The Cat Came Back

by Hilary Mullins

Seventeen-year-old Stevie tells the story of how her life changes after she encounters a teacher named Rik, a women's ice hockey coach named Granite, another teacher named Mick, and Andrea, a new classmate

Genres: LGBT, Fiction, Queer, Young Adult

224 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1993

Reviews

[Elisabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I was around 13, I saw this book on a shelf at the library and basically picked it up because it had "cat" in the title. My young Catholic schoolgirl self was horrified to find it was a GAY BOOK and probably another sign that I was going to TURN OUT GAY, if I wasn't careful. I put it straight back and was seriously upset by it. I turned out gay anyway.

This year, this book popped into my head again, so I actually checked it out! It was pretty ok, weird diary type book about a girl who's having a relationship with her teacher (a dude) and struggling with being gay. Not as terrifying as I originally thought, for sure. Not mindblowing tho.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a boarding school comes a journal of a teenage girl in a relationship with a male teacher. She having a hard time against her hockey coach Granite. Now she has a new teacher Mic and a new student who is also on the hockey team, Andrea.

The teacher relationship ends as Stevie gets more close to Andrea to a point that a relationship is sparked and then commenced. Stevie tries to get on top of things and quite disappointing her Dad who doesn't like how she quite hockey. How she let her grades drop a bit. She wants to get into her top college.

This book really looks for the eyes of a teen and because it is a book set in the 80's there is some slang like tho used making some parts hard to read. but you can't really blame the author for that since it was written thirteen years past the year the book is set in.

[Bella · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like the author totally captured the voice of a teenage girl which was fitting for the book but made it hard to read at points. And some of the slang was incredibly distracting. Maybe it was common in the late 1990s and it’s just dated now, but I think some of it was the creation of the author that just didn’t land. However, I felt like the author laid out the ultimate reveal pretty well and only left some consequential stuff unexplored.

[Kaila Riddle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A teenagers journal on her journey of self reflection, acceptance and self love. This book is every bit as chaotic as a teenagers journal and internal monologs should be, and every bit as confused and frazzled too. Reading between the lines, through the slang and repetition, and with the poetry and storytelling, this was a compelling way to tell Stevie's journey through her last year of high school. Highly suggest this wonderful queer content 🧡💗❤️

[Jamie (TheRebelliousReader) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars. I thought the fact this is written entirely in diary entries was cool and I can imagine how impactful and important this was for young lesbians at the time of its release. I did like this book but I didn’t love it. The writing was good and it’s a quick read but I think the characters were underdeveloped and that made it hard for me to fully connect. Other than that I do think this is worth the read and I did like it for the most part.

[Jens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent! Unfortunately out of print and hard to get. But there are scans on TIA: https://archive.org/details/catcameba... (which I made an EPUB of).