For someone who loves cats and is on the precipice of adding two rescues to his posse, the title of Jason Rekulak’s novel had me hooked. LOOK WHAT THE CAT DRAGGED IN is a supernatural thriller of the highest magnitude that reads like ROSEMARY’S BABY with a cat.

Penny Padgett is an extremely likable character. She lives in a classic row house in Philadelphia with her boyfriend, Dean, and her beloved cat, Popcorn. She also is a bestselling cartoonist who is working on the fourth edition of her series featuring herself and Popcorn. So imagine her horror when she wakes up at the start of a major blizzard to find a window open, and Popcorn is nowhere to be found. 

Penny’s first call is to her best friend, Margo, who she works with as a volunteer at a local coffee shop/cat shelter. Word spreads, and the search team for Popcorn expands to the shelter’s owner, Angie, and fellow volunteer, Greg, who has feelings for Penny.

"The tale is never predictable, and Jason Rekulak brilliantly plots it with a deep respect for gothic horror and occult practices. It is his finest work to date."

Tragedy has shaped who Penny is. She lost her parents in a senseless auto accident and shortly after found Popcorn, who became her only family. Her editor is pushing her to make the deadline for her next book, but the loss of Popcorn has not made this easy as she sinks into a deep depression that not even her boyfriend can pull her out of.

Dean begs Penny to accompany him to an event at the home of a wealthy client with his financial practice, and she reluctantly agrees. While at the mansion, she is seemingly drawn to the eerie portraits lining the walls of the hallway and heads towards the magnificent library. It is here where she discovers what was calling to her --- a cat she soon learns is named Godfrey. The owner of the estate, Evelyn Bruehl, finds Penny there and says that Godfrey was named after the founder of the property, the late occult artist Barnabas Godfrey. I will not go any further into his background for fear of spoiling the story. But trust me, it is beyond creepy.

At the end of the evening, Evelyn approaches Penny about pet-sitting Godfrey for two months. She accepts. Godfrey comes home with Penny, and his presence slowly inspires her to begin creating her comic strip again. One of the demands Evelyn made was that Godfrey only be treated by her personal vet, a weird old man who feeds the cat a grotesque kind of food that stinks up the entire house. The end product that Godfrey leaves in the kitty litter also has a beyond foul smell that produces an influx of huge beetles and other odd-looking insects that infest the basement.

What started out innocently enough turns horrific quite quickly, and the novel transcends into darkness and madness in unexpected ways. When Penny picks up a book about the life of Barnabas Godfrey, she is treated to a series of portraits he drew, many of which are based on famous literary and biblical moments, such as “Paradise Lost” and the Garden of Eden. There also is the striking portrait of a demon sitting on the chest of a sleeping woman that resembles the image of the classic succubus of gothic lore. This possibly explains why Penny feels increasingly unsafe in her home as bizarre incidents with Godfrey continue to ramp up, along with unexplainable nightmares that bleed into her comic strip art.

What sets LOOK WHAT THE CAT DRAGGED IN apart from other horror titles are the depictions of the Penny and Popcorn comic strips throughout the novel, in addition to the recreation of Barnabas Godfrey’s artwork. These are some of the best illustrations I have ever seen in a novel, and it really makes the book shine. Witnessing the darkness that this story hurtles into is a complete pleasure, and I did not want to stop reading. The tale is never predictable, and Jason Rekulak brilliantly plots it with a deep respect for gothic horror and occult practices. It is his finest work to date.