Cat Lady: The hot, must-read Richard & Judy Book Club novel for summer 2023 from the Sunday Times bestselling author

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It feels like this book has been written by a computer algorithm (time to add a joke here, and now some sex, and now some tears) and not sense-checked by a human, or a cat.

This is a book that tries humour but its not a funny book because there is too much tragedy behind it. Enjoyed this book is was funny in parts and the cat lady and her relationship and life problems and was quite dark in parts. Mia has been living in terms of what society expects from her, rather than what she wants in fear of judgement.Mia is clearly struggling in many aspects of her life – and all of them seem quite compartmentalised – her role as wife and step mother at home (although she doesn’t share a bedroom with her husband, as she prefers to sleep with her cat ‘Pigeon’), her work – where she loathes her ‘boss’ and appears to dislike most of her staff, her relationship with her sister (and non existent relationship with her brother in law), and her attendance at a pet bereavement group – despite Pigeon being alive and well. There was constantly something happening to her and after each thing happened, I kept asking myself when something good would happen to Mia.

It was really interesting to see how everyone in the group responded differently to losing a pet, from the emotions they experience to the impact that it has had on their life. Sometimes she has a bit more than 'it all' - there's her husband's ex-wife who spends way too much time at their house and has way more opinions about everything Mia's doing wrong than could really be considered appropriate. Mia is 45, and happily married (separate bedrooms), lives in a nice house (originally bought by her hubby and his first wife), is a great step mum (although the first wife/mother is always popping round); has a great job (she has to micromanage the gormless chief executive) and is in love (with her cat, 'Pigeon') and is pretty much living the ideal conventional life, but is this the life that Mia wants? There were so many instances when reading when I was simply teetering between cringe, disbelief, and also shock at the standard of publishing. Dawn O'Porter is a broadcaster, novelist and print journalist who lives in Los Angeles with her husband Chris, cat Lilu and dog Potato.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. She's a good wife to her husband Tristan, a doting stepmother, she slips on her suit for work each morning like a new skin. She has met a new group of friends at a pet bereavement group, and is slowly finding peace in the world. Nothing much happens in the first half, there’s a bit of awkward social commentary, and Mia reinforces every stereotype about people who love cats. We learn about her challenging childhood and how Pigeon saved her from herself in her teens but much as I love my cats, I know that humans need other humans.