It's not perfect. Somehow DO'P has missed that mothers day is always a Sunday and has her characters going to work that day which doesn't make any sense. Mia has it all. A fancy house, a husband, a stepson, a fancy job with a jewellery company and best of all, a cat that she loves with all her heart. Sometimes she has a bit more than 'it all' - there's her husband's ex-wife who spends way too much time at their house and has way more opinions about everything Mia's doing wrong than could really be considered appropriate. She also works for a spoiled over-privileged it-girl with no common sense or perspective. Really gets the reader to think about what matters in life Unputdownable and completely wonderful!’ Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

There isn't much of a synopsis for this novel so I wasn't sure what I was going to get but it day say 'very funny'. It wasn't! Beneath these anxieties is another insistent push-me-pull-you argument: will she be able to write, to think, if she pours her energies into creating another human being? The artists whom she most cleaves to – Suzanne Valadon, Louise Bourgeois, Gwen John, Barbara Hepworth and Tracey Emin – have alighted on different answers to this question. They have also often had to contend with the way that women who make art are treated: as outsiders, as eccentrics, as creators whose work must resist the accusation that its relation to their own lives renders it somehow lesser, “little more than an excretion”, merely “expunged from your feminine brain, just as you expel blood and milk from your feminine body”.

Do not recommend this book to anyone, as much as I wish I could. I was gifted this by Harper Fiction and Tandem Collective UK, but will not be tagging due to the negative nature of this review. A lot of the story was predictable. I felt Dawn got a few digs in...a joke about Boris Johnson, a dig at nasty Journalists who write upsetting stories about people. She also covered most current topics like racism (her boss she works for says some racist things), sustainability etc. There's a brief mention of covid but then next minute she's in a hospital environment with filthy hands and no mention of any mask wearing or the fact you still can't really visit people in hospital! Also, I'm surprised that as a mother herself, Dawn writes about Mother's Day being on a weekday as Mia is going to work and the stepson is going to School! It's called Mothering Sunday for a reason Dawn!! I love Dawn O'Porter's books - I think I've read all of them to date. I loved this one too. I could relate to Mia's love for Pigeon and her wish to protect herself from just about every other living being. We learn about her challenging childhood and how Pigeon saved her from herself in her teens but much as I love my cats, I know that humans need other humans. I really just think that this one wasn't particularly aimed for me. I didn't get the humour or wit and I haven't read any of Dawn O'Porter's other works to compare them to. I enjoyed the fact that the protagonist was an older lady - in her 40s but she wasn't relatable to me in any way, shape, or form. She was quite repulsive.

Sometimes she's way too open - the visit to the GP to get support with her crabs is a stand-out moment. Een klein boekje, zakformaat als je grote zakken hebt. Super vrolijke en aantrekkelijke cover en die stijl wordt doorgezet doorheen het hele boek. Veel te lezen valt er niet maar dat geeft niet want er valt zo veel mooist te zien. En te lachen. The moral of the story is, no one's life is perfect, which is told in both a humourous and poignant way. Mia is 45, and happily married (separate bedrooms), lives in a nice house (originally bought by her hubby and his first wife), is a great step mum (although the first wife/mother is always popping round); has a great job (she has to micromanage the gormless chief executive) and is in love (with her cat, 'Pigeon') and is pretty much living the ideal conventional life, but is this the life that Mia wants? Crazy Cat Lady is, zoals op de achterflap vermeld, een geïllustreerde samenvatting van het leven als kattenvrouwtje. Een heel mooie, vrolijke, opbeurende samenvatting!

I promised my mother in law that she could have this book once I had read it, because she truly is a cat lady - not in a weird way. But, I can’t give her this book. It’s so messed up that I feel like giving her this would be a massive mistake. It’s not funny, it’s just wrong. I have read some things in this book that I really wish I could un-read. I adored Mia’s love for Pigeon 🐈 and how Pigeon literally got her through each day. There was some really great characters in this book and some I really wanted to scream at. It was great how Mia learnt so much about herself through this story and learns to live.