Cat's Tale is a Puss In Boots retelling. I have to admit that I'm not very familiar with the origin story, and that might be why my mind wasn't so extravagantly and deliciously blown as it was with Bettie Sharpe's Cinderella retelling, [b:Ember|10780513|Ember|Bettie Sharpe|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327943431s/10780513.jpg|6639869]. I couldn't tell where Sharpe was borrowing, subverting, or reversing her source material.

I could tell, however, that I loved Cat's Tale.

The protagonist, Lady Catriona, grows up human -- but she's a cat at heart: cunning, vain, concerned with her own well-being, careless of others when she's not downright cruel, demanding praise as her due. She also likes to...er...cat around town, as it were.

I usually dig difficult women, but Lady Catriona was hard to like at first. Luckily, this is a novella, and it doesn't take long before she experiences the reversal at the heart of this tale: she runs afoul of an evil wizard who transforms her into a cat.

Catriona adapts exceptionally well to her new state -- she was always a cat, after all -- though her first demand, upon taking stock of her new form, is for a pair of shoes. She recruits Julian, the miller's son, to aid in her plot to overthrow the wizard and win back her rightful place at court. Julian is as kind and good-hearted as Cat is spiteful and selfish, but they develop a truly sweet and lovely friendship. It's Cat's first real friendship, and it's only possible because she's a cat -- stripped of her beauty, unable to use and discard Julian as she has other men. Sharpe writes amazing dialogue and she captures these two characters, and how they improve one another, so perfectly.

I thought the ending was a bit rushed, but considering the length of the story I think Sharpe kept her focus where it belonged. Count me a fan; I'd happily read novellas this good till the world ran out of ink. ( )

I found Cat’s Tale to be a won­der­ful ‘adult’ retelling of the tale of Puss in Boots, as it is a fairy tale with just the right amount of naugh­ti­ness. While I wasn’t expect­ing the more graphic aspects going into the story, as a long time reader of his­tor­i­cal romances, I found that it worked and added to the story rather than just dis­tract­ing you from it. Reading through, I was torn con­stantly between hat­ing Cat for being so vain, greedy and shal­low, and lov­ing every minute of it. Many authors seem to be afraid to make the female the ‘reformer’ in a story (let alone as the main char­ac­ter), and I gob­bled up every minute of Cat’s inde­ci­sion and worry about how Julian would react if he knew the truth of her character.

It is fun to see Cat’s char­ac­ter change as she begins to fall in love with Julian, and I appre­ci­ated the fact that despite the story being so short her evo­lu­tion and feel­ings for Julian don’t evolve sud­denly. My only com­plaint is that Cat took her entire trans­for­ma­tion into a cat rel­a­tively in stride, as it didn’t actu­ally seem to phase her. How­ever, does seem fit­ting to Cat’s char­ac­ter that she is more con­cerned with her lack of shoes than the fact that she is now a cat. Despite the ‘fairy tale’ aspect of the story, all the char­ac­ters are writ­ten with both strengths and flaws, and Julian man­ages to remain the hero to the story with­out being the per­fect ‘Prince Charming’.

ARC Provided via Carina Press on NetGalley ( )