TITLE: ⟫ Cute as Cats
AUTHOR: ⟫ Suki Fleet
RATING: ⟫ 3.5/5
BLURB: ⟫ Meet-cute in a cat cafe, but oh no! there's a storm and they're trapped together...Zu has spent his life wishing he wasn’t so big and awkward and always making a mess of things. When he gets stood up by his date at a cat café one rainy Christmas eve, it turns out to be the best thing that could have happened to him. He finds himself exchanging flirty glances with Kiitan, the café’s slender pudding chef. But when they start to talk, Kiitan tells Zu he’s deaf and Zu’s shyness get the better of him, and his worry about messing up makes him do just that. Gathering his courage, Zu vows to wait until the end of Kiitan’s shift to make it up to him. But as the streets around the café start to flood, the café closes early to make sure everyone can get home, and Zu thinks his chance is gone. Until he sees Kiitan is staying behind to protect the café’s cats. Ignoring all the ways things could go wrong, Zu does the only thing that feels right—he takes a chance and offers to help him. This contemporary Christmas short story has gay, pansexual, disability rep and a HEA. An earlier version of this story was available as part of the Rainbow Christmas Advent in 2022. This is an extended and updated version of that story.
REVIEW: ⟫ I admit it, I picked up this book because of the cats and the meet-cute premise! I went to a Cat Cafe for my 50th birthday with my kids and we had an absolute blast!
This novella is sweet, cute and all of those words that are appropriate for this time of year. It contains a lot of representation for such a short story: disability representation, gay, pansexual – but all of it is just part of the story rather than a big deal. Obviously there isn’t a lot of space for character/world building and it was a little instant-love – basically Zu and Kiitan fall in love over the course of a (very busy and traumatic) day. If you ignore that aspect of things if it doesn’t work for you, then this is a simple tale of two men meeting and liking each other, working together to keep cats safe, and a little bit of sexy-touching to round things off. A really nice read and a good start to my Christmas reading!
I received an ARC from GRR.
