Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao

RomanceFantasy

Feb 24

Written By taylor shepeard

Title: Water Moon

Author: Samantha Sotto Yambao

Publication Date: January 14, 2025

Audience: Adult

Genre: Fantasy

Sub-Genre: Romance

POV: Single

Series: Standalone

Format: Audiobook

—Narrator(s): Cindy Kay

3.25 ⭐ | 1🌶️

Pros:
✨Fun / Interesting Concept
✨End Twist

Cons:
✨Dialogue / Philosophical Commentary Felt Disjointed
✨Cool Ideas w/ No Follow Through
✨Underdeveloped Plot
✨Flat Characters / Character Development

Synopsis

On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see only a cosy ramen restaurant. And just the chosen ones – those who …

… are lost – will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets.

Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as its new owner to find the pawnshop ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike other customers. For he offers help, instead of seeking it.

Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice – through rain puddles, hitching rides on paper cranes, across the bridge between midnight and morning and through a night market in the clouds.

But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own – and risk making a choice she will never be able to take back.

*Blurb taken from The StoryGraph

Review

This review may contain spoilers.

I have so much, and yet nothing at all, to say about this novel. Which pretty much sums things up.

This is one where, if you step back, close one eye, turn your mind off, and go with the flow, it’s dreamlike and full of whimsy. But if you try to think about it AT ALL, the whole thing falls apart and feels pointless. Which is a crazy weird line to walk. The plot is all over the place, the characters are surface-level, and the goal of the main protagonist ends up being a wase of time, which in a way makes the novel feel a bit like a waste of time as well? That’s harsh, I know, but this is all vibes and nothing else. If that’s your thing, you’ll adore this!

I did like the twist. Very nicely done. And I also liked the concepts if they were individually presented and fleshed out. Like the the museum for education, which snagged my attention, but was never explored further than a few pages. This would have been an interesting collection of short stories. But as a novel, it was disjointed and jarring.