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A review by tej_reads
Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao
5.0
It's been 24 hours since I finished Water Moon and I'm still kind of hungover from it, my eyes still feel puffy. I was going to stop reading at around 10 pm because I just had to sleep but I stayed up till 2 am crying over this book and that's how I know it was one of my favourite reads of this year.
A fantasy romance, Water Moon follows Hana who on her first day as the owner of her fathers pawnshop finds it ransacked, her father missing, and the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen. Hana and Kei - a stranger, then go on a journey to find him and the treasure that was lost.
The story's main focus is of Hana finding her father but also in a way finding herself, that being said the ending was not one I hoped for which was funny because it tied into the major theme of the novel around choices and consequences. One of my favourite parts was I suppose of the 'villains' of the novel and how they weren't really villains there was just a way things were always done - so in a way the villain was the status quo. But it was also dark and sometimes very creepy, I enjoyed how the story went for very light and breezy one page to tense the next. I liked how fast paced it was not in plot I suppose but in setting as Water Moon is a fantasy romance adventure novel I liked how we kept moving from place to place it felt like a treasure hunt it also mean that Yambao was so creative in methods of travel, for example, by rumour but also in expression of scientific concepts like time travel and how they were showcased in the other world.
Water Moon felt like a Studio Ghibli film on paper and in my imagination. Water Moon reads warm, vivid and, lush, an expansive story neatly packed in 336 pages.
Thank you to Samantha Sotto Yambao, Netgalley, Random House UK, Transworld Publishers and, Bantam for the ARC in exchange of an honest review.
A fantasy romance, Water Moon follows Hana who on her first day as the owner of her fathers pawnshop finds it ransacked, her father missing, and the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen. Hana and Kei - a stranger, then go on a journey to find him and the treasure that was lost.
The story's main focus is of Hana finding her father but also in a way finding herself, that being said the ending was not one I hoped for which was funny because it tied into the major theme of the novel around choices and consequences. One of my favourite parts was I suppose of the 'villains' of the novel and how they weren't really villains there was just a way things were always done - so in a way the villain was the status quo. But it was also dark and sometimes very creepy, I enjoyed how the story went for very light and breezy one page to tense the next. I liked how fast paced it was not in plot I suppose but in setting as Water Moon is a fantasy romance adventure novel I liked how we kept moving from place to place it felt like a treasure hunt it also mean that Yambao was so creative in methods of travel, for example, by rumour but also in expression of scientific concepts like time travel and how they were showcased in the other world.
Water Moon felt like a Studio Ghibli film on paper and in my imagination. Water Moon reads warm, vivid and, lush, an expansive story neatly packed in 336 pages.
Thank you to Samantha Sotto Yambao, Netgalley, Random House UK, Transworld Publishers and, Bantam for the ARC in exchange of an honest review.