I really don't understand why I keep coming across books by religious people. It's like the one genre that keeps popping up. No matter what I think I might find, it always ends up being some random ass religious person as an author. But this series seems to be different. I found a few of these and each were written (presumably, anyway, as I only found two to back up my theory) by a different author. This is almost like a series that just hires different people for each book, rotating through the ranks until they start again at the first one. While that's an interesting concept, because maybe you'll get some who aren't super devout and others that are extremely churchy, it also leads to tonal inconsistencies, like when a guest writer pens a script of a TV series they aren't part of the regular writing crew for.
Either way, here's this book, one of my favorite book titles ever, "The Comatose Cat".
Not even like a Babysitters Club or Nancy Drew-esque "the CASE of the (blank)", no, just "The Comatose Cat". Like this is just a book about a really invested cat lady who sits by her comatose cats bedside the entire time, just praying for it to eventually wake up. Now, while I won't fault the author as she has a rather impressive list of credentials one can view on the back of the book, I DO think it's kind of odd that they didn't put a description there instead? That's...strange. I mean, perhaps it's unnecessary, as the book is literally fucking titled THE COMATOSE CAT, like, how much simpler does it have to be for you, but still...some context would've been nice. Who put this cat into a coma? Why did they do this? Did the cat know too much and was about to turn them in? Well, I was curious, so I turned to our good ol' pal GoodReads for some answers. Did some sleuthing myself, you might say. Here's the description from their site.
First off, let's talk about how this is the 15th book in this series. That's wild, man. But okay, now we have some information to go off on here. The people in her community of Willow Bend, which absolutely sounds like the name of a retirement home which is probably where these books are mostly read, are becoming sick, and suddenly her beloved cat Gooseberry - which, not gonna lie, might be the greatest cat name of all time - becomes sick as well, which forces her to solve the mystery. While this all sounds pretty standard for a mystery type book of this fare, my absolute favorite part of this is the last sentence.
"People in the town of Willow Bend learn that progress is not necessarily a good thing."
Yeah, that sounds about right for a book series based in faith, read, presumably, by faith based people. You sure know your audience. Old ass fucks who don't want things to change. Who think the kids are just smokin the devils lettuce and that big government is your friend. People who haven't had sex since the Civil War. You know, the greatest generation? The ones who ignored the AIDS epidemic? Right, those people. Now, to be fair, I admit that not every religious person, or every old person for that matter, though the two often go hand in hand, are bad people. I have plenty of rather religious or spiritual friends who are perfectly fine human beings, same with old folks. But this just reeks of that group of people, to me. Is the book good? I don't know, I didn't buy it and read it. Is the cover good? I mean, in the same way that a Thomas Kinkade painting is good. It's the sort of middle americana imagery one would expect to find on a commemorative plate in their grandmas hutch.
Also, I'd like to point out how the book says these people (and Gooseberry) are becoming "ill", but in actuality, I'm assuming these people are, like Gooseberry, falling into comas. There's a big fucking gap there, guys. A coma isn't the sniffles. Ill is a rather tame way of putting "my friend is in a vegetable like state that they may never awaken from."
The art on this isn't terrible, and the cat is pretty cute, even comatose wise, but it's also pretty generic at the same time. Nothing to pray home about. I wonder how God feels about having all these awful books written in his name. I'd be pretty pissed off, personally. You gave this entire species sentience and this is the shit they churn out? They couldn't find better ways to use their time? You'd think God would be flattered, but if that were the case, churches wouldn't collapse on people as often as they do, which is pretty often, actually. Lots of bad things happen in churches. For a place that's meant to be a safe environment, it's seen a lot of mass shootings. I don't think God is on your side either way, and maybe it's because you fuckers wrote these stupid things.
Okay, perhaps that last bit was a tad venomous, I admit. I apologize. There's nothing wrong with, as I'm sure I've said before, having your faith as long as you don't use said faith to hurt someone else. If it's just something that gets you through the day, then who really cares if you believe in things nobody can see or have any proof of whatsoever. If it brings you some sort of comfort, then by all means, believe away. That's not letting books like this off the hook though. This looks like Martha Stewart started to write crime novels. And Gooseberry on the cover of this doesn't like like he's comatose, he looks like he's fucking Taxidermied. That cat is DEAD, son. That cat has BEEN dead, been STUFFED and is now on display in this womans home.
And who the fuck paints their kitchen lime green? This isn't the 70s anymore, though perhaps that's when she painted it. I'm personally offended by that color choice. Somebody take this dead stuffed cat away from this woman. Gooseberry's stiff corpse deserves better than being stuck in a lime green kitchen for all eternity. That, folks, is true hell. That's the hell the religious people are scared of. That's the hell you'll spend the rest of eternity in.
Hell is a lime green kitchen and a stuffed cat.
Enjoy your stay.
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