The Full Moon Coffee Shop (Review)

Information:

• Author: Mai Mochizuki
• Genre: Contemporary, Fantasy
• Page Count: 240
• Year Published: 2020 (Original publication in Japan), 2024 (English Translation)

Read This if You Like:

• Asian/Japanese literature
• Cozy Fantasy
• Slice of Life stories
• Coffee Shops
• Astrology
• Studio Ghibli Vibes
• Cats

 Synopsis:

Not much is known about Japan’s mysterious Full Moon Coffee Shop. It’s only open during a full moon, and it’s never at the same location twice- in fact, it seems to just appear by surprise and leaves as soon as it comes with no announcement. When one arrives at the Full Moon Coffee Shop, they don’t get to pick their order, but instead have it curated by the attendants, alongside an astrological reading to help determine what issues are going on in their lives and how to fix them so they can move forward. Who are these attendants? They just happen to be talking cats. The novel consists of 3 chapters/stories, and each one focuses on a different person who discovers the Full Moon Coffee Shop, the conflicts they are facing, and how they are addressed during their visit. 

Review/Opinions:

The Full Moon Coffee Shop, translated from Japanese into English, contrasts a lot with America’s cozy fantasy novels, which mostly are in traditional fantasy settings with your standard D&D like characters. However, it’s a book that is part of one of the most popular literary trends in Japanese literature- a story focusing on an area with a cozy atmosphere (typically a cafe or bookstore/library) that may have an element of magic. These novels almost always focuses on a series of characters going through various conflicts in life, who use the business’s service to solve their problems. (The most popular example of this is Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold series.) And a lot of these novels include cats in them because of their symbolism of luck and prosperity in Japanese culture. Despite all these tropes, I was still excited to read The Full Moon Coffee Shop as I was dragged in by the promise of talking cats, and overall this was a nice, cozy, and realistic read. 

The most enjoyable part of this book was how realistic the characters were. While this is a cozy fantasy story, it primarily focuses on magical realism (or a real world setting with some magical elements), so most of the conflicts dealt with in the novel are highly connected to real life. The main characters are all middle aged adults, but I still think the conflicts they face as well as the overall atmosphere will appeal to younger readers, because the plotlines are light and developed well. There’s also some good themes, such as finding your purpose in life, and picking a motivation that supports you. I also enjoyed how all the characters in the novel connected to each other, as although each main character got their own chapter and POV, they all have interacted with one of the other main characters at some point. It did feel like because there were talking cats and astrology involved, some of the conflicts were wrapped up a bit too neatly- the character just received an astrological reading and suddenly came to terms with what they had to do to improve. I feel like there could have been more character development if they had to figure out some things themselves without the help of the cats and the stars, but I still feel like the characters will connect to a wide audience.

I also easily fell in love with the worldbuilding and fantasy aspects of this novel. The main thing about it that I enjoyed: There are talking cats. Were they necessary? No, I feel like the novel would’ve also worked if the cafe attendants were simply humans, regardless of if they were magical or ordinary. But did I still love this aspect because of the Studio Ghibli vibe it brought and because I’m a huge cat person? Yes. Furthermore, the cafe scenes had a very cozy vibe, and I especially liked the descriptions of the food, which all sounded really tasty despite all being fictional. And my hunger was not helped by the fact that every character who had the food immediately reacted with joy. I also liked the Kyoto setting, which added a nice sense of tranquility. 

There’s only one major critique I have of this novel: the constant astrology talk. As mentioned earlier, astrology plays a major part in the novel. The cats spend a lot of the cafe visits showing customers their star charts, so they can analyze the customer’s lives and discuss how they can improve. The issue is, there was so much of this astrology talk in the novel. It felt a lot like info-dumping, and there was sadly more focus on the star charts than the more interesting ideas, such as the food curated for every customer. However, I did think that once you got used to the astrology stuff, it didn’t become as tedious as it was at first. I don’t know much about astrology and how it is practiced, and I’m unsure if some of the astrological concepts actually exist in real life or if they are just elaborate concepts made for the book’s worldbuilding, but the dialogue (well, really it was the talking cats) broke everything down into simple terms, and I found it easy to follow. So while overall the astrology wasn’t confusing, it did make up a massive bulk of the dialogue and somewhat overshadowed all the cozy fantasy elements I came for. 

Outside of the heavy astrology talk and the quick solutions to problems, I really enjoyed this book overall, and I think it’s a decent pick for anyone wanting to see the hype about Japan’s cozy magical realism novels. I’ll probably pick up the sequel (Best Wishes From the Full Moon Coffee Shop, which has its English translation releasing in October), and since this is a quick book where the chapters are more like vignettes, I’ll do a reread of it when I need something cozy and simple (or if I just want to read about talking cats.)