heathers_books's reviews
457 reviews

HEADLINE: LOCAL WET CAT ACCIDENTALLY FINDS HIMSELF IN A ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP WITH BARKY BEAGLE. 

The wet cat in question is Mark, a reporter at the Chronicle who is still deeply mourning the loss of his lover while the beagle in question is the famous (for mostly the wrong reasons), Eddie O'Leary, a baseball player who talks too much and maybe isn’t that great at playing baseball…(He’s also very lonely, very stubborn, and very loud about all of it. Typical beagle behavior. We should expect nothing less.) 

Holy smokes. Cat Sebastian has rendered me speechless yet again. 

Going into this book I expected very low stakes and high reward romance but how I FELT for these characters made this very high stakes and let me tell you, I have never read a book labeled as slow burn and been so STRESSED. I was yelling, I was crying (Not the cute kind. The ugly kind.) and I was pleading for these two stubborn characters who were equal parts desperate yearning and careful compassion in their handling of one another. 

This entire book felt so fragile to me and even speaking of it I’m compelled to handle it as gently and as patiently as Eddie did Mark’s grief. (The cherries... I’m crying again.) 

I could write an entire essay dissecting this book and the way it handles Mark's loss of someone he'd planned his entire life around and the genius of his dog Lula serving as an outward physical manifestation of his inner journey with grief. My inner college English student is begging to be set free but for the sake of this not turning into a 15-page character study, I will contain myself. 

All this to say, I would be doing this book a disservice by telling you this story was a romance and that I enjoyed it. And though there was a good amount of joyful foot-kicking to be had while reading, at its core this book felt like a case study in the role that grief and guilt play in accepting love that you once believed you deserved but no longer feel entitled to and the act of loving someone unconditionally without the expectation of reciprocation (even the unpleasant fussy parts that demand Eddie wake up at the crack of dawn to take the dog for a walk). 

Long live Lula, the wire-haired reigning queen of every room she enters! 

Special thank you to Netgalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for the arc of this book! I am leaving this review voluntarily!