The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park by Michiko Aoyama Translator: Takami Nieda
Narrator: Naruto Komatsu, Kenichiro Thomson, Susan Momoko Hingley, Yuriri Naka, Ami Okumura Jones
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: relationship fiction, sad fluff, translated fiction, world literature
Pages: 256
Length: 4 hours and 57 minutes
Published by Hanover Square Press, Harlequin Audio on September 23, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
The enchanting new novel by the multimillion-copy bestselling author of What You Are Looking For Is in the Library, about five strangers who each seek comfort from a healing hippo ride.
Nestled at the bottom of a five-story apartment block in the community of Advance Hill is the children's playground in Hinode Park, where you will find a very special age-old hippo ride named Kabahiko. According to urban legend, if you touch the exact part of the hippo where you have an ailment or wound, you will see swift signs of recovery. They call it "Healing Hippo."
In The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park, the apartment residents each find their way to Kabahiko, confessing their troubles and drawing upon the hippo's rumored abilities. From a struggling student who pets the hippo's head to reverse his poor academic performance to the lonely new mother who hopes that touching the hippo's mouth will allow her to better express herself, this heartwarming, eclectic cast of characters will all come to Kabahiko for healing in their lives—though they may not always find it in the ways they expect.
With Aoyama's classic charm and emotional power, The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park is a deeply moving celebration of kindness, community and understanding.
My Review:
I picked this up because I LOVED the author’s first book, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library and was hoping for more just like it. That particular book is one of my favorites among the current trend of mostly light, slightly bittersweet, loosely linked stories that are more about healing and interconnected relationships than they are anything else. Often, these stories have just a touch of magical realism, as was particularly true in the book that seems to have started the trend, Before the Coffee Gets Cold.
The “Healing Hippo of Hinode Park”, the playground statue at the center of this neighborhood and the people who come to perch on the hippo Kabahiko’s back in hopes of fixing whatever part of them is currently broken, is not magical in any demonstrable sense. Although neither was the library in the author’s first book.
The magic in Kabahiko is really the magic of the human spirit. The hippo just gives that spirit a bit of focus. Or perhaps that’s clarity. It could just be that Kabahiko provides a listening ear and an open heart into which someone, several someones, can pour their troubles and hear THEMSELVES and what’s at the heart of their current predicament.
The theme behind these interactions with the hippo seems to be that “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” It’s also never too early.
In each person who comes to Kabahiko for healing, whether child or teen or adult, it seems, or it feels, or both, that they have a physical ailment. Each chapter is named for the part that the person thinks they need to heal.
But the stories here aren’t about the physical. They’re about anxiety manifesting physically. They’re about suppressing one’s own voice out of fear of what others will think. Or fear of embarrassment or being ostracized or of looking out of touch with the world. Each person has closed themselves off from their authentic self – but the part that they’ve locked away has to find another avenue for drawing attention to itself so that the situation can be resolved. Which means that something hurts in the physical sense as a way for the body to express the emotional pain. Or blockage. Or both. Definitely both.
The individual stories, from the student who discovers he can no longer skate through school to the mother who lets a ‘mum group’ she doesn’t even like walk all over her to a middle-aged man resenting the changes that the years have brought instead of making the life he has the best it can be, are individually lovely and heartwarming and utterly real in their exploration of human nature and human relationships.
Which just makes the reader hope for, long for, or perhaps even look for, a Kabahiko somewhere near so that they, too, can be healed.
Escape Rating B: I have to confess that while I did like this one, I didn’t like it quite as much as I did the author’s first book. Which probably has a whole lot to do with the library setting of that first book, AND that I didn’t personally get into quite as many of the individual scenarios in this book as I did in the Library. Because, well, library.
Howsomever, when I listened to The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park, it turned out to the perfect listen for a busy week as each chapter was precisely the right length for my drive. It felt like each day I’d gotten a whole story, a happy ending, with nothing hanging over me but the anticipation of a new story the next day.
This is a multi-cast recording, and the readers for each individual story generally fit well into their characters, although as usual I have to register a tiny complaint that I don’t know who read whom so that I can look for the voice actors in other audiobooks.
I especially enjoyed the way that the overall theme made the individual stories have a more universal feel than I initially expected. The ‘mum group’ story drove me a bit batty until she stopped being a doormat but that’s definitely a ‘me’ thing.
In general, books like this are ones that I turn to when I need a quietly happy comfort read instead of a cathartic and generally murderous comfort read. I love the way the individual stories ‘magically’ get connected in the end, and they all seem to have just the right amount of fluff, but real fluff and sad fluff, to fit this kind of mood.
So if you’re looking for a light reading pick-me-up, pick up The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library, or my other personal fave, The Kamogawa Food Detectives, and leave the world behind for a light and emotionally refreshing story.
Nice review. I have enjoyed The Kamagowa Food Detectives, so will give this one a try. Thanks for the recommendation.
This sounds like a great read for those days you are feeling a little blue