September Read: The Great Lab Escape by Perry Kirkpatrick

Hey everyone! I’m back with this month’s book review! As some of you may know, the poll for September’s read acted weirdly, so I just picked this one based off what someone told me their vote was, plus this one looked fun! It’s a super short story too, starting off a series written by this author. So here we go!

The Synopsis (taken from Goodreads):

What do you do when you discover you’re the first cat to learn to read? 
You run! 

Before Mia was the remarkable detective cat, she was a test subject at Caput Laboratories. When she begins to notice words jumping off the page, she’s determined not to spend the rest of her life in the lab. 

Everything goes awry when her plan to intentionally fail her test backfires —badly. Can she make her escape with only her wits and her newfound reading skills? And will she make it in the big world outside the lab’s walls? 

Content Review:

Positive Messages: The kitty’s caretaker in the lab, Janet, is very kind to them, and while the other cat ignores her, the main character kitty is kind back to her. Later, Janet helps her escape the lab.

The man who the kitty decides she wants to be adopted by is a kind man, helping elderly people with their groceries and laughing at his own mistakes instead of getting upset. He also takes her in even though he doesn’t know if he has enough time to balance his job and everything with a cat.

Rating: 5/5

Spiritual Messages: The cat thanks the “Maker of Cats” and prays to Him once. She also remarks how if He watches sparrows, He had to be watching over her escape.

Rating: 5/5

Romantic Content: There was no romantic content in this book!

Rating: NA

Violent Content: There is talk of animals being put down, and a cat’s tail is stepped on once.

Rating: 4.5/5

Language: None in this book!

Rating: 5/5

Other Negative Content: The only negative content I could think of was a few things that seemed/were unrealistic. For example, the cat travels on the streets for weeks, but when she arrives at the house of the guy she wants to be adopted by, she makes sure not a hair is out of place. If a cat had been out on the street that long, it would be thin at the very least, and somewhat dirty and possibly matted and with fleas. None of this was mentioned, so maybe she was, but I felt a little mention of that would’ve made it a little more realistic.

The author also has the cat cleaning herself after eating because it’s the “polite cat thing to do”. Realistically, cats clean themselves because they want to get any food scent a predator could pick up off them. I know the author did some research on cats as she correctly mentioned cats with their staring contests and a couple other facts, so that one just kinda stuck out to me since it was wrong.

Rating: 4.5/5

Total Content Rating: 4.8/5 Stars

Personal Review:

For being such a short book (only 22 pages) it was a super cute story, and I look forward to reading the actual first book in the series. I especially enjoyed the part where she saw her missing cat poster and thought she was now a fugitive. It was both fun and humorous, though the putting down mention made me feel bad for the other animals that failed the test. I hope they escaped somehow too!

Personal Rating: 5/5 Stars

Thank you for reading my review! Have you read this book or series? Have you read anything from this author? Do you want to? Let me know in the comments below! Thanks and God bless! ~ Kay Adelin