The writing was well done but the story was simply not interesting at all. ( )

This was a little hard to follow in places which took away from the wonderful story that it is. I would have liked to see The epiphany happening rather than being told about it second hand. I would also have liked to see more of the epiphany.

I received this book as a part of Member Giveaway on LibraryThing in exchange for my honest opinion.

When Arlo the barncat bites off more than he can chew with a local bully and consequently loses confidence, his animal friends rally together to teach the bully a lesson and give Arlo a boost.

That summary makes it sound like this is a simple, tidy short story for children about the daily lives of barn animals, right?

Wrong.

You know how sometimes you make up a song or stories or little rhymes or even entire languages for your pets or children or significant other because you love them and that is just a natural thing that happens when you spend a lot of time with them and develop a bond? Except that if you were to say those stories or rhymes or sing those songs to other people they would just stare at you blankly because they don't get it and the more you try to explain it the more awkward it gets?

That's how I felt when I was reading this story (and the other one called The Littlest Spycat's First Christmas, which I nabbed for free at the same time I received this one). I sort of feel like these are expanded-upon bedtime stories the author used to tell her grandchildren and, because they liked them so much, she felt inspired to write them down for other people, not realizing that to everyone else they will not make any sense. It comes down to three main issues:

I have no idea who the target audience is
This may not seem like a major issue, but it's really the crux of why this story/series doesn't work. Because there is no real focus on who this is written for, all the disparate parts (tone, style, length, artwork, reading level, plot, world building) not only have no direction, they are at odds with, and even contradict, each other.

I don't understand why the whole spy society thing is even necessary
It just leaves way too many unanswered questions and points of confusion and holes in world building that basically just shouldn't be there, especially when Arlo (the greatest spy) is barely in the epiphany story and the spy stuff had very little to do with anything in either of the stories I read, except in passing mentions.

Writing needs some cleanup
Some odd sentence structure and punctuation usage makes this a little difficult to follow--I kept having to reread passages because they didn't make sense to me the first time.

There is potential here, despite the issues I have identified. If these were written for a targeted audience in a form and length that made sense for that audience, only included details that made sense for the story, and the author got some guidance from a good editor to help the flow, these could be very entertaining.

Bottom line: This author has to decide what she wants these to be, then write them in a way that other people can relate to. ( )

An embarrassing injury to his tail Arlo seeks refuge with friends, who seem disinterested in his plight, leading him to rethink his position within the agency. I'm always looking for children's books for my nieces and nephew but Arlo's Epiphany has a large vocabulary for six year olds. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the short read. The illustrations are cute though few and far in between. ( )

This cute short story has a couple of good characters like Arlo the barn cat alias spy, Mahoney a retired spy, Agent Brenda Chicken and possible arch enemy McTavish. The illustrations were a bright spot in the book. Although the plot will interest young children, the writing is at middle school level. The story also needs editing for punctuation.

LibraryThing Member Giveaway randomly chose me to receive this book. Although encouraged, I was under no obligation to write a review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. ( )