Beautiful art, but the story wasn't interesting enough for me. I really wanted to like it, because it has a cat and all, but unfortunately it just didn't do it for me.

This was an interesting read. Beautiful artwork though the story was a bit confusing. Feels like this is a fable that has been passed on through the years, which is pretty cool.

Such a sweet tale fit for a cozy evening reading with a fellow furry friend. Anyone who is trying to find their way back home will enjoy the adventures of the cat searching for his home.

2/5

I tried to like this, considering the drawings are pretty good and the beginning felt very interesting.
Problem was that the more I kept going forward, the more I was confused about what was happening.

I honestly didn't find any connection to the plot, just a mess of "retellings"(?).
I don't even know what I read nor was reading at some point.

Not fo me, sorry.

A real failure of a topsy-turvy mish-mash, this starts with a Japanese legend of kimono decorations that first combat each other due to their wearers' unrequited love, and then break out into the real world, and then devolves into nonsense, featuring a cod-Alice Liddell, Holmes and Watson – where Watson is played by Peter Lorre of all people – and something about boat crew fishing. Far too bonkers for its own good, it might not even deserve two stars seeing as it starts with a fine kernel of something, then proceeds to spit it out and give us something utterly different instead.

This graphic novel is beautifully illustrated with simple colouring, but it packs a punch in the way it tells a story about a cat that is part of a design on a kimono. The cat becomes alive and leaves the kimono and sets out on an adventure of its own.

As the cat travels we are drawn into the stories of those people that the cat meets and as he travels from place to place travelling through the lives and stories of others, the cat becomes a figure of myth and legend. It is an adult fairytale.

The artwork is beautiful and the story is magical and engaging. I read an ebook version but I think this is a story that needs to be experienced by reading a physical book, just because the artwork is so beautiful and manages to convey the mystery of the story.

Copy provided via Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

A cat escapes from a kimono and travels around the world interacting with various literary characters. Quite a fun, enjoyable romp. I hope that more of this author's titles are translated into English.

OMG, this book was so fun and entertaining and everything I didn't expect from it, yet it is 4.5⭐s.

This graphic novel is about a cat who escapes from a Kimono that a weaver designed for her beautiful love interest from a noble family. The whole story is about the adventures of this cat which is so interesting and totally the opposite of what I thought when I started to read the story.

The cat went through the sea and was loved by one of the crew members & escaped from them to be sighted by Alice in Wonderland in fairytales. It was so funny that the cat was the main turning point of each one's life to make their life changed. The most interesting & intriguing part of this story is that this cat also comes across by Sherlock Holmes & Dr Watson in the middle of their investigation becoming a breakthrough to their case. This one had a folklore mixed with fairytales and little bit of mystery to it & I loved it whole heartedly. I was even thinking how interesting it would be if it was bit more longer. I highly recommend this book to anyone truly without any age restriction. Even if you haven't read the stories that mixed up with this one it won't reduce your enjoyment a single bit.

**ARC provided by NetGalley for honest review**

The Cat from the Kimono by Nancy Peña was an adult graphic novel inspired by an old Japanese fable about a truly remarkable kimono. The story begins with a love struck weaver and the owner's daughter who loved her cat kimono, but she wanted nothing to do with the weaver. The weaver made a kimono of his own to try to compete, but it gradually escalated more and more until one of the cats from the daughter's kimono escaped from the kimono and ran away. The graphic novel gets a little stranger after this, following the cat's run into Sherlock Holmes and Alice in Wonderland type characters in turn. I liked the beginning of this with the fable, and the color choices of the black, white, and red really stood out, but it got a tad dark for my taste and then it just got confusing and weird and kind of left me thinking what the point was. Give it a try if it sounds interesting, but it wasn't my favorite unfortunately.

This was a super cool and interesting graphic novel.

This followed a myth of a cat in a kimono trying to find its way home, and then blended it with characters from classics literature. This felt so vibrant and had a touch of whimsy and magical realism that I miss from childhood books.

The color scheme also created it's own sense of story, by connecting themes and emotions to the palette currently being utilized in the scene.

Thanks NetGalley and Humanoids Inc for access to this arc

2/5 stars

I really enjoyed the parts with the original owner of the cat kimono. The rest of this was not my cup of tea. Silly and weird, like why alice in wonderland references? And the Sherlock Holmes stuff was also just meh. I was expecting to like this a lot more, but sadly I do not :/

The Cat from the Kimono does something interesting and follows the possibility of a cat from legend popping into some other legends by coincidence. I didn't find it incoherent as some of the other reviews did, but it seems like some of them as well thought there was time skipping and didn't realize that the kimono-of-legend was basically the same time period of Sherlock Holmes/Alice in Wonderland-era England. It wasn't hard to follow, and the art was lovely at parts and whimsical at others. It's a little magical (what else can you expect from a kimono-escaped cat!) and enjoyable enough as a little story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Humanoids, Inc. for the eARC in exchange for the review.

A beautiful illustrated graphic novel that reads like a fairy tale.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher Humanoids, Inc, for the free ARC and this is my honest opinion.

I find the idea behind the book intriguing; however, it was quite hard to follow. It felt like a lot of ideas jumbled together. I kept putting the book down and picking it back up again. The art style kept me coming back more than the actual story.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC to review.

The Cat from the Kimono has striking art and an original storytelling style. I loved the patterning and bold pops of color that were reminiscent of woodblock prints. I most enjoyed the cat's origin and the different versions of the original story (the fish instead of a crane). The original narrative was definitely the strongest. The plot got lost further in when the story shifted in art style, cast, location, and time. The plot was much less cohesive with the addition of Sherlock and Alice in Wonderland. It would be stronger with a set of new characters, even if they are rehashing older roles. Part of the appeal of this graphic novel is the multicultural perspective, and that was lost in falling back onto the literary canon. I preferred the cleaner art style and lore of the beginning of the book, but I appreciated the way the art/shading created a clear delineation between the segments of the story. The relationship between text and image was cohesive and felt balanced.
Overall, I enjoyed the art style, and this was a fun, semi-whimsical read, but it could have been a lot stronger.

This is the kind of book that divides opinions - the art is very peculiar (I loved the Japanese-styled sections, I hated the rest), the story is told in a peculiar way (it starts like a Japanese fairytale, then it jumps into Queen Victoria’s England and its literary heroes - Alice and… Sherlock Holmes; at first glance it seems to be a collection of short stories, but by the end you’ll realize they’re all a single saga) and the meaning is intentionally obtuse and confusing (love is where you least search for it? maybe)..

And yet, it’s charming, even beautiful, scary and dreamlike. And it’s just the first book in a series, which should explain the open ending. And it’s French, which should explain the weirdness :)

Anyway, I liked it and I think it’s better than OK, so three stars it is.

Disclaimer: I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review. This didn't influence my opinion in any way.

Take a Japanese legend/fable about a cat escaping form a kimono to roam the world, add in Alice Barnes, then stir in a cat obsessed sailor, and shake in Watson and Holmes and you have the gist of this tale. Done mainly in black and white, the art work goes from elegant to grotesque with only black pages to make shifts in the tale. That takes some getting used to. But if you are looking for a bizarre story to entertain you, you could do much worse than reading The Cat from the Kimono.

Thanks Netgalley for the chance to read this story.

I'm not really sure how to review this book. It comes across very disjointed and is hard to follow. The illustrations with the kimono are nice though. The idea of the book had a lot of promise - drawn cat comes to life and goes on an adventure

I recieved this ARC from NetGalley.

My thanks for the ARC goes to NetGalley and Humanoids, Inc. I'm voluntarily leaving a review.

Genre: Fantasy, Weird Fiction, Fairy Tale

I 100% asked to review this book based on the cover art. THE CAT FROM THE KIMONO is a graphic novel for adults. I had so much fun with the art.

It's clever, it's weird, it's funny.

There are several storylines tied together with the cat from the kimono. You'll see the original maker of the kimono, sailors, Sherlock and Dr. Watson, and more. Lovers want the beauty of the cat in the kimono, but the cat is more elusive than you might imagine.

I recommend this book—it's short and strange but fun!

Happy reading!

"Bizarre" probably best describes The Cat from the Kimono's narrative structure. I absolutely loved the beginning - the art was right, the story felt very much like an old fairy tale and I honestly just wish it had continued like the first segment. After what is arguably the highlight of the comic book, the whole thing devolves into a disjointed mess. The titular cat tries to find its way back to the kimono from which it fled, journeying through different parts of the world. Among others, the cat randomly meets Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, a girl named Alice whose storyline shares some similarities to the Wonderland-Alice but not really - it's just a confusing vignette of various segments that don't fit together in the slightest. The art style used in the parts about the "original" Japanese tale (which were SO much better than the others) gets thrown overboard in favor of what to me feels like a less appealing, far more generic style, which just adds insult to injury.

Maybe I didn't understand it, but The Cat from the Kimono was a miss for me. I LOVED the beginning and was very disappointed with the way the story unfolded. If Nancy Peña had stuck with the incredible atmosphere and storytelling she created at the start, I probably would've absolutely adored it and I'm honestly sad to see a story with such great potential go in such a bizarre direction.

- ARC provided by NetGalley -