Penny Smith’s Reviews > Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter > Status Update

I haven’t gone much deeper but If I had to guess I think the angle is going to be that Laurent is like a cop bootlicker who turned on his people and considers them dangerous even though he knows nothing of the culture of magicians and basically he’s like magician racist lol

I still do like heather fawcett’s unique writing style, but I think it works best in journal format like in Emily Wilde. In journal format, you can get away with simply saying what a conversation entailed instead of writing it out, but she does it in this book too despite it not being a journal. It doesn’t work as well for me here. It makes me feel like the book should have been longer.

YOUR MAJESTY NOOOOOO

The kiss followed by the mystical cat shelter headline?? THIS IS JUICY!!

Okay this scene seems like the right one to give backstory in. Havelock even says an identical sentence to Yannick in the other info-dump scene “she came into her power much younger than I.” Is this just a weird editing thing??

I like the eclair as symbolism. She always passes by them in the shop windows but can’t afford them, or chooses to not indulge. It’s similar to her relationship with Havelock, something she wants but insists staying on the practical path, until she finally takes a bite. I’m sure she’ll be taking a *bite* of Havelock soon lol

This Havelock lore dump might have been more natural to swallow if Agnes and Yannick had been maybe combing through books or doing some task as the information was coming out. I know it’s not as necessary to do in a book as it is in a movie because it’s not a visual medium, but I mean it sort of it, in an imagery sense. So I would have liked some sort of task or visual to go along with the info dump.

This one blurb about Yannick is the most substantial description of what life for magicians is like in this universe, but it’s weird to be that it’s written in a sort of omniscient way. She just started describing it like it’s something she already knew instead of saying “he started telling me this about his life…” like she usually does. It feels like this was added in the editing pass? Idk it’s weird

I think the middle off this book has been slogging a bit, but these scenes with Agnes and Havelock igniting their romance plot has kicked it back into gear for me. I’m enjoining getting back to the emotional character moments the beginning of the book had.

I love that Agnes and Havelock are both very knowledgeable in their fields and protective over them but that’s exactly where they can’t get along because they’re both too excited and stubborn about their respective subjects