Book 83, 2023

[chez_jae]

Gone but Not Furgotten: by Cate Conte

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



After cleaning house (which never not sucks but was made much worse by how ghastly hot it is), I finished reading Gone but Not Furgotten by Cate Conte. It's the 6th book in her "Cat Cafe" mystery series, starring Maddie James and her rescue cat, JJ.

Maddie is getting ready for an influx of visitors during the busy tourist season on Daybreak Island. Concerned that she's stressing too much, her friend Cass encourages Maddie to attend one of his retreats and also take up meditation. Cass also brings a potential cat hoarding situation to Maddie's attention. When they travel to the nearby small town of Fisherman's Cove, they find the home owner, Laurel, dead at the bottom of her steps...and dozens of cats roaming the property. In the midst of trying to remove the cats, Maddie encounters several locals, including people who'd argued with Laurel about the cats. Maddie is beginning to wonder if Laurel's death was no accident. When someone else is murdered and suspicion falls on Cass, Maddie takes it upon herself to start investigating. She enlists the help of her grandfather, who's a licensed PI, and her BFF Becky, who's the editor of the island's newspaper. It's all hands on deck to solve a murder or two and save the cats.

This was an enjoyable story, and I powered through it rather quickly. I liked that the narrative went from active investigation to cat rescue to Maddie at home. Characters were relatable and real, including the various animals. I guessed the killer early. Woo! However, there were a couple editing errors that threw me out of the story:
1. Maddie's mother kept calling, mostly at inconvenient times, which led to Maddie allowing the calls to go to voice mail. That's fine. What wasn't fine was this: on page 251, Maddie thinks to herself, '...darn it, I still hadn't called my mother.' I was confused because on page 226, this happened: 'Instead, I called my mother.' I actually read those passages on two different days, yet I managed to remember that Maddie had finally contacted her mother. Editing, people!
2. At one point, Maddie called police officer Craig and asked him to check something out. A little while later, she was waiting on Becky's return call. Uh, no you weren't; you were waiting for Craig to call back. Editing!

Favorite lines:
♦ "What's her name again?" If he'd told me, I couldn't remember. If he'd told me the cats' names, though, I'd have remembered those.
♦ "I'm just really sensitive about how people look at cat caretakers. Anything over two usually gets you labeled with something derogatory."
♦ "If it wasn't for those silly cats, no one would have ever known." // Her words reminded me of the old Scooby Doo cartoon.

I'd award this 4.5 stars if I could. Given the editing issues, I'm knocking it down to four.