To love cats, yourself and everyone around you

Synopsis

It’s the most wonderful time of the year on Castle Street, and there’s a paw-some new business opening….

It had always been Tabby’s dream to work with cats and an inheritance from her beloved nanna has finally made that a reality. Idyllic Castle Street in Whitsborough Bay couldn’t be a better place for pastry chef Tabby to open a cat café with her boyfriend, Leon.

But when Leon leaves her in the lurch, the pressure mounts for Tabby. With Christmas fast approaching, she has to open the café on her own – a daunting prospect, especially when she’s been hiding her health issues from the ones she loves.

Faced with local resistance to the café – and somebody seemingly determined that she won’t succeed – Tabby will need her friends, family and cats more than ever to recover her broken Christmas spirit and pull together for a Christmas miracle.

Will the cat café bring the festive joy to Castle Street as Tabby had hoped or will it be a cat-astrophe? And can the magic of Christmas on Castle Street mend Tabby’s broken heart as well as her business?

Escape with million-copy bestseller Jessica Redland this Christmas for the purr-fect festive treat!

My review

Tabby is finally realizing her dream: opening a cat café in Castle Street in Whitborough Bay together with her boyfriend Leon.
The opening has already been postponed once, as Leon accepted a job as a chef on a cruise ship. While that perhaps was a gift in disguise, Tabby now is counting down the days to finally welcome Leon back and to open the café.
That is until Leon decides that not only the café isn’t his dream and that being in a relationship with Tabby isn’t either…
Now Tabby has to open her café on her own, while Leon would be her ack – up when her health wouldn’t allow her to work.
Luckily Tabby can count on her family, friends the people she has hired for the café to make the opening happening.
But apparently not everyone is happy to have a cat café in Castle Street, and Tabby finds herself fighting against not only her illness, but also against prejudice and even against her own pride, as even her closest family doesn’t know the depth of her illness… 

Hello everyone, my name is Tiziana, and I am an ailurophile… (yes, I had to check letter by letter that I was writing that word correctly 😊).
At the moment I have no cats of my own, and that is only because I am living in an apartment, work fulltime and I wouldn’t find it fair for a cat to be having a limited space and being on its own for most of the day…
So I take pleasure from catsitting, reading books where cats also appear etc. 

And can you imagine my complete joy at discovering that one of my favourite authors (yes, that’s you Jessica!) wrote a book involving cats??? It felt like all my favourite holidays were coming together! 

Tabby, our main character, is an amazing, lovely person. Even if I questioned the amount of cats she has, because let’s be honest, there are A LOT of them, I admired with how much love and care she looks after each and every one of them.
And I completely understood her with giving each cat a voice and accent of their own. Believe me when I say that I did the same thing!  

But while I was developing a girl – crush on her, my heart also broke for her. Not only did her boyfriend dump her on a terrible way, also her health – issue for sure did add pressure on realizing her dream. (In Dutch we have a very fitting saying, by pointing out that something isn’t just that straightforward ‘Dat is geen kattenpis’, which would be translated as ‘That is no cat pee’). 

I didn’t know much about the disease, and I didn’t know how it all translated into how it makes someone feel. But reading how Tabby is feeling, and how she is trying to explain it, both with the colour scheme and the amount of spoons (you’ll get it when you’re reading the book), somehow it was much more understandable for me, even if I can only try to imagine how people really feel having the disease.
And it truly broke my heart seeing how Tabby’s health issues are preventing her to live her dream at the fullest. Because somehow, she always has to depend on someone else on the bad days… 

I could comprehend Tabby, as she hides her discomfort, as she doesn’t want to be a burden to anyone. But her family and friends do an amazing job by asking her what would she do if someone she loves was in need of help? 

Jessica shows us with this book how much love there can be in a person. The way Tabby cares about each cat as an individual, and how she makes decisions that even break her heart, but are the best decision possible for her furry friends, shows us that Tabby is a real cat – lover.
And we see at one specific occasion how one event truly affected Tabby (don’t go thinking I have forgiven you for that Jessica, as you brought me to tears once again! 😊). 

But Jessica also shows us that we should never underestimate the love others have for us. Tabby is afraid to show her real pain to her people. But she slowly learns that her people love her unconditionally and would do anything to help her out. Because that’s what you do when you love someone. 

I have read a few reviews before I started writing mine, and some were saying that this wasn’t’ a real romance, as it only appears more towards the ending.
And yes, it’s true that Tabby’s love interest isn’t the main subject of this lovely book. But let me ask you this… what is romance about? Isn’t it about finding/ having someone to love?
And so, Tabby has to learn to love herself, her completely. And she has other people around her that love her. So how can this not be a romance? Because this book is filled with love, on each page! 

Well, except when there is one character who proves to be anything than a lovely character… 

Like I just said, Tabby has to learn to love and accept herself. Even if that means that her dream perhaps isn’t that realizable in the way she thought it should be. But that doesn’t mean that her dream and love for cats cannot be shown in a different way, one that is perhaps even more ‘Tabby’ than she thought. 

My dear Jessica, once again you wrote an amazing story, filled with so much warmth even if there were a few heart – breaking moments in it.
And you brought us also back a few old friends, which absolutely delighted me! 😊
You show us again and again what marvellous characters you can put into books. And they are real characters, flaws even included. But those flaws and real issues that they are facing, make the characters only more lovable.  

This was a typical Jessica Redland – book, filled with so much warmth, friendship, paws and love. Once again this author exceeded my extreme high expectations!