Erina seems like the class ice queen, but she’s really quite nice and has a huge soft spot for cats. After saving a poor feline, she gives it a smooch in the course of playing with it and naturally it transforms into her standoffish classmate Nekoyama. Is this love? Or merely a case of paws and effect?
Nekoyama is a cat. He. Is. A. Cat. Besides being this series’ goofball premise, it is key to understanding/enduring his incredibly snotty behaviour at the start of the book. He’s really coming on strong for most of this book, the first part especially.
It seemed like this was going to be another one of those hot bad boy stories, and it was, but being part of his nature (trust me, this guy goes nuts watching nature videos) makes it a bit more palatable. Cats - nature’s tsunderes.
Erina also gives as good as she gets, which might not seem to make for the healthiest relationship around, but sure is fun to watch. It’s hard to take Nekoyama’s aloof behaviour too seriously once you realize that he can be disarmed by a cat toy or Erina’s shoving him out windows.
It’s definitely the whole cat thing that gives this the extra zing that keeps it from falling into the traps or so many other books like this. Besides the fact that any kiss from anyone can trigger this transformation, Nekoyama has lead a pretty tough life because of this that does get him some extra sympathy.
This is also far more, uh, active than a lot of shojo books tend to be. Kisses are flying left, right, and centre, including one stolen one (bad Nekoyama!) that leads to some welcome recognizance later on.
When Nekoyama changes forms, however, he’s buck naked, so we’re not even a volume in and Erina’s seen him from tip to tail several times over. Honestly, having something that’s not entirely as pure as usual is kind of welcome, even if poor Erina is constantly scandalized.
It starts very small, but then just builds and builds on its nonsense until it’s pretty darn good. It probably won’t become a favourite, but it takes lots of basic cat behaviour and gets a good story out of it - the thunder scene is actually incredibly sweet and more romantic than this book likely deserves.
Needless to say, you should probably just read this anyway if you’re a cat person. Nekoyama is absolutely adorable in cat form and can talk, so you get some bonus antics out of that (the entire bathing story is very antic-forward).
3.5 stars - a wobbly first chapter gets cuter and more fun as it goes. Apparently I can excuse jerk behaviour a lot more when it comes from cats, which, given my own life, completely checks out.