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stephaniecommerer's review against another edition
adventurous
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
I'd like to thank Samantha Sotto Yambao, NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Water Moon follows Hana, a young woman left in charge of a pawn shop after her father's retirement. Unlike other pawnshops this place deals in regrets and choices. The morning Hana goes to open her shop for the first time as the new owner she finds it ransacked, her father and a choice gone, and so she decides she must find him, with the help of Kei, a young man who walked into her store.
It promises the charm of a Studio Ghibli movie and Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikaszu Kawaguchi, however it's unlike either of those. You can tell the author had some amazing magical realism ideas, but the worldbuilding lacked so much detail that it began to seem random when things were introduced, or akin to shock value. There were no titles for her world or Kei's world, but there were titles for a lot of what seemed to be unimportant things for the story. Things are briefly brought up and never mentioned again, and when the lore is mentioned, due to Kei being from the human world he acts as a reason to info dump for the reader to learn some information.
Speaking of Kei and Hana, there was an extremely forced romance between the two. They had no chemistry and the love between them was generally instant as they only know each other for 2 days by the end of the book. There was no real reason for it to be there, and was one of the reasons I thought about DNFing this book. The author also has a way of writing that I think others may enjoy but I did not, the introduction of Japanese words spelled out with English letters and then repeated as a question translated by another character, it got old very quickly. The dialogue was very stilted and awkward and seemed to try to be very quotable and deep, I think she shouldn't have tried so hard to sound profound since I did like the quotes Hana and her father said before the love interest was introduced, which is where I think most of the faults start. There are a lot of one liner sentences that give a dun dun dun feeling at the break of a chapter or at the end of chapters.
I think if this book had more time to rest, be edited and worked on just a bit more it could've been a lot more like what it was advertised to be. It's also very likely that this book will find is audience among romantasy readers and other people that sadly aren't me.
Trigger Warnings I Gathered: cancer, parent death, some sexual content, injury detail, dementia
Water Moon follows Hana, a young woman left in charge of a pawn shop after her father's retirement. Unlike other pawnshops this place deals in regrets and choices. The morning Hana goes to open her shop for the first time as the new owner she finds it ransacked, her father and a choice gone, and so she decides she must find him, with the help of Kei, a young man who walked into her store.
It promises the charm of a Studio Ghibli movie and Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikaszu Kawaguchi, however it's unlike either of those. You can tell the author had some amazing magical realism ideas, but the worldbuilding lacked so much detail that it began to seem random when things were introduced, or akin to shock value. There were no titles for her world or Kei's world, but there were titles for a lot of what seemed to be unimportant things for the story. Things are briefly brought up and never mentioned again, and when the lore is mentioned, due to Kei being from the human world he acts as a reason to info dump for the reader to learn some information.
Speaking of Kei and Hana, there was an extremely forced romance between the two. They had no chemistry and the love between them was generally instant as they only know each other for 2 days by the end of the book. There was no real reason for it to be there, and was one of the reasons I thought about DNFing this book. The author also has a way of writing that I think others may enjoy but I did not, the introduction of Japanese words spelled out with English letters and then repeated as a question translated by another character, it got old very quickly. The dialogue was very stilted and awkward and seemed to try to be very quotable and deep, I think she shouldn't have tried so hard to sound profound since I did like the quotes Hana and her father said before the love interest was introduced, which is where I think most of the faults start. There are a lot of one liner sentences that give a dun dun dun feeling at the break of a chapter or at the end of chapters.
I think if this book had more time to rest, be edited and worked on just a bit more it could've been a lot more like what it was advertised to be. It's also very likely that this book will find is audience among romantasy readers and other people that sadly aren't me.
Trigger Warnings I Gathered: cancer, parent death, some sexual content, injury detail, dementia
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer and Death of parent
Moderate: Dementia and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Sexual content