Kara Ingalls shows up for work and sees the line outside her café. Part of her is happy that there are so many people waiting to get in the door. A very small part. Most of her is irritated and anxious to see the crowd. She knows that they will be a person down, so she’ll be the one standing at the counter helping them. And she likes to help people. She wants people to come to her café. She just doesn’t want them all to show up at the same time and expect her to be friendly and perky.
Where did all these people come from?
Ben Reese is nearby, grinning at their successful campaign for the cat café. He is part of a team trying to build up local small businesses, and after their first article on the café, there is a line of people waiting outside. And a grumpy woman who looks confused. He tries to talk to her and is taken aback by her attitude. Most small businesses would be thrilled to find a line of people waiting for them to open. But this woman, Kara, is not happy.
A short conversation with her leaves Ben flat. He understands why she is surprised by the customers waiting on her café, but he thought she could be grateful for his work. After a client meeting, he heads home and does some more renovation on his house. But when he hears a soft mewing and finds a tiny kitten who had gotten into the ducts, he doesn’t know where to turn except the irritated Kara and her cat cafe.
Kara wasn’t very happy to see Ben again, especially after he’d told her just that morning that he wasn’t an animal person. As a veterinarian, she can’t understand that. She opened the cat café especially to help the casts that need someone in their corner to help advocate for them. And now this guy is here to dump the kitten he’d found, and during the holiday season, when a lot of their foster families are traveling and can’t take on another kitten. She checks out the kitten to make sure he’s okay and talks Ben into taking him back home until she can find a placement for him, just a day or so. He agrees, reluctantly, and gets ready to head back home when he finds out that his friend had been flirting with Kara’s partner in the café, Charity, and gets them invited to her Friendsgiving.
Between Ben keeping the kitten at his place, Friendsgiving, and his company working on marketing plans for local small businesses, he can’t seem to stay away from Kara. And while he finds her smart, funny, and attractive, he is reluctant to give another relationship a shot. After what happened with his last girlfriend, now his brother’s fiancée, Ben isn’t ready to take another chance.
Kara is caught between her past and her future. She wants the café to be a success. In fact, she wants to add a clinic to it, to offer even more care for the cats she loves. But she can’t be involved in any public way. After her ex-husband used her work laptop to steal money and top donor identities from the nonprofit she worked at, she had to disappear from social media. He repaid a lot of money and went to jail, but a lot of people still believed she was involved in his crimes. She can’t let the café go down because of what he did to her. And she is having trouble opening herself back up to a new relationship.
But when she sees Ben smiling at that kitten, she knows that he is an animal lover underneath it all. But is that enough to build a relationship on? A future? All she knows for now is that she needs $6000 to keep the café open into the new year, and $40,000 if she wants to make her dream of the clinic come true. It’s going to take something big to raise that money. It will take a brand new marketing plan, with a new website and lots of social media interaction. Their 25 Days of Catmas campaign is a start, but will it be enough? Can it save the cat café, heal two broken hearts, and help tame a kitten named Chaos?
A Cat Café Christmas is a new holiday themed rom com from Codi Gary, and it’s filled with adorableness. Each chapter starts with a short blurb about a cat that’s up for adoption, and the adventures of the kitten Chaos is just precious (although not everyone agrees, like the chihuahua of the foster mom who tried to keep the kitten for a bit). These characters are smart, the banter is fun, and the kissing adds some spice. Kara and Ben are honest with each other about their past relationships and handle their mutual attraction with maturity and respect, which is a really lovely twist.
I enjoyed A Cat Café Christmas and it’s sweetness and catness. Fans of television holiday movies will find a lot to like in this one, as will romantic comedy readers and cat lovers. It’s a fun escape from the holiday craziness, or a reminder of the magic of the holidays if they feel too far away. And if you find that there is a kitten in your life that terrorizes your dog or uses your shoes as a litter box, then you can empathize with what happens to the characters in A Cat Café Christmas when Chaos is unleashed.
Egalleys for A Cat Café Christmas were provided by Forever through NetGalley, with many thanks.
