Look What the Cat Dragged In

I’ve been wanting to read Jason Rekulak since he released Hidden Pictures in 2022. That’s still on the TBR (very high up on it!), but I did finally dive into his work with his latest book, Look What the Cat Dragged In. This is a supernatural thriller for cat lovers, and indeed, that’s what first caught my attention. I read this book with my own cat, Scarlett, purring by my side, doing none of the things these creepy cats get up to!

On a cold day in February, just as a snow storm comes into Philadelphia, Penny’s cat Popcorn goes missing. After endless searching turns up nothing, Penny falls into a bit of a depression. But her boyfriend Dean, hoping to get her out of her rut, invites Penny to attend a fancy work function with him. While there, she meets the owner’s cat, Godfrey, and is roped into catsitting him for the next two months. But there’s something odd about Godfrey, and as Penny sees increasingly unnerving and gruesome behavior from the cat, and slowly starts to lose sense of reality, she fears for her safety.

What I Liked:

• Love for cats. Penny adores her sweet cat Popcorn; she quickly grows to care for Godfrey, too, even with his very different personality. So much of this book is devoted to cat care, feline personalities, and even drawing cats. (Penny has a successful career drawing comic books featuring Popcorn.) Cat people will relate to a lot of this… at least until things start to get weird!
• Gradually increasing concerns. The horror comes in slowly at first, with an overly clingy cat, nasty specialized food, beetles scurrying around the apartment. Then there’s the unexplained music, the unsettling visions, the lost time. By the time things get violent, it may be too late for Penny. I’m a lifelong horror fan, so I was enthralled once all the truly horrific things started happening in the second half of this book.
• Crazy culmination. I can’t tell you what it all leads to, but wow, what a bizarre situation Penny has gotten into! By the time she figures it out, who will be left to help her? Who can she trust? And will either of her cats make it out unscathed?

Audiobook:

Stephanie Németh-Parker does an excellent job of narrating Look What the Cat Dragged In. She does different voices, accents, and tones so well, making each character distinctive. But can I particularly applaud her meowing in this audiobook?! Because the cat characters meow a lot, and she dutifully meows in the recording. It really brings the whole story to life. There are also a couple of interludes from Penny’s comics announcements, plus thematic music starting and ending the novel. This was a superbly done audiobook.

Final Thoughts

Look What the Cat Dragged In is so unlike any other book I’ve read! Sure, it’s kind of a “WTF did I just read” sort of book, but it was also truly engrossing. If you like books straddling the line of thriller and horror, don’t mind some gore, and love cats, this is the (weird) book to read.

The audiobook was excellent. I only wish I’d had the ebook ARC, too, as that comes with over 80 pages of illustrations I’d love to see. Now that this is out, I’ll need to go pick up a physical copy!

Special thanks to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy Look What the Cat Dragged In here – it’s available as a hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.

Look What the Cat Dragged In by Jason Rekulak
Audiobook Narrator	Stephanie Németh-Parker
Audience	Adult
Genre	Supernatural Thriller
Setting	Philadelphia
Number of Pages	352
Format I Read	Audiobook (NetGalley ARC)
Original Publication Date	October 13, 2026
Publisher	Flatiron Books

Official Summary

“Garfield meets Rosemary’s Baby” —Publisher’s Weekly

From the New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Pictures and The Last One at the Wedding comes a new supernatural thriller about a young woman pet-sitting a cat with a mysterious secret, featuring more than eighty pages of illustrations.

Meet Penny Padgett, a twenty-seven-year-old cartoonist in Philadelphia who agrees to pet-sit a very peculiar cat named Godfrey in her home. At first, he’s a warm and affectionate companion who follows Penny all around the house and insists on sleeping by her side every night. But soon strange things are happening: Penny is haunted by disturbing and violent nightmares. There’s a terrible insect infestation in her basement. Her cute cartoon illustrations turn dark and surreal, as if influenced by some invisible hand. And her health starts failing, as if her mind and body are under attack by a sinister, malevolent force.

Penny may be a cat person, but she’s starting to think Godfrey is no ordinary cat. . . .

Fully illustrated with more than eighty pages of original artwork, Jason Rekulak’s new novel is intensely plotted, wonderfully frightening, and wildly clever. He more than lives up to his reputation as having “a freakishly fertile imagination” (The New York Times).