If you love cats, books, and miniatures, the ANAVRIN Cats Crossing Book Nook is pretty hard to resist! This kit creates a whimsical little bookshop hidden among trees and greenery, complete with tiny cats, shelves packed with books, warm lighting, and a clever infinity-mirror effect.
I recently built the Cats Crossing kit myself, and in this review, I’ll take you through my experience from opening the box to switching on the lights for the first time. I’ll also share what I loved, what I found more challenging, and whether I think this book nook is worth buying.
As an Amazon, Etsy, xTool, and Anavrin associate, I earn a small commission from your purchase, with no extra charges for you.
What’s Included in the ANAVRIN Cats Crossing Book Nook Kit?
Opening the Cats Crossing box, you’ll find pretty much everything neatly packed and ready to start building. The kit contains 407 pieces, including the pre-cut wooden parts for the main structure, all the tiny decorative elements, greenery, miniature books and, of course, plenty of little cats!
You also get the parts needed for the LED lighting and infinity-mirror effect, which is one of the features that makes this particular book nook stand out. The pieces are pre-cut and pre-colored, so this isn’t the type of miniature kit where you’ll need to paint everything from scratch.
Everything comes with illustrated instructions to guide you through the assembly, and the different components are organized to make figuring out what belongs where a little easier.
I also filmed a full unboxing video, where you can see exactly what comes inside the Cats Crossing box before I started building it.
My Experience Building the Cats Crossing Book Nook
Cats Crossing book nook, picture taken from the side.
I have to start by saying that I absolutely love the design of this book nook. There is so much to look at! (yes, I know I have said that before about other book nook kits from Anavrin hahaha)
The combination of the bookshelves, greenery and all those little cats creates such a charming scene, and the small infinity mirror is a particularly clever detail.
It gives the impression that the little passage continues much further into the distance than it actually does.
Despite the amount of detail, I found Cats Crossing surprisingly easy to assemble. The pieces fitted together well and I never felt that the actual construction was particularly difficult.
Look at that ceiling, so nice! What a design!
There are, however, a LOT of tiny books to make! They aren’t difficult to assemble, but there are enough of them that you’ll probably be quite happy when you finally finish the last one.
One funny detail: the little books had covers in my own native language: Dutch! With well-known Dutch authors, what a terrific detail! Some mistakes here and there, but what a great idea! 🙂
One part I would recommend being a little more careful with is the large tree trunk and root structure. This piece is more delicate than most of the kit and I felt that it could potentially break if I put too much pressure on it.
When gluing the different parts of the tree together, I used clamps to hold everything firmly in position while the glue dried. This worked really well and kept everything securely together.
I only ran into one other small problem during the entire build, and that was actually my own mistake. There is a lovely hanging lamp shaped like a flower, with green leaves and a small green bead underneath.
I accidentally installed it facing the wrong direction, and when I tried to correct it, the little green bead broke off.
Luckily, it turned out to be a very easy mistake to fix. I simply glued the bead back into place and used some of the greenery supplied with the kit to disguise the damaged area.
Look at that ceiling too, wow!
That is actually something I really enjoyed about Cats Crossing: the greenery gives you quite a bit of freedom.
You don’t have to make every leaf, vine, and patch of grass look exactly like the example. You can arrange things a little differently, hide small imperfections, and make the scene feel more natural.
Check out the final result!
If there’s one point of attention, it might be the higher price for this high-tier quality DIY kit.
But the quality of this book nook makes up for it, in my opinion. Especially with the dust not being able to reach the project that easily because of the dust covers lol:
Overall, I found this a very relaxing build rather than a frustrating one. There are plenty of tiny details to keep things interesting, but nothing I encountered was particularly complicated.
And watching the shelves, cats, plants and little illuminated passage gradually come together was probably my favorite part of the whole project.
