Reviewed by Sarina
TITLE: Like a One-Eyed Cat
SERIES: Steampunk Mystery
AUTHOR: Hollis Shiloh
PUBLISHER: Spare Words Press
LENGTH: 71 pages
RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2014
BLURB:
Jimmy’s not good at trusting people. He grew up a chimney sweep and starving alleyway scruff. Even now, fully grown and an army veteran to boot, he’s half-wild and only trusts one man, “the boss,” a gentle man he works for occasionally. Jim certainly never intends to trust anyone else, but then he ends up working an investigation job for the boss next to a scarred ex-soldier with surprisingly gentle ways.
A touch of mystery, low sexiness, light steampunk elements.
REVIEW:
While I’ve enjoyed the previous stories in this series, I have to say that Like a One-Eyed Cat was a nice break away from the characters I’ve become accustomed to. I adored Jimmy; rough around the edges and with serious trust issues he was nonetheless perfectly content to be himself and never saw any reason to act any differently. His childhood shaped him in a myriad of ways and I liked that it clearly showed in his interactions as an adult. As the story is primarily Jimmy’s you don’t learn a great deal about Marcus; you find out why he was taken in by ‘the boss’ and what led him to it in passing but its in his interactions with Jimmy that you’ll learn the most. While their start together wasn’t the best, the rest of the story made up for that in spades and it made for a really sweet read.
The investigation portion of the book was fairly low key and made for a nice bit of background to the more prominent character development and interactions between Jimmy and Marcus. The best part of the story, for me, was the tie in with the title. The introduction of the one-eyed cat early on in the story was more important than I’d realized at first and I just loved seeing the similarities between Jimmy’s dealings with the cat and the later interactions between him and Marcus.
This really was a nice read; I liked the characters and it was great getting to take a break away from the established relationships and situations from the previous books. If you’re looking for a low angst, sweet read I’d totally recommend this one; you don’t need to have read the other books in the series to enjoy it.
RATING: 
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