The Cat Who Saved the Library is an engaging bookish fantasy featuring literature and the love of reading, along with a return of the anthropomorphic cat from book 1, by Sosuke Natsukawa. Due out 8th April 2025 from HarperVia, it's 224 pages and will be available in hardcover, paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout.
This is a multi-layered book. On the surface, it's a fairly simple story with another young person who suddenly notices that many of her beloved books are going missing mysteriously. She's shocked when a talking tabby cat visits and asks for her help saving books. On a deeper level, the author has a lot to say about reading, and books, and the love of literature.
There is a lot of literature name-dropping here and especially for young adult readers, there are numerous great works of western and eastern literature mentioned which will give hours of further reading prompts.
The characterizations are very lightly rendered and most of them are not detailed at all. They're not all likeable, I found the titular cat, Tiger, to be supercilious and quite abrasive, for example. On the other hand, the author makes some valuable universal observations on the nature of friendship, interconnectedness, humanity, and what drives creativity. It makes an oddly endearing whole.
The translation from the original Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai was relatively seamless. It was easily understandable and relatable to readers whilst still maintaining a distinctly Japanese aesthetic.
The unabridged audiobook has a run time of 5 hours and 56 minutes and is capably narrated by series narrator Kevin Shen. He delineates the characters (of all ages, both sexes, plus cat) well and distinctly. There were only a couple places where the dialogue was so fast moving that it's difficult to figure out out who was who in the scene. Sound and production quality are high throughout the recording.
Four stars. It's an undeniably odd but engaging story. Especially recommended for book lovers.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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