Unfortunately, this wasn't for me. I love cats and a cat premise but the concept didn't really work for me. A lof of the book was unnecessary with the first and last chapter essentially containing the entire plot.

I love cats very much, but I never imagined waking up one morning and seeing the world through the eyes of a cat, which is what happens to the protagonist of this book. While her body is in the middle of a business trip, part of Dolores' consciousness finds itself in the body of the family cat, with all the limitations, but also the advantages. She discovers many things she would never have suspected, such as the duplicity of her handsome husband and the dangers faced by her teenage daughters. The human Dolores remains completely unaware of the events, and meanwhile the feline Dolores tries with all her might to overcome the limits of her animal instinct, using it to her own advantage, despite the fact that the family cat is, to all intents and purposes, an indoor cat.
In a crescendo of increasingly frenetic and humorously described events, the human Dolores and the feline Dolores converge with growing determination to avert a tragedy, and at the same time, to come to terms with the past and the present. Like the calm after the storm, the lockdown due to COVID suggests a time of quiet to get back to making sense of things.
Hilariously funny, this book is, liguistically speaking, one of the richest I have come across from an English-speaking writer.

This is a funny, weird, and interesting book. It talks about a women who find herself in a cat body and a cat that shares her body with a woman.
As it was written before the pandemics it talks about a world we left behind.
Dolores, the women in the cat body, discovers that her family is not perfect as she thought, and she acts as she can. X and Dolores were two interesting characters, others were not likeable but all well written.
I liked the wry dark humour and the style of writing.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

This premise is tricky to pull off, and depending on your perspective, the author successfully pulls it off. This is a light read, and includes some humor. While over the top much of the time, those seeking an easy read that's a little off-center, may enjoy this one.

Dolores inexplicably awakens with her consciousness transferred into her cat, X. X is still present in her own feline body and doing her own thing; Dolores is just along for the ride. Inside of X's body, Dolores is witness to things she would otherwise have never known about her family, and we also get to experience life from X's point of view, watching the bipeds go about their business. The best parts to me were X's interpretations of things, and certainly the language X used could be entertaining. I didn't love this overall, but it was decent. 2.5 stars rounded to 3.

Sent review in 2018. Did not realize it was the same book until I read the first page. Sorry for any confusion. I enjoyed the book and you can check out the review under the original ARC

This novel starts slowly and builds to a delightful and comic chaos in the climax. It follows several intertwining stories: x, a London house cat, Dolores, her owner who is now sharing X's mind, Dolorses' erstwhile author husband, and Dolores, the human. The plot switches from one to the other, deftly combining stream-of-consciousness with traditional plot. Another intriguing aspect is that this is happening in early 2020, just before the world changed.

I had not expected to like this novel, but I did, i loved it.

My thanks to Agora Books and NetGalley for a review copy of this book.

Cat Flap is a slightly fantastical, quirky, humorous but also slightly over the top novel. Successful corporate executive, Dolores Tremayne, finds part of herself in her family’s cat, X (named so by her daughter, since it sounds ‘mysterious’) while her human self is away on one of her frequent business trips, this time to Germany. As X, she begins to see (albeit partly from the cat’s perspective) the happenings at her home, and finds all is not going as smoothly or wonderfully as she chooses to believe. Her husband, author of a somewhat well received (though not well-selling) book, who is supposedly working on the next part of his book, is actually not only cheating on Dolores but is also into drugs. Her older daughter seems to be communicating with a suspicious character on the internet. But Dolores’ human self is blissfully unaware of all this and the part that is in X can’t really do very much on her/its own. And to top it all, the despicable Gerald and separately, his mistress (their upstairs neighbour) are determined to do away with poor X.

In the book, Cowell takes us into the minds and thoughts of various characters—X and the part of Dolores sharing her body, the rather repulsive Gerald as well as the ‘human’ Dolores, and we also follow other characters including Gerald’s mistresses and Dolores’ wealthy, self-made, father who is involved in some dubious dealings of his own. We follow each of these, learn of Gerald and Dolores’ back stories, their lives before marriage, how they met and their relationship began, and of course how things have turned out in their lives (alongside, issues of race, class, wealth, etc. in society and at the workplace are explored). We don’t learn too much about their two daughters, Portia and Astra, as individuals, but Portia’s messages to her internet ‘friend’ play a role in the overall plot.

To start off, with I would say that from the cover I was quite sceptical about how the book would turn out to be, but had requested it because of the cat aspects of the plot. However, it turned out to be much more enjoyable than I was expecting.

The concept of the book when I read its description, a woman, part of whom wakes up in her cat seemed really interesting to me, and reading the book, I thought this was really well done. I liked how Cowell has interpreted this scenario in that the cat, X, remains a cat, and retains its own personality, though being conscious of another presence in itself. The Dolores in the cat can see things and understand them as her human self would but not always for X’s cat personality and qualities prevent this from happening entirely. So we hear both lines of thought, both voices—sometimes interacting, sometimes unable to communicate with each other, and neither able to operate quite fully as themselves (perhaps, the cat is, actually).

I felt for X when she talks of her life as a ‘flat cat’—her food only those premade pellets, never getting the chance to step out and breathe in fresh air (or chase/hunt other creatures), and not even knowing certain sights or smells because she is forever (or almost forever) inside. I know that the cat’s voice is again a human talking on a cat’s behalf, but as someone who has cats (and also having very recently lost one when she was outdoors, which led me to question my letting her out), I did still feel for poor X because while I realise that we keep them in because we want them to be safe, it is essentially like a prison for them.

X was certainly my favourite character in the story. The humans, on the other hand, were not quite as likeable. Gerald, as I already wrote is rather despicable (for many reasons), and while he might claim his behaviour as being something he can’t help, he seems only to be making excuses to himself (what he plans for poor X is totally unforgiveable, and he isn’t the slightest bit remorseful). So I wanted very much throughout the story for him to get his just desserts (also his awful mistress). Dolores while not an unlikeable person in herself, seems rather naïve when matters of the heart are concerned, for it isn’t that she didn’t know what Gerald was like, but like many others, she simply falls into the stereotypical trap of believing that she could or has changed him.

The plot overall was pretty enjoyable in that I wanted to keep reading, of course to see how things turn out for poor X, but also how the human Dolores finds out all the part of her that is in X knows, and how as a consequence, Gerald ends up (the characters’ backstories including Dolores’ father’s were interesting to follow as well). All of the threads of the story come together for a rather dramatic culmination in which X ends up plays a heroic role. However, here I felt things got a bit too over the top—playing out like one of those exaggerated movie scenes which I don’t really enjoy all that much.

There is humour in the writing for sure which I enjoyed, more so at the start when Dolores that it in the cat is figuring things out, thinking of books and authors, among other things. But in the later part of the book, I did find like another reviewer that I was rushing through a bit, so perhaps a slightly trimmer version would have helped. This book has been published earlier in 2018, but this version has been updated to incorporate the covid and lockdown elements which make it more current, and shape the absolute end a bit differently to what it would likely have been.

Overall a fun read, with a definitely intriguing concept, and interpreted in an interesting way.

p.s.: there are mentions of animal cruelty, though saying what happens finally would be a spoiler; also some explicit-ish content; and drugs.

3.8 rounded off to 4

I didn't realize this was a reprint of a book I read (and enjoyed!) years ago. Lovely new cover, fun read for cat lovers.

Thank you to the publishers - Agora Books - for giving me access to this publication as an E-ARC via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

This was presented as "hilarious and unforgottable" which was what draw me in - thinking I'd get something along the lines of Jonas Jonasson but unfortunately I was quite disappointed. I didn't find this funny at all.

The plot - which in the blurb does sound great- is about a business woman called Dolores Tremayne who falls asleep on a plane and wakes up in the body of her family's cat X and gets to see her family from another perspective.

I wish I would hace enjoyed this more than I did.

Initially, I liked this book. I thought it was well-written, and an interesting concept and a bit different. So many books these days are predictable - the murderer will be caught, the lonely heroine will find her man etc - and this promised to be different. Yet I became quickly bored of the cat protagonist. The novelty wore off and I found myself thinking, "Do I care enough to keep reading?" and the answer was no. Also I wanted some kind of clever explanation for HOW the woman had both become a cat but was managing to be in Germany on business at the same time? (Never mind how she'd become a cat!) Or how the cat was also still the cat? I could suspend my disbelief enough for her to be the cat but not for the cat also to still "be inside" the cat or for her also to be in Germany, if that makes sense. So the book just didn't work for me.

I don’t like to DNF, particularly when given the book in exchange for an honest review. In this case, I skimmed the last 60%, as I couldn’t bear to push through every word. The plot is a fun idea, which took more and more distasteful turns. Wordy, unlikeable characters, depressing and completely unpleasant.

I was really looking forward to reading Catflap but I struggled to get in to the story. I read up to chapter 4 and was abit lossed with what was going on. I could not finish the book because I found it hard to get into. I am sure other people who like this style of book would get into it.
Thank you NetGalley for letting me read this book.