The Girl With Nine Lives (The Adventures of Benedict and Blackwell Book 1)
Author: E. Earle
4 out of 5 stars
Teaching assistant Ellena Blackwell falls into a depression as her career stalls, and she receives no support from the college she works at. The rest of her life is also not working out as she’d hoped, either. Then Ellena’s cat, Benedict, begins to talk to her, telling her to snap out of it. With Ben’s support, Ellena begins to take back control of her life. When she has to deal with the head of the college’s PR, Sabrina, Ellena accidentally records a call Sabrina makes that reveals a crime Sabrina and the college’s principal are involved in. When Ellena’s friend goes missing after an interview at the college, Ellena is determined to help her friend and begins to investigate with help from a police detective.
This was a fun fantasy and crime book. There were plenty of funny moments, but there were also some serious moments. Ellena’s diagnosis of anxiety and depression was handled well. Ellena visits her aunt who realizes something is wrong and helps get her in with a doctor quickly. However, there was one negative about this that I’ll explain later in the review.
I liked Ellena. She’s very relatable, and she changes in a positive way over the course of the story. I liked her determination. First, when she decides to be more proactive and make things happen in her career, and then when she refuses to back down from looking for her friend. The other characters are also well-written too.
The book did have a couple of issues. The main one is is how fast Ellena was able to get past her anxiety and depression. Once she focused on doing things to help her career and started to see some results, she was almost instantly better. It wasn’t completely unbelievable because the main thing that was making her depressed is going better, but it just made it seem too easy. There were also some editing mistakes. For example, the wrong pronoun being used. Although there weren’t a lot of errors, the ones it had were obvious.
With those negatives in mind, I decided to rate this book 4 out of 5 stars. I enjoyed the story, and the ending made me smile, so it’s well worth a read for fans of modern fantasy, crimes, and cats.
Current price through Amazon Kindle: $2.99
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DACVG2G
(I do not benefit from the use of this link.)