Review: The Pawful truth by Miranda James

The Pawful Truth (Cat in the Stacks #11)
written by Miranda James
narrated by Erin Bennett

My Rating: 3 stars

Genre: Cozy Mystery
Age Category: Adult
Type of romance: m/f

Blurb:
In addition to his library duties and his role as doting grandad, Charlie has enrolled in an early medieval history course offered by young, charismatic professor Carey Warriner. Charlie feels a bit out of place – his fellow classmates are half his age – except for Dixie Bell Compton, another “mature” student. When Charlie hears an angry exchange between her and their professor, his interest in piqued. He’s even more intrigued when she shows up at his office asking for a study partner. Charlie turns her down and is saddened to learn just a few days later that Dixie has been killed.

Charlie wonders if Professor Warriner had anything to do with Dixie’s death. Warriner is married to a fellow professor who happens to be a successful author. There are rumors on campus that their marriage was on the rocks. Was Dixie’s death the result of a lovers’ triangle gone bad? Charlie soon discovers that the professor’s wife may have some secrets of her own, and his suspect list is only getting longer.

As he and Diesel step further into the tangled web of relationships, someone else is viciously killed. Whose jealousy finally erupted into murderous rage? Was it a crime of passion, or is there another more sinister motive? Charlie races to unravel this mystery: and to draw out the culprit, he may just have to put his own life on the line….

My Review

I received a free copy from Tantor Audio and voluntarily reviewed it.

The Pawful Truth is the 11th book in this series and follows Charlie as he solves mysteries. In this book Charlie has enrolled in a class, there’s another older student in the same class and when she ends up dead Charlie get’s involved in solving the case. I really like this series and following Charlie and seeing his life develop, but sadly I found this book to be less enjoyable than most books in the series so far.

For some reason this book just didn’t keep my attention as much as most of the books have so far. I liked being back in Athena and reading about Charlie solving another mystery, but the mystery just didn’t grip me. At first I kept being confused at who was who of the involved parties, as a lot of character get introduced early on. My confusion about this didn’t help in following what was going on. This got better as things progressed and I got a better sense of who was who and how they were connected. There also was a lot of speculation of who was in love with who and who was having an affair with who and how this impacted the mystery. Maybe it’s because I was quite stressed and not feeling too well when listening to this book, but I had a hard time being invested in the mystery. The reveal made sense, but also just made me feel sad about it all and the people who died.

I also felt this book had less personal life threads going on that some of the other books. Charlie’s relationship with Helen-Louise is still going well. He is settling in with Ramseys now as a new kitting in his household and there are some fun antics involving him. This book had some more about Melba as she has some connections and information that is relevant to the case. There is more of his children and grandchildren visiting. It’s all pretty stable and not too much going on or happening there. I felt like most of the focus was on the mystery and I wasn’t as invested in the mystery that made it harder to fully enjoy the book. The narrator was great as always and I do enjoy reading more about these characters.

To summarize: I really like this series, but this book didn’t keep my attention as much as the previous ones. The mystery in this one just wasn’t fully working for me and I wasn’t as invested in it. And with most of the focus of this book being on the mystery I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped. I also was a bit confused at first about who was who as a lot of characters and their connected get introduced in short succession, this did get easier as the book progressed luckily. I did enjoy reading more about Charlie, his life and those around him. There are some fun scenes involving the new kitten and there’s more about Diesel the cat as well. I liked reading more about the familiar side characters. I enjoyed listening to this one and the narrator is a great one for this series. I look forward to the next book and hope I enjoy that one more again.

Links:
– Goodreads
– Bookbub
– Amazon
– B&N
– Kobo

You can also read my review on Goodreads and Bookbub.