Now 2023 Previous Articles Road Essays Road Reviews Author Black Authors Title Source Age Genre Series Format Inclusivity LGBTA Portfolio Artwork WIP

Recent posts


Month in review

Reviews
Across the Universe by Beth Revis
The Adventures of Superhero Girl by Faith Erin Hicks
Afterparty by Daryl Gregory
All Clear by Connie Willis
Cherry Heaven by L.J. Adlington
The Color Master: Stories by Aimee Bender
The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by DuBose Heyward
Curses! Foiled Again by Jane Yolen
Ghostbusters: Total Containment by Erik Burnham
The Girls from the Revolutionary Cantina by Mike Padilla
Grumpy Cat: A Grumpy Book by Grumpy Cat
The Hidden Spring by Clarence Budington Kelland
Hilda and the Bird Parade by Luke Pearson
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
How to Paint a Cat by Rebecca M. Hale
Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai
Journal of a UFO Investigator by David Halperin
Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett
Olivia and the Fairy Princesses by Ian Falconer
Operation Redwood by S. Terrell French
Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons by Eric Litwin
Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
The Return of Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke
Simon's Cat in Kitten Chaos by Simon Tofield
The Summer Experiment by Cathie Pelletier
Summer Knight by Jim Butcher
3 Below by Patrick Carman
Touchstone by Laurie R. King
Under the Dome by Stephen King
The Vampire's Visit by David A. Poulsen
xxxHolic Volume 13 by CLAMP

Previous month


Rating System

5 stars: Completely enjoyable or compelling
4 stars: Good but flawed
3 stars: Average
2 stars: OK
1 star: Did not finish

Reading Challenges

Canadian Book Challenge: 2023-2024

Beat the Backlist 2023

Artwork
Chicken Art



Privacy policy

This blog does not collect personal data. It doesn't set cookies. Email addresses are used to respond to comments or "contact us" messages and then deleted.


Comments for How to Paint a Cat

How to Paint a Cat: 08/13/14

cover art

How to Paint a Cat by Rebecca M. Hale is the fifth book in the Cats and Curios series. As I mentioned in my review of book, two, Nine Lives Last Forever, the blurbs for these books are deceiving. This time, the basic plot is described in first person present tense. But despite all the many points of view which really took off in How to Moon a Cat, none of them are written in first person or in the present tense.

The Cats and Curios series continues to buck with cozy traditions by allowing stories to unfold at reasonable rates. I read two other cozy mystery series set in San Francisco: The Party Planning series by Penny Warner and the Bibliophile Mystery series by Kate Carlisle. Both these series have main characters who are plagued by murder and forced by the extreme violence in their lives to be amateur detectives. So far in five books, there has been exactly one murder and that happened at the close of book three, How to Tail a Cat. In book five, the ensemble cast of characters are still reeling from Spider Jones's brutal murder inside city hall.

Were it not for the moon and bricks, along with the cats, of course, being given points of view in How to Moon a Cat, I would have been extremely skeptical of making Spider more of a character post mortum than he was in the previous book. Along with the copious amounts of San Francisco history, there is a growing element of magical realism.

But the solving of Spider's murder is tangential to the capers Oscar's niece is asked to participate in. This time her quest through the City takes her through the history of Coit Tower and its WPA era murals.

Is Spider's murder solved? Yes and no. There's a bit of a cliff hanger which will be addressed in How to Catch a Cat coming out in 2015. Will I keep reading? You bet!

Five stars

Comments (0)


Lab puppy
Name:
Email (won't be posted):
Blog URL:
Comment:




Twitter Tumblr Mastadon Flickr Facebook Facebook Contact me

1997-2023 Sarah Sammis