The Ghost Cat by Alex Howard was a mostly cute story. I enjoyed the premise and Grimalkin as a narrator. However, I wished at times that we could have spent a little more time in each era as it felt a little rushed and as if our feline friend did not get long enough to experience all the new things in each decade he visited. As such, the story lacked the depth it could have had. Nonetheless, many people are sure to enjoy this book as it is in the same vein as many of the cat-centred Japanese tales that have become popular in recent years. I am giving it four stars.

Thank you for the opportunity to review this title. My review is scheduled to go live on my blog and on Goodreads on 26 August 2024. At that time I will also share across social media.

Thank you for the advanced review copy. I liked the concept of this book and fell in love with Grimalkin. Unfortunately it read a little choppy. Part of the cause may be that it didn’t translate to kindle format well. I enjoyed the historical aspects

A charming, heartwarming and nostalgic read, I fell in love with Grimalkin and all of his humorous musings. I love the concept of following this loveable cat through time, getting to see different time periods through his eyes. If anything, I wanted this book to be longer, with more depth in each of the time periods. I would recommend to a historical fiction lover who is looking for a quick and cozy read.

This book was so sweet and sad at the same time. I felt so much for the cat and the life it lived. It did remind me of "Before the coffee gets cold x, but in a more charming read.

Thank you NetGalley, Harlequin Trade Publishing, and Hanover Square Press for this arc

4/5 stars

This was cute, silly, dry, and heartbreaking. This compares well to Before The Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi and I feel lovers of that series will really enjoy this. I loved Grimalkin and how this sweet kitty adapts to each new era he's in, quick to realize he's being judgemental in a way that is better left staying in his decades past. He and Eilidh's relationship was so very special and made my cry more than once. I will say, once their storylines ended I found it hard to get through the rest of the lives. I guess their relationship to each other and Grimalkin's love for his human was an important point that left quite a gaping hole after it was gone. The authors self insert at the end was funny though, and reading the acknowledgements at the end and seeing how he came up with the story was cute.

If you are a cat lover and/or history buff you will love this book. I am both and I found the protagonist cat, Grimalkin, authentically drawn and his reactions to his decades long journey through history very appealing and informative. It's a gentle story with humorous moments and a few wistful ones as well. I took away one star for an annoyance on my part that the 9 lives legend was re-imagined so that he had to be a ghost cat for 8 or his 9 lives and, for the most part, couldn't engage physically with his world. I felt it was a missed opportunity for him to reappear in each new era and interact with the new residents of his home. No matter, I was still charmed by the story and will recommend it to all.

As someone who has been to Edinburgh and is mildly obsessed and a major cat lover, this book was made for me.

The concept is amazing. I feel like we get works like this but for dogs, and it was so refreshing to have a look into Grimalkin and his nine lives. This is great for individuals looking for a quick and cozy read.

An entertaining and at times genuinely heartfelt read about a cats adventures in the afterlife tied to a particular address in a Scottish tenement. I found myself tearing up at times reading about the cats interactions with the living inhabitants of the house.

I'm only crying a little but. The Ghost Cat was an entirely sweet story of a little cat who dies old, and well loved and the journey he goes on after. Like, I'm seriously tearing up writing this. I think anyone that likes cats would like this a lot. The last time I cried this hard over a cat book was when I read The Travelling Cat Chronicles.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. The above is my honest review.

This book was cute. Dry, but cute.

I preface this with I love cats and I was really hoping for more fantasy aspects.

Grimalkin (our historical ghost cat tour guide) meets an unfortunate early demise in his first of nine lives and comes back to take us through 150 years of history told with wit and humor.
The pacing was a little hit or miss but overall I enjoyed reading Grimalkin’s story!

I recommend this book for people who enjoy historical fiction.

This book was written from the perspective of an orange tabby cat with a crooked tail. Upon his death, he is awarded nine lives, for 3 he stays, haunting his former home. Yiddish 3 he strays, where he can leave the confines of his home to roam. For 3 he gets to play, and at this stage he has the ability of poltergeist. His haunting spans over a 120yrs and we can observe the changes in history, seeing historical figures, new inventions, through a cats eye. I did quite enjoy this book, but my only complaint is I wish that each of his haunting showed more of the history. The book was mainly about the cat and not the history, so in understand. But I personally would have enjoyed seeing more of the history.

This was a great book!! I highly recommend this book. You need to read this today you will not be disappointed!!

**This book will be published August 27, 2024**
Thank you to Netgalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for this eARC in exchange for my review and feedback.

In this story you follow Grimalkin and his 9 lives through historical moments in the UK. If you are an American like me I recommend looking up the mythology behind Cat Sith. We meet this character quite abruptly and I feel like I had a better grasp of what the author's ideas were when knowing this myth. Poor Grimalkin was supposed to get his full 9 lives, but because Cat Sith was distracted he now has to finish off his lives as a ghost. “Three lives to stay, Three lives to stray, and Three lives to play.”

This was a very cozy journey through historical moments seen through a cat's eyes. I enjoyed Grimalkin's commentary as a Victorian cat in a future eras. It had me smiling a few times. I also learned little historical facts along the way with the footnotes and observations of Grimalkin.
The only thing upsetting to me was the ending, I wish we had gotten one last scene with Cat Sith so that Grimalkin could have explained his adventures to someone. The focus is more on the house and its occupants throughout time, which was fun to see, but I feel like Grimalkin needed a final meeting with Cat Sith after his primary one.

Overall, very cozy and quick read. Don't let “ghost” in the title fool you, it's not a “spooky” story. This is a journey through history through the eyes of a Victorian age cat.

I really enjoyed reading this, it had everything that I was looking for from the description. It had a great overall feel for the story and genre. Alex Howard had a great overall writing style and I was invested in what was going on with the world. The characters were everything that I wanted and glad I read this.

This is a really cute read! I do love reading books around cats as I find they are so well written. This is a very different take than others I have read but it was worth it.

It is written from the perspective of a cat, Grimalkin who lives through 12 decades and sees the world changing, the ups and downs of the people coming and going. He truly loves his owner Edith, and is able to see how she lived after his death but also those who live in the house where she did. He sees humans at their best and at their worst and is able to experience the changing of times.

Charming character exploration. Grimalkin is a fun if biased perspective, and seeing his attachments and viewpoints across time makes for interesting reading. Some time periods were tighter and cleaner, but all were enjoyable!

I am definitely an ailurophile, with two of my own, so I knew this book would appeal to me.

“A cat has nine lives. For three he plays, for three he strays and for the last three he stays.”

This is an old English proverb. The author has imagined the nine lives of one tabby, who actually dies at the end of his first life, so his following eight lives are lived as a ghost, meaning that he can observe but is invisible to humans. It is a great idea, but it does create a few problems for the story structure.

Grimalkin is the puss involved. He is a “cat of uncommon curiosity and insight.” We first meet Grimalkin when he is an elderly cat living in Edinburgh. He was rescued as a kitten by Eilidh in 1887 and she and Grimalkin love one another deeply. Unfortunately (and in error) Grimalkin dies at the end of his first life instead of experiencing the nine lives that are traditional for cats. This error is corrected by Cat-Sith, the King of the Cats. (This is where the story becomes complicated.). Grimalkin chooses to return to Eilidh (his person) as a ghost to complete his nine lives rather than the oblivion of immediately dying permanently. So he returns to his cat life eight times, seemingly at random intervals of time, for just a day each time. When he falls asleep he jumps forward in time to his next life. He is present at Eilidh’s death, misses the First World War entirely, meets a couple of famous Scots, has some adventures and finally dies on the same day that Queen Elizabeth II does, in 2022.

There is change over the decades and new inventions to scare our hero, but each life is very brief and only vaguely connected to his previous lives. This makes for a rather disjointed story, almost like a collection of short stories. Why does he stay in each life for only a day? A longer life at each stop would allow more development of the story and the characters.

But overall I did enjoy the book and became quite attached to Grimalkin as he progressed through his allotted nine lives. I learned a bit about Edinburgh and was reminded of some major events in the twentieth century. It was a nice touch that the last stop was in the home of the author. I think any cat lover would enjoy this quiet little fantasy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hanover Square Press who provided me with the ARC in return for my honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC!
3.5 stars:

I think this book is really cute but also at times insanely devastating. I think the idea is super original and creative, and Grimalkin is well written. It also acts as a bit of a historical fiction (through the eyes of a Victorian cat) which I found interesting - I wasn't expecting his lives to be so spread out. I think the bit of cat God lore at the beginning is really interesting, although I wish it had been fleshed out a bit more. Another thing I didn't love was that the beginning was a bit boring. I read the first 41% of the book over like two weeks and then the last 50% in one night (which tells you something about the pacing or at least the level of engrossment the book will provide). But I liked pretty much everything else.

Grimalkin is an interesting narrator and it's very cute to read about his love for Eilidh or conversely his distaste for certain people/things. SPOILER *** The scene where he finally finds Eilidh and she feels his presence was SO BITTERSWEET ***SPOILER OVER! Justice for Grimalkin! He deserved his 9 lives w/Eilidh :( ! Another thing about Grimalkin is that he's very adaptable (I mean he is a ghost cat jumping thru time so it's kind of a necessity) and it's interesting to see how his attitude towards life changes and how his old beliefs come back.

Overall, this is a super cute, cozy read that is great to read before bed (or any time) - very low stress.

thank you too Harlequin Trade Publishing and Netgalley for providing me with an Ebook Arc in exchange for an honest review!

*2.5/5
I am the first to admit that Cats and History are two of my favorite all time things so when i saw the tagline and summary for this book, i was excited! in concept, this book is perfect for me but alas, in execution, it fell short.
i think for a book to succeed 9 times out of 10, it needs to establish a main character or narrator that the reader can relate or connect with. it gets more difficult when our main character isn’t human but an animal. i think with an animal being our main narrator, in order to have them be a head the reader wants to be in, a writer needs to establish a connection with another animal or human so we can better get attached to our animal narrator. Unfortunately, our main cat Grimalkin doesn’t really have any genuine feeling connections with anyone, so he becomes a bit of a mouth and eyes for the reader to just peer through. I found being in Grimalkins head rather boring and tedious. he felt more like a clueless tour guide than a cat to me.

as for the history aspect, the choice of having the historical context for each year Grimalkin visited relayed to us via footnotes was… interesting. i personally really didn’t like it, i felt like i was reading a text book and it took me out of the story— like who is adding these footnotes? can Grimalkin also see them? where are they coming from, i’m so confused how this works within the story.

Grimalkin learns about each new year he visits by observing new humans each time (for the most part) but unfortunately, i can really tell that these characters are just there to relay what time period they’re in, what’s changed, and show the passage of time. they don’t feel real at all. (personal preference, but it really irks me when an author overcompensates for a characters accents. like i could handle words like “feeling” being shorten to feelin’ or such but having slavic characters saying things like “vait” instead of wait or Scottish one’s constantly saying “wee” every time they speak was getting on my nerve. just say they have an accent, the reader can take it from there).

the actual passage of time being shown from the same general area was pretty cool, and i liked the random cat god/lore, wish he had gotten more of that but i understand why we didn’t.

there were a lot of stylistic things that didn’t mesh with my tastes, so unfortunately this was a bit of a let down. i wouldn’t discourage anyone from checking it out at least if it sounds interesting to them though! my tastes aren’t for everyone !

This was cute and cozy. I am a huge cat lover, so it was very interesting and fun to read. I highly enjoyed it. I will definitely be recommending it. I love seeing all the new places he would wake up.