jailyn🪐🌟🗡

Kitten by Stacey Yu out August 4th! thank u @randomhousebooks for an arc in exchange for an honest review!

Kitten captures the complexity of being twenty-two and a recent university graduate—the shift from an environment that provides supports and routine to then being thrust into a world that expects you to have all the answers and a clear path ahead. This makes Katie, our main character, a complicated character but easy to root for.

It quickly becomes clear that Silver, Katie’s boyfriend’s cat, is a metaphor for everything Katie feels she can’t be—“free to be disgusting and terrible and bizarre, free also to die once the best of life was over,” but still be loved.

It feels almost frustrating when we really get into Katie’s infatuation with Silver, but I think that might be the whole point. As someone looking in, we want her to take action. I wanted her to tell James what she was feeling, to tell Lou why she couldn’t ask for money, to become friends with Isabella.

I will say I did wish we had gotten a little more about the complicated relationship with her mother. The way Katie perceived her mother to long for youth, I found to be really interesting and would have loved to explore it a bit more.

All of this to say, I found Katie to be relatable. Her loneliness, the feeling of being stuck, the fear of being fully seen for who she is, was all so real.

Although I would have liked for some relationships to be fleshed out a bit more, I really enjoyed Stacey Yu’s debut—she has a strong voice and I can’t wait to see what she writes next!
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#kitten #staceyyu #litfic #literaryfiction