suvissiin 's review for:

Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao

2.0

fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Water Moon falls into the category of media that has a great premise, but ruins it with the execution. For something that is marketed as ”Ghibli-core” and rides on the Ghibli inspiration, this book dillutes any storytelling and whimsy with bad pacing, flat characters and overwhelming the reader with useless information.

For me, the biggest issue with the book was the pacing. Moving to different locations was rushed and repetitive. Every new location would have a new magical quirk that would be forgotten in a span of few pages. Samantha Sotto Yambao really breaks the one major rule of writing, which is making the reader not care about the world. The magic system is meaningless, there is no care or storytelling building upon the world except the very basics. There is no time to get to know how or why anything works, not to mention about caring about any of it. Every chapter ending with a quirkly one-liner also made the quality of writing seem that much worse.

The characters of Hana and Kenshii were very one-dimensional, there is insta-love and little to no build-up in their chemistry through dialogue. The dialogue, like the pacing, was also incredibly repeptitive, Kenshii choosing to stay with Hana and Hana feeling guilty wanting Kenshii to stay. 

The ending and the beginning for me were the most interesting parts of the book, but they were still very messy, careless and did not raise any kind of feelings at least for me. 
I feel like this book would work better as graphic novel with no dialogue.