A Purrfect Gift – Reading Companion
I put together a reading companion for my new novella A Purrfect Gift so you can look at photos of the settings, outfits, and dishes described in the book and experience everything along with Lena and Caroline.
I hope you enjoy A Purrfect Gift and this reading companion!
You can now buy the ebook on Amazon, read it in Kindle Unlimited, or listen to the audiobook.
Chapter 1
Lena has just moved to Freiburg, which is my hometown in southwestern Germany. She’s living in the same apartment building as Susanne and Anja from Paper Love—in the same neighborhood where my twin sister lives.
Here are a few pictures from their neighborhood.
I probably don’t need to explain how Lena’s cat got her name. She’s named after Dana Scully from the X-Files, which I was a huge fan of growing up. Gillian Anderson used to have red hair back then, which is why Lena named her ginger cat after her.
Unfortunately, the stuffed tea rex doesn’t exist (at least I couldn’t find one like the one I imagined), but I bought myself a tea rex mug, and, of course, the first cup of tea I drank from it was Earl Grey.
This is what the meerkat figurine on Caroline’s patio looks like.
Chapter 2
Caroline works as a HR manager for a local newspaper, which really exists. Here’s a photo of the newspaper’s building.
Lena gets herself striebele at the Christmas market. I think it’s pretty much the same as funnel cake in the US, right?
Chapter 3
The sweatshirt Lena is wearing was inspired by one I own.
Chapter 4
Here are the silicone cat coasters Lena owns. The one on the top right is the coaster that Caroline says resembles her cat Frau Merkel.
Chapter 5
In this chapter, we’re meeting Anja, Susanne, and Muesli from Paper Love.
Muesli was inspired by one of my beta readers’ cats. He looked like this:
Chapter 8
In this chapter, Caroline introduces Lena to meat fondue, which is what my family always has for Christmas dinner.
The homemade dipping sauces are indeed the best thing about it, especially with fresh French baguette. Pictured below are four of the five sauces (from top left to bottom right): remoulade/herbs, curry, garlic, horseradish. The fifth is a tomato dip that, for some reason, didn’t make it in the picture.
The photo also shows the fondue forks.
Caroline gets Lena an Alemannisch/standard German dictionary. Alemannisch is the dialect I grew up with. Some words differ so much from standard German that people who aren’t locals struggle to understand. For example, the standard German word for a sunny-side-up egg is “Spiegelei” (mirror egg), while it’s “Ochse-Aug” (ox eye) in Alemannisch.
If you want to hear how different from standard German it sounds, check out this video. By the way, the drag queen is wearing her version of a traditional Black Forest dress.
Lena gets Caroline a gift certificate from Kashmir, which is my favorite Indian/Kashmiri restaurant.
For more pictures of Freiburg, check out the reading companion for Paper Love, which is book 1 in the Matchmaking Cats Series.
