If you want the plot of Howl’s Moving Castle, but with all of the edges sanded off, but also there are really cute cats, congratulations, this is that book.

It starts off slow. The magic system and world-building felt half-baked, I didn’t feel a lot of chemistry between the characters, and I just wasn’t feeling the fantasy here. Maybe I’m just a bit too much of a crotchety wizard with a hoarding problem to ever relate to the cat-loving type A woman who assists and cleans up after all the problems he causes. Yeah, I’d love an Agnes in my life too, but I also know I haven’t done anything in my life to earn an Agnes, and neither has Havelock.

And look. I’ve got nothing against heterosexual romance. I’m straight on my parents’ side. But something about the dynamic of Agnes as a caregiver and Havelock as a misunderstood lonely boy just felt burdened with heterosexual gender baggage that I didn’t love. Patience for masculine self-centeredness and destruction is not a particularly compelling character trait to me. I was feeling the same queer friend fatigue I have every time one of my women friends complains about some straight guy they’re dating. He’s just a man, Agnes, hit him with your car.

I felt like the book was almost distractingly preoccupied with trying to convince the reader how misunderstood Havelock is. Part of this is just because Agnes is an outsider to the world of magic and despite becoming wrapped up in all of the magical nonsense, it seems she’s never going to be capable of being more than that. Not a lot of examination on the idea that there are witches and there are non-witches and what that means to the world.

The times where this book works are centered around Agnes and her life with the cat shelter, with the quirky, “cozier” magic ideas such as enchanting cats to disguise them and an oven that bakes pastries only at midnight. It honestly feels a lot like Heather Fawcett had a lot of cute ideas and then realized like a plot needed to happen around them, so she borrowed Howl and Sophie. Unfortunately, Agnes and Havelock are lacking that charm, despite how desperately the book wants the reader to find them charming.

The nexus of the conflict and the magical fights felt under-developed. I think so much of this hinges around the fact that Agnes is kind of just dragged into this plot against her will. Many plot points are brought up and resolved by things simply getting explained to her by someone. About midway through the book I started thinking about the perennial problem of romances in comic books. Lots of superheroes have partners that are regular people, but Lois Lane is among the few who is interesting enough to carry a story on her own. Sophie Hatter, of course, is another example. I fear Agnes Aubert is not.

As a complete aside, a disappointingly few amount of the actual cats are mystical, which is what I thought the book would be. I try not to punish books for not following my expectation of them, but I fear I must include this criticism due to the title.

Also, unless I’m mistaken, no one mentions cat litter until page 163, which seems late. A lot of the cat care in the book feels very surface level and romanticized, just like everything else. Despite gesturing toward the mixed joys of cat care, shying away from the pure, full-body horror one feels when one hears a cat about to spew a hairball or the strange embarrassment in catching a cat loudly licking the place its balls used to be led even that aspect of the book to feel very clean and sanitized. Ironically I think if this book dared to push more of how unpleasant Agnes’s work could be it would have made her a more compelling character that I felt more invested in. In general, despite the near-apocalyptic levels of magical conflict, Fawcett’s setting just feels blandly pleasant and unlived-in.

This was a cute book, but not a place or a set of characters I’ll be eager to return to.