Title: The Empire Cat’s Christmas Gift
Author: Nic Tatano
Publisher: HarperImpulse
Date: November 4th, 2016
Pages: 265
Format: eARC
Source: from Publisher for a review
Synopsis (from Goodreads):
The purrfect gift this Christmas…
The night her house catches fire, kick-ass lawyer Tish McKenna’s neatly ordered life is thrown into chaos. At least she’s alive—thanks to her adorable cat, Socks!—and after her near-death experience Tish realises she wants more in her life than late nights and case files…
Professionally speaking, hot-shot attorney, Spencer Capshaw hadn’t realised how far off track he’d come. Sure, he had his reasons originally—saving his dad’s life required more money than the DA’s office paid him—yet helping corrupt corporate bigwigs was not why he became a lawyer…
With a little help from a furry friend, these two lost souls find each other in the heart of Manhattan. But when Tish and Spence are pitted against each other in a trial that pushes them both to their limits, can their budding relationship survive?
Will there be a diamond in Tish’s stocking this Christmas? Find out in new festive favourite The Empire State Cat’s Christmas Gift by Nic Tatano!
Review:
One look at The Empire State Cat’s Christmas Gift is all you need to figure out why I wanted to read this book.
It has a cat (and I adore cats, cats are my weakness) and it screams “festive”.
I mean, what more do I need?
Nothing, that’s what.
Except… the only thing that’s festive when it comes to this story is it’s title (in reality, if we remove the title from this cute picture, it doesn’t feel so festive anymore, does it?).
It all comes to good marketing, because the book came out around Christmas time, but the story itself is festive as much as I Heart Vegas by Lindsey Kelk – the story takes place during several months and the last chapter happens around Christmas. That’s it.
But don’t let my complaining stop you from picking this book up! It was a good story, after all!
I had some problems with it (I will get to them soon), but overall I pretty much enjoyed it the whole time.
I am not sure what it is about Nic Tatano‘s writing, but it feels like everytime I read one of his books, I can’t seem to stop myself. “One more chapter” – that’s what I say to myself and before I even realize, I read half of the book.
The story centers around Tish, a lawyer and an owner of a really cute tuxido cat called Socks.
At the very beginning of the story, Sucks turns out to be a hero – she wakes up Tish while their apartment is on fire and, therefore, she saves their lives.
Although Sucks plays a role in The Empire State Cat’s Christmas Gift, her presence is not what keeps this story going.
When in The Lost Cats and Lonely Hearts Club, the first book in this series, the story centers around cats (so much that it was even overwhelming at times), in this sequel the balance between the two (cat’s and people’s stories) was done better.
Spencer is Tish’s love interest. He is a successful attorney with good manners, and I even dare to say that his character represents a knight on white horse.
He acted perfectly, but I find it hard to believe that today a guy of his age would use phrases like “fine young lady” for a woman he likes.
I also didn’t feel the chemistry between the two of them. I felt like the whole thing was happening way too slow at first, and then, all of a sudden, way too fast.
When we’re taking only that part of the book into cosideration (chemistry/relationship development between Tish and Spencer), it almost felt like reading a christian fiction.
As I already said, I had some problems with this story.
My first problem was slut shaming. This is not the first time happening in chick lit genre that a woman who “looks like a plastic doll” is immediately portraited as a cheap slut who doesn’t know how to behave herself and is stupid.
I was very dissapointed when I read how characters were judgamental and I couldn’t help but feel that the writer’s own points of view blended to pages, because if every single character speaks down about something/someone in the same way, I can’t help but think that the author shares the same opinion.
Secondly, we should believe that Tish is “shark” in court, but she seemed unprofessional to me. Spencer was even worse.
So, even though Tatano told us they were very good lawyers, he showed us a different story (spoiler: great lawyers do not talk about movies they watched the night before in front of the court, they do not talk about their personal life with the judge in the middle of the case, they do not have to win one case so they wouldn’t end up on a street and if they do, they are not too picky when it comes to cases and people they will represent, and they surely don’t represent people they want to see lose the case).
Thirdly, the villian of this story was underestimated. I believe he would do what he did, but I don’t believe for a second he would be so stupid to do it the way he did it in this story, and got so easily caught in his crime.
Altogether, this was a quick read that I would recommend to chick lit lovers.