C+
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Humor, Novella, Romance
Geek With the Cat Tattoo is a weird, cute, offbeat little novella about an awkward musician and cat. It’s fun and sweet if you don’t think about it too hard but has an ending which left me feeling sad instead of uplifted.
Emerson is a shy young man who builds and repairs instruments (mainly guitars).
He is so shy that he can barely speak to the young woman, Lola, who periodically brings her father’s guitar to the shop for tune-ups and repairs. All this changes when Emerson is adopted by a cat that he names Sam.
Sam narrates most of the book. He’s a cat with the ability to influence the thoughts of his owners – for instance, he might cause them to think that they really should buy the better brand of gourmet cat food. Sam has trouble finding a permanent home, because his owners always figure out that he’s mind-controlling them (Sam would probably insist on “mind-influencing” as opposed to “controlling”) and they get creeped out. Sam is determined to blend into Emerson’s life, but he just can’t bear to see Emerson keep striking out with Lola. So Sam makes Emerson able to express himself – and Emerson and Lola hit it off. The problem is, what happens when Sam isn’t around?
There are many aspects of this book that are delightful. Lola plays her violin in front of the botanical gardens and Emerson drops love letters into her violin case. Emerson goes to Lola’s first concert with Sam riding in the hood of his sweatshirt. Lola invites Emerson to a grown-up party where there is beer, wine, and an inflatable bounce house shaped like a castle. It’s whimsical bliss.
Lola and Emerson have a nice music connection – he appreciates and supports her music and she appreciates and supports his craft on a technical level that most people who are not music geeks would miss.
So why the C+? Because this book had two weird tonal things that took me right out of the story. The first thing is that it is, in fact, creepy that Sam has this brain-influencing magic, and it’s sad that Emerson never stops wondering how much of the person Lola loves is Emerson himself and how much is Emerson-plus-cat. The cat knows all the things Lola loves come from Emerson, but Emerson doesn’t:
Sometimes I see Emerson giving me that look where his eyebrows are drawn together and he wonders…It’s always those special moments when he’s said something particularly charming and funny, and Lola has laughed and thrown herself into his arms.
Now we’re at Lola’s, and Emerson is swirling her around and her feet are off the ground and I see Emerson look over his shoulder at me…he wonders if I’m mindmessing with him, if I’m the reason Lola just threw herself into his arms.
Is this supposed to be a sad book? Did anyone else, reading that, just want to curl up and cry? That’s not even just sad for me; it’s nightmarish. And that’s the end of the book, pretty much. Emerson never (that we know of) feels secure that Lola loves him for who he really is. And when he’s without Sam, he doesn’t retain the confidence he has from Sam, so I wonder whether, when someday Sam dies, Emerson will panic and go back to being a jerk because he thinks that’s his true nature.
About that “jerk” thing – that’s the other problem with the book. When Emerson tries to function without Sam, he doesn’t just babble like a shy, incoherent idiot, which might be kind of cute. He becomes cold and a little bit mean. He gets drunk to cope with his anxiety but instead of making him social drinking makes him sullen and leaves him with hangovers.
He walks out on Lola on multiple occasions. And in the whole course of the book, he never talks to her honestly about his social anxiety, so she can’t figure out why one minute she’s hanging out with a sweet, thoughtful, eloquent guy and the next minute he’s leaving her on the dance floor and then not calling her for days. Ultimately, Lola comes to a highly questionable conclusion after Emerson makes her a violin and leaves it on her doorstep:
And this was the guy she loved, and this guy was a guy worth fighting for. And if at times the other Emerson surfaced, she would deal with him. She would chase the imposter away and coax back the real Emerson.
Suddenly she could see everything clearly. She’s allowed her creepy ex-boyfriend to create a warped version of herself, and she’d allowed that to impact her chances of future happiness…She had to let go of the bitter, hurt, and suspicious Lola.
What the actual fuck is that? That is the kind of reasoning that people use to stay with abusers, and frankly, Emerson minus Sam is an emotional abuser. Lola isn’t afraid that Emerson might possibly hurt her someday (emotionally). Lola knows that he will, and that he has before.
It’s not a sign of being emotionally repressed, or bitter, or suspicious to separate yourself from someone who is intermittently cruel to you without apology or explanation or a plan for how to change. It’s healthy to separate yourself from that person, because that person is emotionally abusing you. And Lola doesn’t decide to trust Emerson because Emerson has changed or communicated or anything. So she’s basically deciding that she can change Emerson, and if he treats her badly, it’s her responsibility to fix it.
I really thought that at some point Emerson would explain his problems to Lola and she would support him in getting help for his social anxiety. Then they would have had a healthy relationship, with their pet cat, Sam.
I liked Emerson, and I had a lot of sympathy for him, so I would have absolutely rooted for that relationship if Emerson had shown signs of confronting his social anxieties and dealing with them in a healthy way. It’s easy for me to see why so many people love this book, given its relatable characters, its use of music and subtle fantasy, and above all, the narration by a cat – who can resist a cat? There’s so much magic in this book, but in the end Sam’s magic is more enabling than liberating, and that made me sad.
Incidentally, when I was debating with myself over whether or not Emerson actually qualifies as a “Geek”, I looked up the definition and got this from Merriam Webster Dictionary:
- A person who is socially awkward and unpopular: an usually intelligent person who does not fit in with other people
- A person who is very interested in and knows a lot about a particular field or activity
- A carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake
- A person often of an intellectual bent who is disliked
- An enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity
I can honestly say that I’ve spent time with choir geeks, band geeks, drama geeks, science geeks, computer geeks, and of course geeks of the sci-fi/fantasy variety, and not once have I seen anyone bite the head off a live chicken or snake (or other animal). According to Wikipedia, the term “geek” meaning carnival performer was common in the 19th century and was the definition used in the 1976 American Heritage dictionary.
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I haven’t read this, although I read the author’s The Girl with the Cat Tattoo, which I recall as cheerful. It calls itself book one of the cool cat trilogy. Following your review, I think I’ll pass on Geek with the Cat Tattoo. This author also wrote Amazon Lily, one of the first electronic books I read. Originally published in 1988, my electronic copy (copy?) had a glorious cover complete with person swinging on a vine. But the cover has been changed to dark and brooding and doesn’t so much as hint at the humor inside.
It’s been a while since I read this, but I remember thinking that having to take care of and interact with Sam made Emerson into a better person; and that enabled him to begin a relationship with Lola, who also made him a better person. I think the ending was more of a HFN that HEA, but am hoping that the third cat book gets written. Girl with the Cat Tattoo is a favorite of mine.
I also read the first book and struggled mightily not to throw it across the room. I didn’t get a creepy vibe, as clearly is happening in this book, but my dislike was strong, for reasons that elude me right now, and in the minority. Thanks for this review. I was tempted to try again, but not that much.
I did know about geeks and chicken heads.
i also knew about geeks and chicken heads! (heyyyyyy ozzie osborne, kicking it old-skool carnie style.)
i really enjoyed both cat tattoo books, even though they both made me melancholy. i really liked your analysis of why this one is troubling — i hadn’t really thought thru the WHY, and i think you nailed it.
in The Girl with the Cat Tattoo, the antagonists are all external: there’s an actual horrid bad guy, and there’s the main female character’s grief because she’s lost her first husband and doesn’t want to risk loss again. the dude in that one is pretty much perfect, and it’s these EXTERNAL forces that the romance has to overcome, not the hero’s behavior. i totally got, in Geek with the Cat Tattoo, that Emerson acts douchey out of his own self-doubt and social anxiety, but the EFFECT is the same as if he’s an actual ass: he behaves hurtfully.
Note from a musical instrument nerd who has both guitar tech and violin-making friends/colleagues (and who admittedly hasn’t read the book): Someone who has worked on/built guitars before would not just be able to whip up a violin. It’s a totally different process and requires extensive and specialized training. I don’t think my suspension of disbelief would’ve held up past that point (and I’ve got the kind of suspension of disbelief that can hold up the Golden Gate Bridge. I love the movie “Love Actually” for God’ sake.)
/rant off. (And again, I haven’t read the book. Maybe he took a few years and went to violin lutherie school?)
I first learned about the alternate meaning of “geek” when I read GEEK LOVE by Katherine Dunn for a book club. I went in super-excited, figuring the choice would be right up my reader alley. After all, I love geeks! I adore romances!
But…it wasn’t what I’d expected. Not at all. No shy mathletes. No LARPers. And certainly no HEA. In fact, certain disturbing images from that (admittedly excellent) book have stayed with me for years.
So let this be a lesson to all: Read the damn description of a “geek” book on Amazon before you start anticipating pocket protectors instead of headless chickens.
This has been a public service announcement from disappointed geek/romance enthusiast Olivia Dade.
I agree with everything you said. This book was a DNF for me due to how bad Emerson’s behavior was and how manipulative the whole business was toward Lola.
It’s been a while since I read it, but I remember being disappointed in it. I’m glad to read this (although I’m sorry you read a book you didn’t like), since the reviews I read when it came out were much more positive and I just didn’t get it. I didn’t like the creepy, mind controlling cat and I didn’t get the romance and I really didn’t believe they’d live hea.
I really liked The Girl with the Cat Tattoo – this one didn’t have the same magic for me. The Girl with the Cat Tattoo was unusual – it felt like a mix of romance and mystery, rather than a straight up genre romance, and the romance was understated and external, but it worked for me. I liked that the cat seemed like a real cat and that his pov was in 3rd person, not 1st. The first person cat narration didn’t work for me at all in this story. Especially not with the creepy, Ratatouille-esque mind control.
@mollificent Just speculating, but maybe violins are his real passion, but he learned to do at least basic guitar repair and maintenance for his bread and butter, because more people have guitars than violins?
@garlicknitter – as I recall, you are correct – he had prior violin experience.