A review by bartlebebop
The Nakano Thrift Shop by Hiromi Kawakami

3.0

[2.5-3 stars] I wanted to like this one, but I found the characters to be pretty flat and the plot very hard to follow. I'm not sure if some of it was lost in translation or if some of the charm of this book was lost on me. However, I really enjoyed the elements of the quirky customers and just the general functioning of the store. Overall, I find my feelings to be very mixed. The plot dragged, the characters were very bland, and the book felt much longer than it actually was. However, I found reading the book to be oddly soothing and the slice of life nature of the book was a nice breather from the other heavy things I've been reading. I still don't know what was going on completely, but I would still read this author again.
5/31/2021 update: Ranking this one up to three stars officially on my goodreads. I enjoyed this one more than Strange Weather in Tokyo which I gave 2 stars and Nagano doesn't deserve to have the same rating.