Cat Dragon

 

Cat Dragon is a twee, cozy fantasy with a young cute female MC written by Samantha Birch. Released 23rd Sept 2025 by HarperCollins on their One More Chapter imprint, it's a substantial 432 pages and is available in 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.

Cozy fantasy is more popular than ever, and this is a young-feeling story with lots of bucolic scenery, little cat-dragon familiars, talking pumpkins (inhabited by departed ancestors), and low-stakes conflicts. 

The narrative is a bit disjointed and hops around from scene to scene quite frenetically in places. Each part of the scene is well written, but they don't mesh and there's very little segue between. The basic story is solid and engaging, and very creative. The familiars especially are well written and there are lots of whimsical touches (pumpkins, guardian, etc) which are fun.

The main plot points (like the Guardian who is off-the-rails) are generally not very well explained, though the descriptions are complete and detailed. It's easy to picture them in the reader's mind, but *why* they do the things they do, and how it all fits together is generally not explained. 

Three stars. Charming and a bit precious, but it's very much on the tween/YA end of the scale. 

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.