Title: Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter
Author: Heather Fawcett
Series: n/a
Much thanks to Heather Fawcett, Del Ray, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I like cats, but I don’t love them, which might have detracted from my enjoyment of this novel a bit. Cats are not only featured but secondary characters, so know that going in—if you don’t like cats, this isn’t a novel for you.
I’m disappointed, but it might be more my fault that the fault of the book’s. I went in expecting the shelter to be in the background while a more interesting magic plot took center stage. Wrong. It’s about a woman whose life mission is to save cats. Period. The magic is all secondary.
It’s definitely cozy, and others might call it a slow burn, but I saw it as a pretty boring first 75-80%, then the next 10-15% is riveting while all the setup is paid off, followed by a return to pre-final battle boring till the end. I couldn’t believe I wanted to DNF a Heather Fawcett, but I was tempted.
The problem is that it’s about a humble woman whose greatest ambition in life is to run a cat shelter. Traveling would be neat, sure, but she isn’t willing to leave the shelter to do it. She isn’t willing to put anything over the shelter. Which is honorable, but so boring. She’s content, doesn’t aspire to any kind of greatness. Magic is the only thing interesting about her world, and she wants nothing to do with it. Even after she’s come to accept it, she still wants little to do with it. The most compelling aspect of the book—imo—and she wants none of it. That there’s a narrative problem, ma’am. If she had become Havelock’s apprentice and used her budding talent to help her sister’s shelter, or if the search for the book had been more of an adventure, or if the police had been a more persistent problem, or if Valerie had taken Agnes hostage and we got to know the villain more—but no, the threats were muted because nothing was more important than cleaning cages and seeing to the cats’ comfort. There’s not much to the romance, either, so don’t bank on that.
The plot, and Agnes, just could have been MORE. But it was determined to be a cozy about cats, so fine.
The characters were okay. Agnes received the most development; I admired her dedication to cats, though I didn’t think her borderline obsession with saving them was ever satisfactorily explained, and the deal with her husband was heart-wrenching. Elise was a solid, feisty supporting character. While endearing, Yannick seemed underutilized and was probably unnecessary. I wanted so bad to see him training with Havelock. (I wanted to learn more about the magic, dammit! *stomps foot*) Havelock’s character was frustratingly and woefully underdeveloped.
The cats were fine, I loved that they each had a distinctive personality, though I was disappointed in them as well. I thought there’d be some reveal about Banshee’s silent yowling, and I was 100% convinced His Majesty was a human under enchantment and would be a huge reveal at the eleventh hour. But nope.
Hopefully in the final they’ll insert the year and perhaps location at the start of chapter 1. It’s in the blurb—1920 Montreal—but not stated outright in the narrative that I recall, and I was so confused for the longest time; I realized it was Canada pretty quickly, but they seemed to have a strange mix of both antiquated and relatively modern things—horses pulling carts but also trams and pizza—and I didn’t know if it was part of the fantasy worldbuilding or what. Once I noticed the year in the blurb it made more sense. Or at least I assume it does; I know zero about Montreal in 1920.
Other reviews say the magic system was dull; I wouldn’t say dull, but I’d definitely say it was underdeveloped. And it’s hard to find something compelling when the protagonist’s just watching it happen and not actively participating in it, to my earlier point. I did think it was unfortunate that no one could wield magic itself, but rather had to enchant a being or object. So dueling magic is essentially throwing shit around—and hoping you have useful spells within reach. It’s a bit….graceless. Definitely inconvenient. Also, some of what was setup was unrealized—for example, it was made clear that Havelock was this close to being lost to the Rivenwhatever—I keep saying Rivendell in my head but that’s Tolkien—but no matter how often he went back, he was fine.
A last random note—Fawcett uses some unusual hundred-dollar words, and I’m always happy to expand my vocabulary, but I had to laugh when the Kindle dictionary had no idea what several of them meant. I had to browser search. “Ailurophiliac,” for example.
Overall, I found this book charming but underwhelming with a lot of unmet potential. Unless all you want is to see cats get rescued and adopted, then you’ll probably be my opposite and annoyed with the magic.
