A Fellowship of Curses & Cats (Standard Edition) (Adenashire, 4) by J. Penner Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, romantasy
Series: Adenashire #4
Pages: 256
Published by Poisoned Pen Press on August 18, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
When life gives you cats, open a café.
When a spell gone wrong brings more than just magic to Theo Brylar’s life, things in Adenashire get a little… purrplexing. Suddenly, cats of all shapes and sizes are drawn to him, much to the amusement of Faylin the forest lynx (and Theo’s “house cat”). But when Faylin suggests opening a cat café next to Arleta’s bakery, Theo finds himself juggling more than feline antics.
Between his long-lost father reappearing, his mother’s distaste for that fact, and the lingering grief of his brother’s death, Theo’s family drama surfaces at the most inconvenient time. With Arleta pregnant and facing her own fears, Theo must untangle his emotions and reconcile with his past...all while keeping his cat café (and family) from spiraling out of control.
Escape to Adenashire for a heartfelt, cozy fantasy filled with warm drinks, the healing power of love, friendship, and furry companions.
My Review:
Elf Theo Brylar should literally be having the time of his life. Instead, he’s having cats. Lots and lots of cats. Oodles of cats. Whole entire clowders of cats seemingly materializing from the ether and following him around Adenashire, proclaiming, in every feline register from tiny squeaks to full-throated caterwauls, that Theo is absolutely NOT fine no matter how much he claims he is.
Theo first rode into the Adenashire series in A Fellowship of Bakers and Magic, intent on delivering an invitation to compete in that year’s Langheim Baking Battle to a contestant registered only as A. Starstone. What he discovers when he meets the would-be competitor is the surprise of his life.
Also his mother’s life, but we’ll get to that.
Because A. Starstone had no idea she’d been entered in the competition. Because only magic-users are allowed to enter the Baking Battle and Arleta is human, and therefore nonmagical. Most important of all, Arleta is the woman that Theo has been dreaming of – night after night – for his entire adult life. She’s his FATED. The love of his life. A life that has just been made just that bit more complicated because he KNOWS his mother is going to try to ruin everything.
And he’s right.
But in spite of her best efforts, Shalina Brylar does not succeed in getting Arleta removed from either the Baking Battle or her son’s life. (That entire story is in A Fellowship of Bakers and Magic and it’s magically delicious!)
Which leads, by a bit of a roundabout route by way of A Fellowship of Librarians and Dragons and A Fellowship of Games and Fables, to this story. The story of what happens after the “and they lived happily ever after” with Theo and Arleta.
As this story begins, Arleta is glowingly pregnant, they’re about to open a new business – a cafe – and Theo is busy hiding his extreme anxiety about pretty much everything pretty much terribly. Adenashire is a small town, he doesn’t want anyone to know how badly he’s falling apart, so he picks up a potion at the apothecary that’s supposed to help him calm down.
Instead, it brings cats. And his mother. The cats might possibly help calm him down – if there weren’t quite so many of them. But with the added anxiety that his mother’s unexpected visit brings, dozens and dozens of cats (seriously, AT least a couple of dozen), following him around Adenashire as if he’s the Pied Piper – or the cats’ meow – doesn’t allay his worries one little bit. His vain attempts to hide the furry onslaught from both his wife and his mother only amplifies his anxieties.
It’s only when he FINALLY manages to let out a bit of his internal pressure that he’s able to figure out what the cats are trying to tell him. That they’re not HIS curse, but a blessing for the whole, entire town.
All everyone has to do is let their new feline overlords into their hearts, and everyone’s days will get just a little bit brighter. Including Theo’s. After all, he has a lot of good things coming his way. And his mother is finally leaving town!
Escape Rating B: Adenashire is one of the quintessential cozy fantasy series, along with Legends and Lattes and Tomes and Tea. Adenashire is probably the coziest of the three, as Tomes and Tea has to deal with an evil tyrant queen and Viv in Legends and Lattes has a fair number of enemies who try to tempt (or force) her back into the mercenary life.
Adenashire is more domestically cozy. The problems are real – Theo’s mother is a real piece of work – and those problems cause very real difficulties, the way that Theo’s anxieties about impeding fatherhood AND his lingering grief over his brother’s death and his own father’s disappearance keep weighing him down and causing yet more worry, but those problems are resolved not just nonviolently but with a lot of hope and healing.
So, this story, like many in the series, is working on two levels. On top, there’s the sheer, chaotic hilarity of the Cat Distribution System™ working on overdrive and seeming to funnel all the homeless cats in their world towards Theo, who already has his own snarky feline overlord and doesn’t need TWO DOZEN or more additional ones.
AND there’s the cute chaos of Theo and their family of choice opening the first cat cafe – and observing the cats take over the heart of the entire town even as the new business runs them all ragged.
But there’s also the potentially heartbreaking side. Theo’s mother still hasn’t accepted Arleta into their family, because she’s a non-magical human. Because she broke the rules of the Baking Battle that Shalina has controlled with an iron fist. Because Shalina never got over the different losses of her other son and her husband and has driven Theo away by trying to control her grief instead of working through it.
While Theo has to decide, once and for all, whether to stand up for his wife and child or whether to continue to alternate between placating his mother and running away from her. Both will have consequences, he just has to choose which he can live with.
So the cat cafe part of the story is a lot of fun. The changes coming to Theo and Arleta’s life are potentially joyous. Or Theo could really screw up and make a mess of his life – and Arleta’s – and destroy their found family as well. He’s going to have to “elf-up” and make the right choice.
And all of that is real and easy to empathize with, fantasy setting or no. Which we do. Of course, the cats do make it all better, because that’s what they do.
As always, I had a terrific time in Adenashire, seeing how everyone is doing and cheering for them as they worked their way through this latest mess. I’m glad to say that there are more coming, because Adenashire is one of those places/series I return to when I need a bit of cozy reading to smooth out some of my anxieties. I already have the cat part of the equation covered!
So I’m looking forward to the next book in the series, A Fellowship of Academics and Arts, coming out just in time for the holidays!
