The Full Moon Coffee Shop is a Japanese novella in translation that was originally published in 2020.
From the synopsis: “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 is a sweet, cozy story that also manages to be thought-provoking and inspiring.
A substitute teacher and the group of students she would walk home at the end of the school day once showed great kindness to some cats. Now, years later, the Full Moon Coffee Shop shows up for each of them. The coffee shop is run by speaking cats who can change into human form, and who are each named after a different astrological body. They choose specific food and drink tailored to each customer, and offer to read their star charts. In this way, the cats of the coffee shop are able to help each of these former schoolmates understand what is holding them back in life, and how to get back on course. There are lessons on being less hard on oneself and others, improving one’s state of mind and focus by making one’s surroundings more pleasant, admitting one’s true desires to oneself, and more. It’s a very nice story!
I am not 100% sure about the English translation of this book, as there were some idioms that miss the mark – although I suppose it’s possible these are expressions used in the UK and not the US and so I’m just not familiar with them (just as the book uses the British English term “anticlockwise” rather than the American English “counterclockwise”). Things like “plumping for a suit” , “looking pretty flash”, “splashing out on” the fancy dishes, and referring to singles (as in romantically unattached people) as singletons. I was a bit worried when the book opens with a male tortoiseshell cat, which, while not impossible, is unlikely (1 in 3000 tortoiseshell cats are male, and that’s because they are born with an extra X chromosome). Although I suppose it’s certainly not less likely that the cat will also be the physical form of a heavenly body come to bestow wisdom on people who have earned favors by being good to cats!
This is not the kind of book that will keep me thinking about it for a long time to come, but it IS the kind of book that gave me warm fuzzy feelings while also offering opportunities for introspection. 3.5 stars
Jessica Crawford 