Absolutely stunning photographs with interesting dialogues about each icon.

*Digital review copy provided by the publisher & NetGalley.

This is exactly the kind of coffee table book that I need as a member of the queer community that loves cats! While I anticipated the pictures and fun anecdotes to accompany them, I was excited that this book also had plenty of fun facts and information about the icons. There were so many things I didn’t know about various people like James Baldwin and Freddie Mercury, that gave me more of an insight into these absolute legends that I admire greatly, and it makes me happy to consider them as fellow feline fanatics.

I can’t wait to purchase this so I can show all my friends the different historical figures and their love of cats.

A quick read, and some interesting stories I hadn’t heard before. It also has some great photos. However, a good portion of the people featured in this book I would not exactly classify as icons, but I guess the topic of the book makes the available selection of people rather slim. Nonetheless, it was an okay read.

This is a cute coffee table type of book. Short and sweet. It's educational and a fun read. I highly recommend for pet lovers everywhere. I enjoyed every page ; the pictures are high quality as well.

Thanks to NetGalley and Chronical Books for allowing me to check out this title in exchange for an honest review.

I initially requested this because I love cats and I thought it'd be amazing to learn more about some of the more influential queer icons and their feline companions. I wasn't expecting such a stunning collection of pictures coupled with thoughtful passages about the subject and their feline friends.

A couple of these caught me by surprise, mostly as cat owners but also for their legacy in the LGBT+ community, including Dusty Springfield. I was also surprised to see E. M. Forster in the pages, not realizing that he was a cat person and I got to read about his cat Verouka which can I just say I love that name.

There's a lot of interesting tidbits in here not just for cat owners, but for everyone.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Can't really go wrong with having an attractive person and a cute animal on the cover, right?!

I LOVE this book. I seriously want to buy a copy for everyone in my life.
The animals are adorable.
The people are fabulous.
And the photographs are beautiful.

I'll definitely be looking out for other work by this author.

This is a really cool book! First of all... CATS! If you love cats, you will love the photographs. I also learned so much about people I already knew and learned about people I'd never heard of doing incredible work in the world. Though not a traditional coffee table book size, it definitely has the potential to be a beautiful book left out for frequent browsing by you and guests to your home or office. You'll also want to read it cover to cover (not something usually said about a book of photography). I've already alerted my friends to watch for the release of this book in May 2021 to add it to their collections. What an inspiring and fun idea for a book!

#QueerIconsandTheirCats #NetGalley

Thanks to the authors, Chronicle Books and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review of Queer Icons and Their Cats. While I learned a good amount of background information on each of the people highlighted in this book, I felt that in my mind most of them weren’t really icons per se, but LGBT+ personalities and allies that had cats. The cats seemed to be the least important part of some of these people’s lives. For each celebrity, there is a 1 page bio and for most of them, a somewhat dull photo with a cat. I was expecting more Drag Queens and legends than celebrity personalities and felt a bit disappointed in that sense, but this was still an enjoyable and informative read.

This was a fun and fast read that reminds me of a coffee table book. it gives a lot of information about various queer icons, and shows fun photos of them with cats. I learned about several people I didn't know before, have a few books to add to my reading list, and overall really enjoyed the book.

It also includes some fun facts, books, films and achievements of queer people. One of my favorite facts was that Freddie Mercury liked to call his cats when he was away from home. They also didn't shy away from queer people who had sad histories, which I think is really important when discussing Queer Icons and history. Especially inclding HIV+ queer people.

I will reccomend this book once it's released, and am thinking about buying a copy for one of my queer friends. Overall a short, informative, fun Queer book.

Queer Icons and Their Cats is exactly what it says on the tin. It is a lovely coffee table book that features pictures and mini bios of Queer Icons like Freddie Mercury, Elton John, and Alison Bechdel with their cats.

With a small introduction, the book is laid out in a logical manner -- organized by first name since several entries feature icons that only have one name. It's a light fluffy book that doesn't try to be more that what it is. It's the kind of book you leave open on your coffee table when company comes over. The kind of book you'd give your cat-loving relative as a gift.

It's cute. It's light. It's got pictures of cats.

It gets:

Five Stars

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley.

I am mostly pleased that I took advantage of the opportunity to read this book, because not only were there cat pictures (as promised!) but there were so many interesting queer icons profiled in this book. Each icon gets about a brief page of biographical information which also includes their relationship to folks of the feline persuasion (some of these biographies felt more like resumes, to be honest, and were pretty dry, but others were not). Natasi seems to have made an effort to put together a broad cross section of (often intersectional) LGBTQ folks, reaching back more than a century in some instances as well as highlighting contemporary figures.

The photos do not always depict the human subject’s actual pet(s). That was kind of disappointing, actually. Surprisingly, the portraits are not necessarily flattering to human or cat, either, but it is nice to see folks in more candid moments than their official portraiture typically presents. I rather wonder how the photos were selected. (Yes, every image is credited in the back of the book, but I’m not curious enough to compare photographer and subject for each picture, though it is at least possible to do so.) There were, of course, professional photographs as well, or at least ones which were obviously more deliberately staged. These were more flattering, but I think less interesting.

As many nice things as I have to say about the book, this is very much a book to be read over a long period of time, rather than all at once. Reading this all at once was a bit like reading a hagiography, which can be interesting and informative, but also a bit of a grind. It would be a great gift or addition to a library collection, and invites readers to do further research on their own due to the brevity of each icon’s entry (an impulse made easier by an extensive suggested reading section). This is an ideal coffee table book, or a bathroom book (this is not a snub, perfect bathroom books are very hard to find).

An interesting and creative way to spotlight queer icons. I loved the variety of icons featured--both historical and contemporary. At the same time, the connection to cats often felt tangential and almost unnecessary. While some sections, like that of Freddie Mercury, focused on how central his cats were in his life, the references to cats in many other sections felt like an afterthought.

I greatly enjoyed Queer Icons and their Cats. However the title was misleading. The people in the book are not all, in my opinion, icons and they are not always photographed with their cats. I found many of the photos stunning, but several were like snapshots you never print. The bio’s were educational and entertaining but the title evoked a need to see beautiful photographs. I wanted a coffee table book of photos, but each icon had a one page bio and one photograph. Overall, it was entertaining, but did not fulfill the expectations I had based on the cover.

I didn’t really get what I expected with this book. I was prepared for a book that focused more on personal stories between known LGBT+ persons and their cats.

This is more of a gift/ coffee table style book, that introduces you to some very cool gay icons, who also happen to like cats. You get a short bio about each person featured, and a nice picture of them with a cat (often but not always their own.)

I don’t recommend this if you’re looking for that feline-friendly heart tug. However, I do really like the variety and diversity in the people featured. And I think it’s a really cool way to be introduced to some new personal heroes. I think if you either like viewing different portrait styles, or are looking to introduce/ be introduced to more LGBT+ personalities, this could be a good starting point.

This is a coffee table book of famous queers, past and present, with their cats. Some are posed, as the cover is, some are from historical documents. Anthony Perkins is shown with his cat, as is Elton John. The modern icons, the ones who I have never heard of because I guess I am not keeping up with the current queer icons, look more posed, perhaps having been shot for this book.

It is interesting reading the little one page blurbs about each icon, and how they are important to queer history. And it is fun to go through history and see how cats were favorite pets of people like Freddy Mercury, who would call his cats when he was on tour.

It is rather fun that queer culture has a coffee table book, now, with LGBTQ people and their cats.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

Honestly, what could be better than learning about Queer Icons? A book full of Queer Icons and their cats!!!!
This book was amazing! I am not a member of the LGBTQ community, but I consider myself an ally to the community and with that being said, there were so many icons in this book that I did not know! Reading through the bios of these incredible people was inspiring and humbling and eye-opening. The fact that it was all topped off with pictures of adorable cats was perfection!

--Boring Photos of People with Their Cats--

Based on the glamorous cover photo of the drag performer Jujubee, I thought the book would be filled with similar photos of various human beings, on some spectrum of the LGBTQ, dressed to the 9s (meow!) and with some kind of cat.

So, what is actually in the book are some lighthearted short bios/stories about various people you might term "celebrity", who identify with the LGBTQ label, and who own a cat.

The book seems to be an occasion to celebrate LGBTQ celebrities that own a cat.

Hey, why not?

So, if you are a person who will buy anything with cat pictures in it...This is your book.

And if you are a person who will buy anything that has an LGBTQ theme...This is your book.

If you are a person, like me, who likes looking at stunning fashion shots like the Cover Photo, this is NOT your book. Looking at the cover was the only gratification I got...oh...except for a profile in there of someone I knew a long time ago before they became famous. That was a nice bonus.

The bios are quite nice, but as this is supposed to be a "coffee table photo book", if the photos are boring, and the stories are "nicey nicey stories about people and their cats"...it only gets 3 stars from me for "being nice" and boring.

This a great book for people who love cats and want to learn more about queer and transgender icons.

I feel that it's a quick, easy and informative read. I am looking forward to reading more such books.

Loove it! It's exactly what the title says, queer icons and cats - a perfect combination if you ask me.
I love the write up for each person, it was very informative, and the photos were fantastic.

For generations, cats have been a symbol of deviancy, of witchcraft and negative feminism. In recent years however, the cat has been reclaimed and lovingly exalted as a positive image of femininity and companionship in the LGBTQIA+ scene. This book is a compendium of stories - of queer icons, and their cats.

This book took a much more serious tone than I had expected from the title and cover, but after that initial surprise wore off I found that I enjoyed that more I would have liked a silly tone. This book is a treasure trove of facts and small insight into the lives of some of the most influential and wonderful trans and queer celebrities of the last 120 years.

There were quite a few people in here that I hadn't heard of, which makes this a wonderfully educational book for those of us less well informed on the subject of queer history in popular culture. I feel that if I had read this book before reading Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl earlier this year, I would have more fully understood a lot of the cultural references.

Overall I found this quick read to be informative, empathetic and insightful, as well as being a lot of fun.