by Mary Ann Joyce from the August 2, 2021 issue
Tagline: When a black-and-white cat ambles through the pet door of his summer cottage, Sam never expects his arrival to lead to purrfect love.
Observations: I loved this story so much. There are so many things to point out that make this a study in how to write a Woman's World story, I'm not sure I can cover them all, but I'm going to try, laundry-list-style.
Her word choices are so spot on. Here are some of the ones I relished.
watching the summer sunset fade
like an uncle who fell asleep on your couch after a party
the feline vagabond
a pleasant warmth spreading through his chest (<--not overwriting!)
their conversation as natural as apple pie and ice cream (what a comfort-infused simile!)
I am a fan of epistolary novels--novels written as a series of documents--and this mini version was charming. The fact that the notes were exchanged via cat...? Adorable. The humorous and sometimes hilarious little drawings also added greatly
to this element.
I also appreciated how much time passed during the story. It was part of why I was utterly convinced these two had fallen in love.
I adored the happily-ever-after ending as well. The whole story made my heart sing.
Photo by Ivan Radic via Flickr Creative Commons License
3 comments:
Oh, Kate, I loved this story for all the reasons you stated here.
I'm a cat person, a romance person, and this is the best story ever.
This was a great story. I did wonder, though, why they wouldn't have wanted to meet earlier.
Sounds like a story I just submitted, not knowing about this one. Obviously, I need to do more research, and read further back in your notes!
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