Cat Lady: The hot, must-read Richard & Judy Book Club novel for summer 2023 from the Sunday Times bestselling author

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But sweet hell, some of the encounters and thoughts that the main character had were just unnecessary and outright disturbing. I promised my mother in law that she could have this book once I had read it, because she truly is a cat lady - not in a weird way.

She feels she is being successful at playing the many roles in her life - wife, step mother and successful career woman - but she can’t help feeling like things aren’t quite right. There are some weird inconsistencies: there is one mention of the pandemic “There is a woman sitting next to me with a horrible cough.Dawn is the bestselling author of The Cows and the Richard and Judy Book Club pick So Lucky, and her latest non-fiction title Life in Pieces was also a Sunday Times bestseller. A delightful dark-ish comedy set around a "my pet has died" grief counselling group and essentially about forming and living one's best-self and not taking on a label that society expects from you. I could relate to Mia's love for Pigeon and her wish to protect herself from just about every other living being. The moral of the story is, no one's life is perfect, which is told in both a humourous and poignant way.

She's a good wife to her husband Tristan, a doting stepmother, she slips on her suit for work each morning like a new skin. Although I was intrigued to see where the novel was going to end up, I found that the humour felt a bit forced and sometimes missed the mark for me personally. Most of her life is under complete control but little bits are fraying around the edges and she's at risk.If you’re a big emotional softie like me then you may find the last quarter of the book either upsetting and/or heart-wrenching but also heartwarming at the same time as the conclusion to the story neared. Then something happens and she makes the decision to finally live life for herself and of course - her cat Pigeon. I won't say anymore on the plot as presumably with the lack of synopsis the reader is supposed to go in blind, so I've put this under a spoiler just in case it spoils it for anyone. It won’t be for everybody but it might be a good choice if you want something easy to listen to as you do your chores!

A massive thank you to HarperCollins UK, Harper Fiction and Tandem Collective UK for my early copy of Cat Lady. I've found with other Dawn O'Porter novels that her characters aren't fleshed out very well and it's still the case in this novel. Dawn's books are always an absolute pleasure to read, so as soon as I saw this could be requested I tapped it and had everything crossed. I haven't read a non-fictional book in years and somehow when I saw this book I decided to take the plunge not knowing if I was actually going to follow through and read it.

I didn't get the humour or wit and I haven't read any of Dawn O'Porter's other works to compare them to. I enjoyed the fact that the protagonist was an older lady - in her 40s but she wasn't relatable to me in any way, shape, or form. I did give Dawn the benefit of the doubt as I know she lives in the US and I wasn’t sure if Mother’s Day could be on a weekday over there – but having checked, seemingly not. Used to read multiple books each month, but since the pandemic I got in to watching Netflix and show upon show on tv. but it doesn’t otherwise feature at all - I know the UK is supposedly “getting back to normal” but there’s no other indication that this is set in the future.