The Ninth Life of Missy by Raj Shankar is one of the more unusual concepts for a novel, but it is a credit to the author that it actually works. May Calloway is a young woman who is restless and unsure of herself. Quiet and shy, May is dogged by the memory of her father, who abandoned his family for a new life with another woman when May was just a young girl. She is preparing to move all the way from America to a tiny cottage in a small village in Ireland where she believes she can start her life again. Her beloved cat Missy is the one solid anchor of her solitary life in Greenport, Long Island. Missy, a former stray that nobody else wanted, was only meant to be temporary, like everything else in her life. But then the cat did something that changed May’s life forever – the cat started speaking to her.

Raj Shankar has woven a wonderful story about hope, connection, and the imperfect way we often treat one another. Without revealing the plot, it is sufficient to say that Missy the cat is precisely what May needed at the time. I particularly appreciated the metaphysical concepts that underpinned May’s exploration of her feelings toward her father. I also enjoyed the slow build-up in trust that evolved between Missy and May’s obvious skepticism and doubts. Before long, I was able to accept the idea of a talking and advising cat. That the author was able to create such believability is indicative of the clever plot and the skill of the author. I thoroughly enjoyed the exploration of how memory, however imperfect it may be, shapes and determines so much of our current actions. I was pleased to note that May’s journey is not over; I look forward to the next iteration and highly recommend The Ninth Life of Missy.

In The Ninth Life of Missy by Raj Shankar, May Calloway is a 23-year-old living in Greenport, at the end of North Fork, Long Island. She is getting ready to pack up her life and move to Ireland. Missy is a stray cat, a small tabby with a white blaze on her chest. Michael Devaney is a Senior Analyst with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. These main characters lead the reader through the story as it unfolds. The story starts with Dev, as he is called by his work colleagues, dying in a car accident, but he has left some serious business incomplete at the time of his death. He is given a chance to remedy this oversight and is projected into the body of Missy, but May is the only one who can hear him. So the quest starts to help him correct this oversight and bring peace to both himself and his daughter Sophia, who is left behind.

The Ninth Life of Missy by Raj Shankar tackles a very sensitive topic: how adults behave with their children when the world that they are building crumbles. But they don’t explain to a child that they are not the cause of the breakdown in the family structure. The reader is taken on a journey of discovery, as well as the reason why the powers that be chose her to help Michael Devaney correct the mess he left behind before he returns to heaven. It is a thought-provoking story which will have the reader identifying in part with May and in part with Michael. As the story draws to a close, the reader begins to understand more and more how often important things are left unsaid, and those we leave behind live in a limbo caused by things we did not finish. It is a book that will have a reader sitting in silence, thinking for a long time about things that they may have forgotten to finish or say to those they love. This is a must-read for anyone who has left things incomplete in their lives. A most thought-provoking book; it was a joy to read. It has a long-lasting message for the reader.

The Ninth Life of Missy follows twenty-three-year-old May Calloway, who is preparing to leave Greenport for Ireland when her rescue cat, Missy, begins speaking with the consciousness of Michael Devaney, a dead FBI intelligence analyst. Dev remembers almost nothing about his former life except that he left behind a daughter he believes he failed before his death. Because May alone can hear him through Missy, she becomes his only link to the world he lost. As fragments of Dev’s memory return, May starts tracing his identity through the details he can recover, hoping they will lead her to his daughter. With May’s departure approaching, Missy becomes the unlikely connection through which a dead father may still reach the person he left behind.

Raj Shankar’s The Ninth Life of Missy is literary magical realism handled with real skill, its supernatural premise grounded in finely observed character writing. May Calloway’s reserve has an everyday familiarity that draws you toward her. Dev’s formal habits give his attachment to May an easy sincerity that feels completely natural. Affection develops through conversations at a measured pace, using fluid prose that gives their exchanges a genuine closeness. You see that gift during Missy’s veterinary examination, when Dev’s outraged commentary gets May laughing as shared familiarity settles between them. Shankar brings the same understanding to mortality, presenting human connection as something sustained through participation in another person’s life. Fans of Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures should put Shankar’s original take on magical realism on their to-be-read list. Very highly recommended.

The Ninth Life of Missy by Raj Shankar centers on May Calloway, who lives in Greenport, Long Island, and is about to move to Ireland. After being abandoned by her father, she avoids attachments and protects herself by leaving people and places before they can leave her. Then something odd happens. Missy, her “temporary” stray cat, starts talking like Michael “Dev” Devaney, an FBI analyst who has died and doesn’t know how he ended up in the cat. But he is sure of one thing: he has a daughter and regrets that he was not there for her when she needed him. This pulls them together as two sides of the same emotional wound. May sees herself as the person who was left, while Dev realizes he was the person who did the leaving. His past returns in pieces as days pass. May helps him put the memories together. They work to understand what happened to his daughter and eventually track her down. Michael also begins to notice May’s pain and sees how deeply her father’s leaving affected her.

The Ninth Life of Missy by Raj Shankar is a touching and unusual story about abandonment, grief, trust, and learning to let people into your life. The plot is emotional, bittersweet, heartwarming, mysterious, and character-oriented, with an interesting supernatural twist and some funny moments mixed in. Character development is one of the book’s biggest strengths. It shows them trying to grow and mature, and how hard that can be. The story mostly has a steady and reflective pacing. A lot of the momentum comes from watching Dev recover his memories and seeing May slowly understand his past and how his presence affects her. Shankar’s writing is descriptive, conversational, and thoughtful. His prose is easy to follow. He uses simple, natural language to explore complicated feelings that show emotional sensitivity, soulfulness, and poignancy. This book is for people who like character-driven drama, heartfelt stories that focus on family bonds, and fun, gentle supernatural touches.