The Black Cat Detectives - Kit Gray - ★★

AUTHOR: Kit Gray

GENRE: Cozy Mystery

PUBLICATION DATE: May 26, 2026

RATING: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: A contemporary cozy mystery with three kittens and a dash of magic. Okay-ish plot. Greatly cozy, minimally mystery. Multiple feline first-person POVs, which becomes confusing at times. Liberal in the use of adjectives, making the writing seem too indulgent in its descriptions. Interesting magical content and animals. Minimal characters, so guessing the culprit isn't tricky. Suspension of disbelief much needed, especially in the kitty content. I don’t like this genre but I read it for the kittens, so at least that angle was satisfying.

Plot Preview:

Mila is a decently talented magician who is hoping to sign a bigger contract after her current performance. Unfortunately for her, her almost-ex-boyfriend – who also doubles as her business manager – turns up dead at the end of that show, making Mila the prime suspect. Fortunately for her, the three abandoned kittens she rescued just hours before the show aren’t ordinary kittens. They use all the control they have over the laws of physics to ensure that Mila can clear her name and continue to take care of them.

The story comes to us in four perspectives – Mila’s POV in third person and the three kittens’ POVs each in first-person.

Bookish Yays: (All my Yays are connected to the non-humans in the novel!)

😻 The presence of the three kittens in the storyline. An apt way to make a murder mystery feel cozy. I love how each of them has a distinct personality.

😻 All the other animal characters. There are quite a few, and each has some or the other role to play. I liked Brutus the most!

😻 The elaborate content warnings provided in detail at the end of the book. I didn’t need this section, but it is excellent for those who do.

😻 The cover – just adorable!

Bookish Okays:

😾 The way the kittens use magical abilities in their quest is intriguing. But I wish there had been some more explanation of this. If bending physics laws is something all cats can do, how come each kitten had a distinct ability that their siblings didn’t?

😾 The “Names and Places” list provided at the end – very interesting. I like how the character sketches were kept light-hearted and how they included even the animals. However, I was surprised to learn that one key character’s last name was “Varma”, which is an Indian last name. This character is referred to only by their first name (which isn't a typical Indian name) throughout the book with no reference to their ethnic background. Why have an Indian last name mentioned only in the Dramatis Personae when there is nothing Indian about the character? Just stock representation for the sake of it?

Bookish Nays:

😿 Mila as a character. I couldn’t relate to her at all despite the fact that she was determined to make it as a magician – a career not often seen in fictional FMCs. Her judgement in whom to trust and whom to forgive was highly questionable.

😿 The overly descriptive writing, where almost every noun comes with one or two adjectives, especially in the initial chapters. Descriptions are good, but not so much that they end up overpowering the storyline. I am very fussy about writing styles, so the wordiness was very distracting to me.

😿 The corny dialogues in Mila’s chapters, which sometimes feel straight out of teen mystery flicks. The realism and gravitas felt diluted by the melodrama.

😿 Minimal number of characters, each with a minimal number of straightforward traits. So it is fairly easy to guess the villainous party. (Not that they are a convincing antagonist; their reasons are absurd.)

😿 The slow start. Nothing much happens in the first one-fifth or so. Even beyond that, the focus is more on the cats than on the mystery.

😿 Not the fact that one of the cats uses the they/them pronouns but the fact that almost everyone who meets them, including Mila, knows their pronouns even before they interact. So strange!

😿 The multiple first-person POVs from the three cats. Though they come in a perfectly cyclical order (Mila, Kitten 1, Kitten 2, Kitten 3, Mila, Kitten 1,…), it is still tricky to remember which cat is the narrator of the active chapter as their POVs all sound the same. The names of those three kittens (though truly cute) all start with the same letter, further adding to the confusion. Mila’s third-person is the only easy one to figure out.

😿 The knowledge of the kittens when it comes to human language is too farfetched to accept. They were barely a few weeks old when their mother abandoned them, but before leaving, she apparently taught them not just comprehension of human language but also the art of reading it. The kittens know even complicated words and concepts. Though they do goof up a couple of times on relatively common words, there’s a limit to the quantum of disbelief I can suspend for a single book!

😿 The above would still have been fine had the kittens not used phrases such as “her generous chest" while describing Mila. That was just weird!

😿 Infodump ending.

😿 The illogical human behaviour.

~~~~~~~~~ SPOILERS BELOW ~~~~~~~~~ 

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❓ If you have a very important career-defining performance just a few hours later, will you stop preparing for it just to take the three stray felines you found to the vet to give them a detailed health checkup? Can’t the vet visit be pushed to the next day?

❓ If you are the key suspect in a murder, will the investigating sheriff give you access to the victim’s property and financials even if they were willed to you? Doesn’t this jeopardise the sanctity of the evidence?

❓ Similarly, will the sheriff provide you all the details he has in an active investigation even if you are the prime suspect?

❓If you learn that your best friend has been having an affair with your boyfriend behind your back, will you forgive her just a few days after his murder simply because she “was in love with him”, become besties again, and even take her assistance in searching for the culprit? C’mon!

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~~~~~~~~~ END OF SPOILERS ~~~~~~~~~ 

Overall, while the book did a decent job satisfying my need for something cutely “kittilicious”, the excessive descriptions, the stupid character decisions, the soap-opera-style dialogues, and the muddling first-person POVs hindered my ability to enjoy it.

To be fair, I am not at all fond of the cozy mystery genre. However, the cuties on the cover and the tantalising blurb were too tempting for me to resist. Fans of the genre might experience this book differently. So please take this review with a pinch of salt.

Recommended to fans of the cozy mystery genre looking for a detective mystery with cats and having the ability to turn off their logic and their need for crisp writing.

My thanks to Crooked Lane Books for providing the DRC of “The Black Cat Detectives” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Sorry this didn’t work out better for me.