The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki – Review

Published: August 20, 2024

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Series: N/A

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 240 (Hardcover)

My Rating: 3 Stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
Translated from the Japanese bestseller, a charming and magical novel that reminds us it’s never too late to follow our stars.

In Japan, cats are a symbol of good luck. As the myth goes, if you are kind to them, they’ll one day return the favor. And if you are kind to the right cat, you might just find yourself invited to a mysterious coffee shop under a glittering Kyoto moon.

This particular coffee shop is like no other. It has no fixed location, no fixed hours, and it seemingly appears at random.

It’s also run by talking cats.

While customers at the Full Moon Coffee Shop partake in cakes and coffees and teas, the cats also consult their star charts, offering cryptic wisdom, and letting them know where their lives veered off course.

Every person who visits the shop has been feeling more than a little lost. For a down-on-her-luck screenwriter, a romantically stuck movie director, a hopeful hairstylist, and a technologically challenged website designer, the coffee shop’s feline guides will set them back on their fated paths. For there is a very special reason the shop appeared to each of them . . .

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I picked this up for two reasons – it seemed cozy and I love cats. I couldn’t possibly resist a book about a coffee shop run by talking cats who also read star charts for the needy humans who are invited. I mean, it just sounds so damn cute!

What I got was not actually all that cute and leaned into the human troubles a bit too much for me to find it truly cozy. There are multiple sections divided into chapters and each section follows a different patron of the Full Moon Coffee Shop. One is a script writer who’s talent and desirability has waned, one is a producer who has fallen in love with someone she doesn’t think would love her back, one is an actress caught in a recent cheating scandal, and one is a web developer. Each character is invited to the coffee shop and completely amazed at the talking cats who’ve brought them to help solve their problems.

*I thought these were going to be cute, four-legged talking cats magically pouring coffee and offering desserts. Some of them are. Some of them, most disturbingly, are described like the creatures in the live action Cats movie. Not cute at all, especially since I don’t remember them wearing any clothes.*

The cats read the star charts for each of the characters and provide astrological wisdom to help them make the right choice for themselves so they might find happiness. I learned way more about astrology than I ever thought to know and it was fascinating! This was by far one of the better explanations of how all that works and surprise – it was in a fantasy book.

The human characters were interesting and I was rooting for them to have a happy ending, but I would say that their situations made this magical book lean too far into the realm of the depressingly real. I was happy that each was given a pleasant ending, though this was definitely not something that left me feeling aglow with happiness myself. Overall, I appreciated the story for what it offered but I didn’t love it as much as I had expected to and I could have done with less star chart explanations and more emotional character scenes.