Rather cheap book I picked up at the supermarket of all places recently. Hey, don't judge me, I take pretty much any xenofiction I can get my hands on. I did not know when buying this that it was the third book in a series (which is not very clearly indicated on the Dutch edition's cover), but luckily the book can be read without knowledge of the prior two books in the series. Spoilers ahead!
In Storybook Court in Hollywood, a thieving cat known as MacGyver (Mac) comes across a litter of helpless kittens. Taking his father role seriously, he runs away from his own home and is determined to raise the litter and eventually find the right people to adopt each kitten. But this is rather difficult, with the people of Storybook all being entangled in their own dramas.
Okay, so, I was pretty quickly disappointed going into this book. Mind you, this is not a bad book, it's perfectly fine. But the back cover text of my Dutch edition implied that this book was going to be first and foremost a xenofiction written from Mac's point of view. The book definitely has these sections, but it only takes up about 20% of the book, max. Instead, the rest of the book simply focuses on the human characters. Which in and of itself isn't bad; if the book wants to have more focus on the human cast that's okay. But then please don't imply with the title, cover and back text that Mac and the kittens will be a large focus of the book. They're certainly a part of it and a part of the plot, but they definitely feel more like an afterthought with the amount of focus the human characters are getting.
The human characters were also...I don't know, mixed. The ones that get the most focus are Serena, an actress just starting out in Hollywood, and Erik, a local cop with relationship issues. There's also several side characters such as Erik's partner Kait, Serena's friend at the coffee shop, and his brother Marcus. These characters are all pretty okay, usually they're not too complex but they still feel well-realized. But god, Erik's POV was quite often a pain to read just because he's an asshole. And don't get me wrong, characters can be assholes, but usually you'll at least want your reader to root for them when they're a main character. Erik just...is not a character I root for. At all.
He recently went through a bad breakup with an actress who never made it in Hollywood, and now is starting to romance Serena. But then the moment he thinks Serena is not going to make it as an actress as well, instead of supporting her he just cold turkey breaks up with her through text without even giving her a chance to explain herself. He extremely selfishly assumes that Serena is exactly the same as his ex, doesn't give her the benefit of the doubt and just instantly quits. If they still wanted us to root for Erik, this could've worked if he hadn't been such a giant dick about it to Serena. But he was, so I felt nothing positive when reading his POVs. He does improve by the end but even then I still wasn't feeling it when reading his chapters.
Mac himself as a character was honestly pretty enjoyable. Despite his chapters/sections being animal xenofiction, the author made the choice to not have him talk (in cat language) or spell out his thoughts even. So he's a silent protagonist, which honestly would've worked...but I think that Metz just tried to push him being a silent animal protagonist just a bit too far. Don't get me wrong, this works in books such as Jack London's The Call of the Wild because despite Buck's behavior is still mostly realistic. His inner thoughts or monologue is never spelled out, either, but it's still largely realistic canine behavior.
Meanwhile, Mac here, despite never talking or having inner monologue, does clearly have some capacity to think like humans do, even if his thoughts aren't explicitly spelled out for us. Heck, he even gives the kittens their own names. So while I normally don't mind an author choosing to write xenofiction (sections) with a silent animal protagonist with no inner monologue or thoughts, with how Mac acts I think it would've worked better here. Mac is a cat, but he also very clearly has thought capacity and definitely acts a bit anthropomorphized.
So having him talk in his own cat language or heck just even spelling out his thoughts would've just worked a bit better, I think, because right now it feels like this kind of weird imbalance. It's supposedly realistic because the cat doesn't talk or have any direct thoughts that are being conveyed to the reader, but it's at the same time also unrealistic because of how the cat acts and is able to literally give his kittens names.
So I think Metz should've either gone all the way and have had Mac talk (in cat language, not to be understood by the humans, obviously) or at least give him some inner thoughts that are spelled out for us to make him more anthropomorphized, or just have lied low and kept his behavior more realistic as a silent animal protagonist. This weird imbalance just doesn't really do it for me.
Overall this book is still fine, though. The uncomfortable bullshit with Erik aside, it's a rather cute book about Serena finding her passion for teaching rather than acting, and Mac being a good father to these kittens he wants to protect and find good owners for. But if you went in like me thinking it's primarily a xenofiction, you'll be disappointed. I also think that Mac's weird anthropomorphization levels probably won't bother the average reader, but as an avid reader of animal xenofiction where the animals both do and do not talk, this imbalance just struck me as a tad odd.
Rating: 3.5/5
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