This is a wonderful book for animal lovers aged 8–12 years. Eleven-year old Isla adores cats, but her vet-nurse mum won’t let her to have one of her own. In the holidays before starting high school, Isla helps out at the vet clinic as much as she can. When the local shelter is full, it seems there’s only one option for an affectionate cat named Poppy to stay for a while – at Isla’s house! But where will the other cats who can’t fit at the shelter stay?

Family life is shown in its complexity in this novel. Isla has an older, social media-obsessed sister, a younger brother who is self-conscious about wearing his hearing aids, and a Grandma who is coming to stay after the death of her husband. I enjoyed the mix of family dynamics with my ‘feline-fix’, and am eagerly

Annie Condon