A review by sophie_laura_
How Kyoto Breaks Your Heart by Florentyna Leow

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.25

How Kyoto Breaks Your Heart explores the end of a friendship through genres of memoir and food writing. After hearing Hannah May discuss it in a youtube video, I was so excited to read it that I bought a copy immediately.

I found it really refreshing to see Leow talk about the end of the friendship, an experience that’s universal yet shrouded in shame, with the openness that people more commonly associate with the breakups of romantic relationships. Leow’s descriptions of food and life in Japan were enthralling and exquisite. This is one of the most open, raw, and underrated memoirs I’ve ever picked up.