A locked-room mystery and a cat detective, the perfect match of topics for me I must say!

This book gave me the same vibes as classic murder mysteries mixed with an Agatha Christie-esque style that drew me in. There were some major plot twists that I called, and some that I didn't and I think the balance between what I knew and what kept me on the edge was well done! You could figure out enough to feel like you were following our detective at his pace and also still had enough mystery to want to keep reading on.

Characterisation wise, I thought Katayama was a pitifully funny guy, he was constantly going through it and it definitely added the right amount of humour. I will say that through his character and some of the other detectives, there were some sexist comments that threw me. Not enough to stop me getting through the book, but enough sometimes I felt that when I was reading these interactions I was getting pulled out of the story at times, which is where my rating fell down.

My most favourite character of all had to be Holmes, she was an absolute delight and actually added to the humour of the plot. Her personality stood out in the book and you find yourself waiting for her to come back onto the page, she truly is the star of the show. I also thought it was so funny that she was essentially given the intelligence of a human person, or more. The way she helped lead Katayama to clues was great.

The other murders that we have going on in this book are totally juxtaposed with everything else, even the locked room murder, which felt much more controlled. The murders of the young women in the dormitories were definitely the grittiest and the scariest parts of this book and what made the plot have some genuine tension to it. This book has a lot within it but was a quick read despite all the plot points.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for this free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

this is the kind of book that reading it makes your skin itch 😭😭

this one took a bit to ramp up but it was definitely worth it, once it hit something like 30 to 40% in the story totally took a new lens and i loved it

the characters and the setting were quite new to me in the sense that ive not read a character who is a naturalist or does work painting their records and i found that super interesting