The premise looked interesting to me. Spoilers ahead.
Connla, a cougar enthusiast from the United States, travels to Scotland in hopes of being able to photograph one of the UK's famous "ghost cats", panthers said to live there in secret. However, in Scotland he comes across Imogen, a girl whom he shares a disturbing past with. Imogen however doesn't recognize him, leading to somewhat of a romance between the two as Connla keeps his identity a secret. The truth is bound to come out one of these days, though...
It's a fine book, honestly, but I didn't find myself too invested in it. I found the main characters of Connla and Imogen to not be very interesting, outside of their backstory. But the present-day versions of the characters just felt kinda meh to me, not super engaging or anything. It was also so cliché how a lot of Imogen's conflict was based around multiple men liking her and being romantically interested in her. It felt like a cliché, especially since Imogen herself isn't even a very interesting character. I legit don't really see what any of these men saw in her (other than her apparently being hot).
My main gripe with the book, though, is that sometimes the characters make decisions that just flat out don't make sense, not on a meta level and not on a character-level. When Connla first lies about his identity in the text (before even meeting Imogen) it states that even he himself doesn't know why he lies. Later, when Imogen is questioned by the police and denies knowing Connla, it once again says something along the lines of "she didn't even know why she lied". Why do these characters keep lying for reasons they themselves don't even know? It just feels like the author was trying to fabricate more drama.
There was also at least one factual error about animals in the book, with male eagles being described as being bigger as the females (in real life, female eagles are bigger).
There's also a dog character featured in the book and it just felt, well, odd, that the dog didn't have a name. There's actual wild animal characters who are more minor who do have names, and this dog does lead to an important plot point, so it makes sense for it to have a name. But instead the characters and narrator constantly talk about "the dog" in the book and it feels very distracting. It shouldn't be so hard to think up a name for a dog. Literally just call it Max and Rex and it would still be an improvement over the very awkward leaving it nameless.
It also feels a bit weird how the setup regarding the panthers in the UK doesn't really have a payoff? You'd think that, in the end both Connla and other people having encountered the big cats, that there'd be some huge payoff to the search of them, like it being in the news. But instead the concept was mostly dropped to focus more on the relationship between Connla and Imogen, and Connla's rescue. I don't know, this felt weak. Setting up a question and not really giving it any payoff or answer doesn't feel like strong writing to me.
So yeah, not the greatest book I've recently read, but I've also read worse.
Rating: 3/5
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