Reviews with content warning for Dementia - The Kamogawa Food Detectives

Representations: https://trello.com/c/KcyEeqLR/88-the-kamogawa-food-detectives-1-the-kamogawa-food-detectives-by-hisashi-kashiwai

Thank you Netgalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Well, now I'm incredibly hungry...

This is essentially multiple short stories about food. Long descriptions of incredibly delicious sounding food with a cute little backstory of each person who comes seeking out the hidden, unassuming little building with no signage.

Very much just a cute, light tale with bite-sized (hehe :3) stories guaranteed to put a smile on your face. Even through the sadder stories, hope and human kindness & connection through food shines through strongly. Mix that with loveable characters and well-written food descriptions and you have a book that I kept thinking about even after finishing!

I absolutely see this easily turned into a little tv show, each episode being a different person seeking their food. From my googling, I couldn't find any adaptation of it - though I did see it's a pretty lengthy series so please oh please translate more!

Content Warnings

james1star's review against another edition

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hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillian UK Audio for accepting me to be a pre-publication reviewer of this audiobook. The narration by Hanako Footman was performed very well, it’s clear and pleasant to listen to.

This book centres around a cute but mostly unknown Kyoto restaurant called the Kamogawa Diner where the father-daughter duo of Nagare and Koishi serve up masterful dishes. But this isn’t all they do because they’ve discreetly put an add announcing themselves as ‘food detectives’ where only those who truly need the service will search them out. It can be read as a novel in that the two main, and some other, characters return but each chapter does in essence read like a short story. Each of the six stories is split into two parts, the first where the customer arrives at the diner and explains to Koishi what the dish they need recreating is and why it means so much to them. They then come back in part two, are served up the dish and Nagare reveals how he went about investigating the dish and it’s ingenious recreation. This same pattern is prevalent in each story so you know what’s going to happen. Maybe some of the investigation leaves a little to be desired as Nagare just tells the customer how he did it where actually showing it might’ve been more interesting but the fast, and consistent, pace meant the book flowed well and I was still excited to hear how he recreated the dish. Something I really like is how each customer does have a different reason for coming there and it’s nice to see how experiencing the dish again helps them, be it thinking back and looking forward.

Overall, this was a very decent read and one I’d certainly recommend. It’s easy to get through and on the whole is a pleasant reading experience. I am interested to continue with the series but as I wasn’t blown away it’s not at the top of my list.

Content Warnings

lomahongva's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative lighthearted reflective relaxing medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

writteninmagic's review against another edition

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lighthearted reflective medium-paced

2.5

(Thank you to Penguin Group Putnam for providing me with an eARC to review.)

The story was a quick, lighthearted read. I enjoyed reading about the variety of Japanese food that the restaurant made. My favorite parts of the story were where the restaurant owner told the customers how he prepared their meals. It highlighted the effort and care he puts into his cooking.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much substance to the characters. Even with Nagare (the restaurant owner) and Koishi (Nagare's daughter who runs the restaurant with him), we barely know them as characters. It was all surface level. Each chapter focused on a new customer as they sought out the restaurant; it was very repetitive how they found the restaurant through the food magazine ad, remarked that it was hard to find, noticed a photo on the wall in the corridor while heading to the detective office, and reacted to the food that they requested). The way Nagare and Koishi responded to them also felt repetitive. Also, the translation had oddly phrased sentences.

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