An enjoyable new book in the Cat Cafe series

Purrder She Wrote: A Cat Cafe Mystery (Cat Cafe Mystery Series)

By: Cate Conte

Rating: 5 of 5

This is the second in a series of books by Cate Conte. The first, “Cat About Town”, set the series up and introduced the characters. While “Purrder She Wrote” can be read stand-alone, I recommend reading the series in order as it will assist you in understanding the characters. It gives their history in the first book and you can see the growth of each of them from book to book.

Maddie James has set up her new Cat Cafe. It is opening day and while the cafe is still undergoing changes (especially to the scheduling system!), she wants to take advantage of the end of the tourist season on the New England coastal island before the weather changes.

It doesn’t take very long before a murder has occurred and Maddie gets pulled into the investigation. I really appreciate that the natural flow of why this happens versus something artificial or having our sleuth start investigating in a way that hampers the on-going police investigation.

When Maddie seems to overstep, there are other characters who call her out on it. She steps back, sees the point of their concern and tries to get her life back on keel. Unfortunately, even more events (out of her control) happen which draw her right back in.

While I did figure out the whodunnit a bit earlier than the reveal, I appreciated the plot line and had a lot of fun with the characters including, of course, JJ, who is a very special cat about town.

I was provided a digital advance reader copy of this book by the publisher via Netgalley.