Review of Lending a Paw by Laurie Cass

Read for: Borrowed Books/ Audio book/ Trying new Genre

Synopsis: "With the help of her rescue cat, Eddie, librarian Minnie Hamilton is driving a bookmobile based in the resort town of Chilson, Michigan. But she’d better keep both hands on the wheel, because it’s going to be a bumpy ride…

Eddie followed Minnie home one day, and now she can’t seem to shake the furry little shadow. But in spite of her efforts to contain her new pal, the tabby sneaks out and trails her all the way to the bookmobile on its maiden voyage. Before she knows it, her slinky stowaway becomes her cat co-pilot!

Minnie and Eddie’s first day visiting readers around the county seems to pass without trouble—until Eddie darts outside at the last stop and leads her to the body of a local man who’s reached his final chapter.

Initially, Minnie is ready to let the police handle this case, but Eddie seems to smell a rat. Together, they’ll work to find the killer—because a good librarian always knows when justice is overdue."

My Review: I have had the urge to dip my toes into new genres and decided to start with Cozy Mysteries. This one immediately attracted my attention with revolving around books and a cat! I did really adore Eddy's involvement, while clearly more intelligent than the average cat, he is still clearly a cat, with cat behaviors and attitude. I wasn't a huge fan of Minnie, she was a bit of a bumbling fool, sticking her nose where it didn't belong, but I understand that is kind of the point of these books. While we did get clues throughout the book, we weren't really given enough information to figure out the mystery, which is a bit of a bummer. All in all it was an okay book, I liked the atmosphere and the side characters were all interesting. It wasn't bad for my first Cozy Mystery and I will be trying more in the genre and will pick up more in this series from the library.

My Rating: While I know this is outside my normal reading comfort zone, and maybe I need to get more into the genre to really start to enjoy it. I like to be able to put the pieces together throughout the mystery and I just didn't really get to do that here.  I also prefer when people let the police and detectives do their jobs, so it was a bit of a struggle. I still give it an overall rating of Three Paws.