home) finds a kitten in his vents, and turns to Kara for help. True, he turned to her to try and leave the kitten with her, but he reluctantly agrees to foster the kitten until his FIV test comes back and Kara can find a more permanent foster for him. The kitten, eventually named Chaos, attaches himself to Ben, making it clear the cat distribution system is alive and well in this novel. Ben offers up a marketing scheme for the Café in hopes to help save it and allow it to expand to it's original purpose of offering a low-cost Veterinary clinic to the community. 

Hijinks ensue, which of course there's the classic trope of miscommunication. Kara's extremely personal need for honesty almost jeopardizes their relationship, as does her overly-cautious anxiety. There were times in the book I could relate to Kara's desire for cautiousness in relationships, having had several poor relationships myself (though never to the point of life-shattering). Even with those relatable moments, I found myself yelling at the audiobook occasionally for her to give Ben a chance. Of course the novel works out at the end with Kara finding a family in Ben's family, and Ben making up with his brother. 

Overall, the cheesiness level of this book was just the right amount, and the tropes were nicely done. It helped tremendously that there were a large number of cats involved in the book. I'm interested in reading the upcoming sequel called Finding Mr. Purrfect featuring Kara's business partner and best friend, Charity.