Furever After by Sofie Kelly

Furever After
by Sofie Kelly

ISBN-13: 9780593548738
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Berkley
Released: September 3, 2024

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
Kathleen is busy running the library and planning her upcoming wedding to detective Marcus Gordon, when she suddenly stumbles across a body in the library. She is surprised to learn that the deceased was in the middle of an unlikely heist—it seems like he was trying to steal one of the paintings that had been in a box in the library’s workroom. Kathleen never knew any of the library’s artwork was valuable and can’t imagine what the dead man wanted with it.

But then an art history expert called in by the police identifies the almost-purloined painting as a piece that might have been part of a previous high profile art theft. Owen’s and Hercules’s whiskers are already twitching, and events soon make Kathleen realize that whoever killed the wannabe art thief has more than murder on their mind.


My Review:
Furever After is a cozy mystery. This is the 16th book in the series. There was more filler than normal, and the wedding-related ending was tied up with such a fantasy, happily-ever-after bow that it felt like the end of the series. It probably is simply because there's no realistic way to keep the cat's magical abilities secret anymore as unreliable children will be around the cats so much now.

It's a clue-based mystery, and Kathleen figured out both who originally stole the paintings and who killed the art thief. She didn't follow the obvious question--how did valuable paintings end up in her library--but tried to figure out how the thief was connected to the original theft. She researched online with the help of her cats. The explanation for why the thief died in the library made no sense, though: if badly wounded, a person doesn't think, "Gee, this is the perfect time to break into a building and steal a painting."

I had a problem with the ending suspense sequence, too. Riley's supposed to be smart, but she just kept putting everyone in danger. She knows someone's being held by the killer, but she called in Kathleen. Not the cops. Kathleen asked her to call the cops as they needed help, but Riley refused because she wanted to help Kathleen. And she's not a help while repeatedly putting everyone else in danger. Riley also should have known that it wasn't urgent to immediately retrieve her lost phone, but she rushed back into deadly danger. Unbelievably, she somehow found her phone (and she didn't know where she dropped it) in the pitch dark in water so deep she had to swim. I hope they remove this mad dash by Riley before the final version of the story as it wasn't necessary and was so unrealistic.

There was no sex. There were only a few uses of bad language. Overall, I'd recommend this story to fans of the series.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.