Reviewed by Vicki
TITLE: The Cattery
AUTHOR: K.A. Merikan
PUBLISHER: Acerbi & Villani ltd
LENGTH: 186 pages
RELEASE DATE: April 8th, 2016
BLURB:
— Role-playing a cat for six months? You said you’re paying how much? —
Goran’s mouth has no filter, and it’s losing him job after job. Desperate and a week away from being homeless, he finds an offer online that sounds too good to be true. Spending six months in a mansion by the beach in return for a hundred thousand dollars as long as he sticks to the house rules.
This might be the one job where his unruly mouth doesn’t get in the way. After all, saying the wrong thing is impossible… when you’re role-playing a cat.
Meeting all the other guys at the cattery seems to be the icing on the cake, but the inconvenient truth he dishes out turns out to be too much. Goran makes everyone his enemy, but worst of all, Ollie, the prettiest cat of the bunch, the one who’s been in the cattery the longest, and the one who makes Goran’s heart skip a beat.
Ollie’s big blue eyes hold secrets Goran is intent on cracking, but to do so, he will need to learn to bite his tongue and listen. Too bad the pretty blond ice prince is set on getting Goran kicked out of the cattery for good.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS:
Themes: debt, enemies to lovers, cat-play, Miami, immigrant, billionaire, love triangle, social anxiety, rent boy, backstabbing
Genre: M/M contemporary romance, sugar kink
Length: ~61,000 words (standalone novel)
WARNING: Adult content that might be considered taboo. Explicit content, strong language, multiple partner scenes. Reader discretion advised.
REVIEW:
Goran is in trouble, he’s a bit too free with his opinions, and keeps getting fired. He’s come from Croatia to Miami after a major fuck up with his family hotel, accepting the offer of a job from an uncle. Unfortunately the job and housing fell through, now he is living in a hostel, working dead end jobs for little pay, that he keeps losing because he’s kind of a dick. After losing his latest job, he sees an offer online that can’t possibly be true. He checks it out and ends up being hired by Luis, a rich man with a kitty kink. Goran is to spent the next six months as a pampered man, part of a cattery, with a handful of other pretty men, wearing cat collars and ears. He figures a bit of sex, a little role playing, some sun, and a paycheck for $100,000 at the end can’t be a bad thing.
When Goran moves in to his new home, he is immediately attracted to Ollie, one of the other cats. Ollie has been at the cattery for two years, way longer than all of the other cats. He was with Luis as this whole thing started and saw the cattery as a safe place to hide away from his family drama. Now he’s become a bit reclusive and can’t see a time when he wants to leave the cattery. He’s not excited to meet Goran, especially when Goran opens his stupid mouth and insults all of the men living there. Ollie sees himself as Luis’s favorite, and begins to fight to keep his place.
So this book started out good, and I loved the concept. But it really just turned in to a bunch of men being bitchy and fighting. Goran is an asshole for most of the book, and Ollie is a brat. I had a hard time seeing any attraction or romance between the two men, the emotional connection just wasn’t apparent to me. They fight way more than they love. Every time I thought there was something lovely happening between them, one or the other would fuck it up. Or one of the other cats would interfere. It just wasn’t cute after a while.
There were several good sex scenes, both between the two main characters and as a group. I liked them best when they were all together as cats, the playfulness was fun to see, even when there was some play fighting. The solo sex scene between Ollie and Goran was nice, a little romance did come through there, but then it went weird again.
I liked the role-playing aspect of this book very much, I’ve read puppy play books before and it’s a kink I like reading about. But cats are so different from puppies, this book had a great dimension that I loved. Having been a cat owner for forty plus years, I know the oddities of cat behavior pretty well. I could see some of that behavior displayed in these men. Even the bitchiness they showed did seem believable as part of the cat play, but it was carried a little too far when they were humans I think. I liked them best as cats interacting with Luis, it was when they all got nasty and began back stabbing that I was unhappy. Which is crazy since I can see my cats being little bitches too! I don’t know what my issue was really, I just didn’t like the mean spirited parts maybe.
Overall I did enjoy this book. I haven’t read anything by these authors before, and I liked the writing just fine. I liked the idea of the cattery, and Luis was such a sweetheart. I did have issues with the relationship between Ollie and Goran, and I wasn’t fond of the abrupt ending, but it was a fun book for me to read.
RATING:
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