DNF'd at 25 percent. (Review from October 1st; I didn't realize that I hadn't shared my review here earlier. My bad)

I really wanted to like A Cat Cafe Christmas. The concept of the story was really adorable, so I excited to read it! And that cover just screamed my name, so I knew I had to read it ASAP. But unfortunately, both the male and female leads irked the hell out of me. I wanted to keep reading the book just to know how it ends, but by 25 percent, I was just done. :( AAAAHHH. Kara was one of the most unlikable characters I have ever read about. And Ben's misogynistic attitude made me really uncomfortable multiple times, too. A big no for me.

Cats! Cafe! Christmas!

I love all three of these things so much, this book was so fun to read! Kara and Ben are great together and I loved all the ideas Ben came up with to help save the cafe. 25 days of Catmas were awesome and I would totally participate if that was real!

This book was super cute and I really enjoyed it. The ex and his scheme seemed a little far fetched at time, but overall I'd still recommend this. Chaos was also hilarious and I needed more of him.

Thank you to Netgalley for the advanced reader copy. This was a charming Christmas romance. I am not a cat person so I definitely was able to put myself in the shoes of the Ben. I really loved how involved the backstory was each of the characters. It really made you want to root for them. It was definitely a cute romance novel without any smut. Sure to get you in the holiday spirit.

Kara Ingalls shows up for work and sees the line outside her café. Part of her is happy that there are so many people waiting to get in the door. A very small part. Most of her is irritated and anxious to see the crowd. She knows that they will be a person down, so she’ll be the one standing at the counter helping them. And she likes to help people. She wants people to come to her café. She just doesn’t want them all to show up at the same time and expect her to be friendly and perky.

Where did all these people come from?

Ben Reese is nearby, grinning at their successful campaign for the cat café. He is part of a team trying to build up local small businesses, and after their first article on the café, there is a line of people waiting outside. And a grumpy woman who looks confused. He tries to talk to her and is taken aback by her attitude. Most small businesses would be thrilled to find a line of people waiting for them to open. But this woman, Kara, is not happy.

A short conversation with her leaves Ben flat. He understands why she is surprised by the customers waiting on her café, but he thought she could be grateful for his work. After a client meeting, he heads home and does some more renovation on his house. But when he hears a soft mewing and finds a tiny kitten who had gotten into the ducts, he doesn’t know where to turn except the irritated Kara and her cat cafe.

Kara wasn’t very happy to see Ben again, especially after he’d told her just that morning that he wasn’t an animal person. As a veterinarian, she can’t understand that. She opened the cat café especially to help the casts that need someone in their corner to help advocate for them. And now this guy is here to dump the kitten he’d found, and during the holiday season, when a lot of their foster families are traveling and can’t take on another kitten. She checks out the kitten to make sure he’s okay and talks Ben into taking him back home until she can find a placement for him, just a day or so. He agrees, reluctantly, and gets ready to head back home when he finds out that his friend had been flirting with Kara’s partner in the café, Charity, and gets them invited to her Friendsgiving.

Between Ben keeping the kitten at his place, Friendsgiving, and his company working on marketing plans for local small businesses, he can’t seem to stay away from Kara. And while he finds her smart, funny, and attractive, he is reluctant to give another relationship a shot. After what happened with his last girlfriend, now his brother’s fiancée, Ben isn’t ready to take another chance.

Kara is caught between her past and her future. She wants the café to be a success. In fact, she wants to add a clinic to it, to offer even more care for the cats she loves. But she can’t be involved in any public way. After her ex-husband used her work laptop to steal money and top donor identities from the nonprofit she worked at, she had to disappear from social media. He repaid a lot of money and went to jail, but a lot of people still believed she was involved in his crimes. She can’t let the café go down because of what he did to her. And she is having trouble opening herself back up to a new relationship.

But when she sees Ben smiling at that kitten, she knows that he is an animal lover underneath it all. But is that enough to build a relationship on? A future? All she knows for now is that she needs $6000 to keep the café open into the new year, and $40,000 if she wants to make her dream of the clinic come true. It’s going to take something big to raise that money. It will take a brand new marketing plan, with a new website and lots of social media interaction. Their 25 Days of Catmas campaign is a start, but will it be enough? Can it save the cat café, heal two broken hearts, and help tame a kitten named Chaos?

A Cat Café Christmas is a new holiday themed rom com from Codi Gary, and it’s filled with adorableness. Each chapter starts with a short blurb about a cat that’s up for adoption, and the adventures of the kitten Chaos is just precious (although not everyone agrees, like the chihuahua of the foster mom who tried to keep the kitten for a bit). These characters are smart, the banter is fun, and the kissing adds some spice. Kara and Ben are honest with each other about their past relationships and handle their mutual attraction with maturity and respect, which is a really lovely twist.

I enjoyed A Cat Café Christmas and it’s sweetness and catness. Fans of television holiday movies will find a lot to like in this one, as will romantic comedy readers and cat lovers. It’s a fun escape from the holiday craziness, or a reminder of the magic of the holidays if they feel too far away. And if you find that there is a kitten in your life that terrorizes your dog or uses your shoes as a litter box, then you can empathize with what happens to the characters in A Cat Café Christmas when Chaos is unleashed.

Egalleys for A Cat Café Christmas were provided by Forever through NetGalley, with many thanks.

"Love is about fear. You're scared to admit it. Terrified to lose it. And afraid you'll never find it again." Codi Gary | A Cat Café Christmas

I laughed. I cried. I loved this book! 🐈❤️🐈‍⬛

This is a story about veterinarian, Dr. Kara Ingalls and her best friend who together own and operate a struggling cat rescue café called Meow and Furever. With the hopes of growing their business into something much bigger, they are in need of a Catmas miracle to make ends meet. Good thing marketing man Ben Reese has recently moved to town. Both Kara and Ben have their traumas to work through and together with time heal from them.

This opposites attract, second chances, CATastic romance novel will get you in the mood for the holidays, that are right around the corner. Just make sure to have your furry friend snuggled up close!

Goodreads: 3.82 ⭐️
My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

On a side note- I loved that at the beginning of every chapter there was personalized cat profile card that belonged to a cat at the rescue. Not only was my heart with the people in the story but my heart strings were pulled with every adoption the café had 💕

"Cats are what? Awesome? Empathic? Cuddle bugs? Entertaining?" Codi Gary| A Cat Café Christmas

Thank you to the Author Codi Gary and NetGalley for this Ebook give away.

#acatcafechristmas #netgalley #codigary #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #reading #readingtime #books #readinglist #alwaysreading

3.5 stars

Cats, coffee, and Christmas, what else can a girl ask for?

This story follows Kara, a veterinarian who recently opened the Furrever Cat Cafe and is struggling to make ends meet at the cafe. Then comes along Ben Reese who works for a marketing firm and comes up with a plan to save the cafe. However, he didn’t exactly give a good first impression on Kara (and he doesn’t like cats!!!)

Kara and Ben had okay chemistry. There wasn’t any “spark” and didn’t really keep my interest in their love story as much as I would have liked it too. Plus the characters both annoyed me in many ways - especially since they tended to overreact over the smallest situations. However, Kara did grow on me throughout the book.

Also, I had an issue with the underlying story of Kara’s conflict with her ex-boyfriend. It seemed like such a big component to the plot, however, the end left me saying “really, that’s it?” It was a little underwhelming with the resolution.

Overall, I feel like I would have enjoyed this one more if the romance was better developed and felt more believable.

I will say though that my favourite part of the book was that the chapters were prefaced with adoptable cat introductions with little drawings of cats!! Super adorable!!

Thank you to NetGalley and Forever (Grand Central Publishing) for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!

This was a new author for me and I really enjoyed this fun Christmas romance! Kara and Ben are such a cute couple! Kara was recently broken hearted from a fiancé who embezzled charity funds. She and her bestie team up to open a cafe, where you can also adopt cat! So fun! Ben has amazing marketing skills but he’s the brooding type. He’s emotionally unavailable since his brother took his finance! Ben also has a lot of ideas that can help people’s businesses! So when the cafe is struggling, Ben helps Kara. These two have good chemistry, pasts, and issues to work through! I enjoyed the slow burn feels between them and how both are given a second chance at love!! Such a heartwarming fun read!

3.25/5 ⭐⭐⭐

Calling all romance-reading cat people: this book is for you! A cute and cozy small-town holiday romance plucked straight from the Hallmark channel, this story features a sortof grumpy/sunshine-enemies to lovers/friends to lovers mashup, where we get to see our romantic leads and their best friends team up to save a dying business and move past their past relationships to find love again at Christmas time.
The story features Kara, who’s running away from an ex-fiancé who embroiled her in scandal when he deceived her by embezzling money from her non-profit on her work laptop, leaving her jobless and broke. Together with her best friend, Charity, she opens a cat café in a small town where she can lay low. But they are struggling to make ends meet when Ben enters her life. A skeptic of pets and small town life, he too is running away. He’s been avoiding his family since his brother announced his engagement to Ben’s ex-fiancée. Ben has the marketing skills to help Kara save her business (and her reputation!), while there’s something about Kara that makes Ben want to trust again.

This story is a classic Christmas romance with the charm of a holiday favorite, and the added bonus of lots of furry friend characters to love! Where it stumbled a bit for me was in the dialogue. While I really enjoyed the plot (even the tropes were delightful!), the way the characters spoke and interacted felt really choppy. I noticed this from the very first conversation between the leads and it never really got better for me. The prose surrounding was really nice, but when it came to characters talking to each other, it often felt info-dump-y, and like people in real life wouldn’t speak to each other this way. It also failed to built the right cadence in the really critical scenes, like the love confession(s), third act breakup, etc. It made those pivotal moments fall a little flat, and took away from my overall enjoyment of the story.

That being said, the plot was really cute, the side characters were fun, and the cats were for sure the best part! I loved the little cat captions to start each chapter, and the illustrations were a nice touch. Overall, I was rooting for Ben and Kara, and I liked their happily ever after. The writing was a little awkward, but it was a great read for a cozy afternoon with a cup of coffee and a cat on your lap! Pick this one up this holiday season if you need a little escape from the hustle and bustle. Thanks to NetGalley for providing the ARC in exchange for this review!

This. Was. Adorable.

My original interest in this book went something like this: New holiday book? YES. Cafe, as in coffee? YES. Cats? HECK YES.

I wasn't sure what to expect since I often question my own taste with regard to reading preferences, well ... among other things. I've concluded (and even QA'd my conclusion) that this was "the cat's pajama's" of holiday reads, if you will.

The characters are thoroughly developed, the story is unique but not too "out there" and the cat element tugged at my animal lovin' heartstrings. It's been said before, but it is 100% true for A Cat Cafe Christmas that if you love Hallmark holiday movies, this book is for you.

Not a "cat book person"? It's ok ... maybe this cat book will wind up calling YOU its person anyway. <3

Veterinarian and part owner of Meow and Furrever Cat Café Kara Ingalls must team up with marketing genius Ben Reese to help save the café before Christmas. There’s mutual attraction but neither is willing to take any chances ruining their professional business endeavor or risking another heart break. As both work together slowly putting differences aside, they might just find themselves seeing they are purr-fect for each other.

Super cute Hallmark feeling Christmas romcom with no spice, just sweet! The fact that Kara and Ben had to come together over cats during Christmas time filled my cat loving heart with joy. I loved that the chapters had descriptions of the cats for adoption. I think any animal and Christmas lover will really enjoy this one.

Thank you NetGalley and Forever for the E-ARC in exchange for an honest review

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I ADORED this book so much! It was the perfect amount of cute and romantic. Kara and Ben were perfect and relatable which made the book even better. I loved that Kara was socially awkward and really was relatable. The addition of the cute cats was awesome! This book was so wonder and I devoured it because it was so fun!

An enemies-to-lovers romance, where opposites attract. The combination of cats, Christmas, and romance could not have kept me from picking up this book. A lot of my enjoyment came from Meow and Furrever Cat Cafe's setting. My favorite part of Kari's character was how she cared for the cats at the cafe. As a result, I became even more enamored with this book. A heartwarming romance between Kari and Ben, coupled with their struggles, made the book so enjoyable.

Thank you Forever and Netgalley for the ARC of this book. This was an honest review.

I try not to DNF a book unless I get to at least 35% but I just could not take one more page of A CAT CAFE CHRISTMAS.

I truly, madly, deeply, hate it when romances with plus size heroines have a leading man who has to repeatedly explain to the reader how he could possibly find the heroine attractive. This book did it over and over again in just the first few chapters.

I also just could not handle the heroine. Not only is she pretty rude and short with whomever she comes in contact with, but she is supposed to be a veterinarian working in a no-kill animal shelter and she is a dick to people who are unable to adopt pets.

The hero is renovating a home and finds a kitten trapped in the vents. Despite the fact that he does not want a cat, he has never owned a cat, and his house is literally unsafe for a cat, the heroine tells him he's a selfish bastard and guilts him into taking home the kitten. In reality, an animal shelter owner would never want an animal to go to a home where it wasn't wanted. NEVER.

I DNFed at 18%.

I didn't find anything particularly original or compelling here, and I did think the two love interests were a bit grating - but there's nothing to not recommend here, and it's of course very good for someone looking for a sweeter romance or one involving pets.

Cats and Christmas
Two of my favorite things
This was an easy to read rom-com and I loved every minute of it.

A Cat Cafe Christmas by @authorcodihallgary is much more than just a cutesy, kitty story!

This is a meet cute, opposites attract, grumpy, rom com filled with adorable cats, each with their own bio!

After Kara’s ex destroyed her life and previous career she teams up with her BFF, Charity, to open a shop where you can have a good cup of coffee, taste the best baked goods in town, snuggle with and even adopt one of many homeless cats! However, the cafe is struggling and they’ve already spent all their money.

Enter Ben, a brooding, grumpy, heartbroken man who happens to be a marketing genius.

Can Kara, a successful past veterinarian with ADHD, and Ben, with his emotional baggage and dislike of all animals, come together to save the cafe?

As soon as I started this book, I was hooked.

Read if you love:

✨opposites attract
✨small town charm
✨friendship stories
✨ADHD representation
✨2 grumpy MCs
✨new beginnings
✨dual POVs

This is a sweet romance with zero smut. Kara runs a cat cafe that gets homes for stray cats, and is trying to raise enough money to open a low cost vet clinic. Enter Ben, not an animal lover, who finds a cat in his house and has to keep him awhile.
He and Kara have instant sparks, not necessarily the good kind. But as they spend more time together, and Ben uses his marketing expertise to help the Cat Cafe, they get closer and closer. As Christmas approaches, they hit a big snag.
If you’re looking for a cute, clean romance this book is for you! 3 stars.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed as in this review are completely my own.

Cute and cozy romcom. If you love cats, this is for you. Loved the pictures and short description of the cats throughout. It was light-hearted and fun. Loved the enemies to lovers trope.

A big thank you to NetGalley, Forever, and Codi Gary for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Review: This was such a fun, festive read! I really enjoyed reading about Kara and Ben, and their relationship was really nice. A perfectly festive book for the holiday season!

I received an ARC and e-ARC from publisher.