Series: The Full Moon Coffee Shop

#BookReview: Best Wishes from the Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki, translated by Jordan Taylor

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Best Wishes from the Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki, translated by Jordan TaylorBest Wishes From the Full Moon Coffee Shop (The Full Moon Coffee Shop, #2) by Mai Mochizuki
Translator: Jordan Taylor
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: holiday fiction, literary fiction, magical realism, world literature
Series: The Full Moon Coffee Shop #2
Pages: 224
Published by Ballantine Books on October 28, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From the bestselling author of the Japanese sensation The Full Moon Coffee Shop, this charming and heartfelt novel showcases the magic of Christmas as lost souls find themselves—with a little help of from an enchanted café run by cats.
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 Christmas-time Kyoto moon.
Satomi is devoted to her job in Tokyo, but when her boyfriend hints that he is going to propose to her on Christmas Day, she becomes torn between the career in the city that she loves and a quieter life with her boyfriend in the country. What will the magical cats see for her future?
Koyuki, meanwhile, works at Satomi’s company. Ever since her father passed away in an accident on Christmas Day, she has been playing the role of the good, cheerful girl—and now that her mother has remarried, she is forced to pretend she is part of a happy new family. But this Christmas, what will the cats reveal as her true wish?
Junko, Satomi’s sister-in-law, lives in a small town with her husband and their daughter Ayu, a first grader. When her estranged father becomes ill, Junko returns home with Ayu in tow—and with the help of the magical cats, she learns something surprising that will change her life forever.
This holiday season, each stands at a crossroads, confronting their past and present struggles. With the help of some feline divinations, each will finally have the courage to seek happiness and contentment in their lives.

My Review:

This book was always going to be this year’s New Year’s Eve review. After all, what could make a better reading send-off for the year (any year but especially this year) than a bunch of beloved former companion animals turned sages from the stars not just wishing their people (for very open interpretations of both “their” and “people”), their very best wishes for the holiday season and the coming new year?

Although, from the perspective of this reader, while it may be cats running the travelling coffee shop, it’s a dog that steals the story this time around – and it’s actually just right. Because little Rin left a gift behind at the Full Moon Coffee Shop for her person, and it’s time for that person to collect.

Rin’s gift isn’t a thing, but that’s what makes this story, and stories like this one, so heartwarming. The gift that Rin left for Junko is both a reminder and a wish. A reminder of the good times they had together, and how much Rin loved her. The wish is for Junko to use those memories as a bridge back to feelings and people that she’d left behind along her way.

Because the story as whole, even as it circles back to characters from the first delightful book, the story that introduced us to The Full Moon Coffee Shop, is a message that we can all use. It’s to look beneath the surface to discover the true wish of our own hearts – so that we have the chance to direct our lives towards making it happen.

Rin’s wish was to stay with her person forever. With a bit of magic, anything is possible. But before Junko can accept that love with her own whole heart, she needs to discover her own wish. That it’s the same wish as her sister-in-law Satomi ties their stories together with the story of the Full Moon Coffee Shop and brings this chapter of the Full Moon story to a hopeful, and happy, ending for their year and ours.

Escape Rating B: I came into this expecting more of what I discovered in the first book, The Full Moon Coffee Shop. And that’s exactly what I got, even if the mix of elements was a bit different this time around.

Not surprisingly, I would have preferred more cats. (I always want more cats, even when I have too many cats and know I shouldn’t pick up more. Four is the limit. Absolutely. This message is for the Cat Distribution System™ so that it doesn’t present me with any more cats. Unless there’s a void out there looking for a human. I still miss Lucifer.)

One of the things I loved about this second book, that also surprised me and made me return to the first for a bit, is the way that the people in this story were part of the story in the first book. We just hadn’t gotten to know them yet. Which meant that when Mizuki Serikawa entered the scene as Junko’s new sister-in-law at the end of this book, I knew I’d met her before and was delighted to see how she was doing after her own life-changing revelations courtesy of the cats at the Full Moon.

Howsomever, I have to say that as much as I love the cats, the coffee shop, and the whole concept behind books like this one, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, The Dallergut Dream Department Store and, of course,  We’ll Prescribe You a Cat, the astrology elements that the cats work with only work for this reader as a metaphor. Not that I don’t adore the magical realism of the cats running the cafe!

The story uses the concept of ‘lunar houses’ – the place where the moon is in one’s astrology chart – to bring hidden talents and dreams to light for each of the characters in the story. As a belief system, I’m not there. As a plot device for getting the human characters to see the things they’ve hidden from themselves, it works just fine. From that perspective, it’s an interesting concept but I wouldn’t want to go any deeper into the details, especially in a relatively short story – or collection of them.

Your reading – and believing – mileage may vary on this one.

All in all, this was a delightful little story with a charming message and a whole lot of hope for the future of its characters that it’s easy to extend into one’s own hopes for the coming year.

I wish you good fortune and great reading for the coming New Year!

#BookReview: The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki, translated by Jesse Kirkwood

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki, translated by Jesse KirkwoodThe Full Moon Coffee Shop (The Full Moon Coffee Shop, #1) by Mai Mochizuki, Jesse Kirkwood
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: literary fiction, magical realism, world literature
Series: The Full Moon Coffee Shop #1
Pages: 228
Published by Ballantine Books on August 20, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Translated from the Japanese bestseller, this charming and magical novel, inspired by the myth of cats returning favors to those who care for them, reminds us that 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 seemingly appears at random to adrift young people at crucial junctions in their lives.
It’s also run by talking cats.
While customers at the Full Moon Coffee Shop partake in cakes, coffees, and teas, the cats also consult them on their star charts, offer cryptic wisdom, and let them know where their lives have veered off course—because every person who visits the shop has been feeling more than a little lost. And for a down-on-her-luck screenwriter, a romantically stuck movie director, a hopeful hairstylist, and a technologically challenged website designer, the feline guides will set them back on their fated paths. After all, there is a reason the shop appeared to each of them…

My Review:

It will not surprise any reader of my reviews that this book had me at cats. I was expecting something a bit cutesy, but also heartwarming and charming because a) cats and b) this book is part of the recent trend of interconnected vignette novels that kicked off – or at least into high gear – with Before the Coffee Gets Cold – a trend which I’ve been enjoying very much.

So I was expecting a similar combination of magical realism with a touch of cozy fantasy and/or cozy mystery, just with a whole lot of cats.

I fully admit I was NOT expecting the astrology bits, but we all get our paradigm shifts where we find them and the logic of what causes them doesn’t have to be the same for everyone. So even though the astrology explanations didn’t work for me except as a metaphor, as a metaphor they worked just fine.

What got me in the heart was the way that the story managed to come full circle and tie itself up with a truly beautiful bow. If, as this book posits albeit a bit sideways, if the Rainbow Bridge touches down on Earth  when the moon is full so that the cats we have loved and cared for have a chance to give us a bit of a push when we need it – I’m there for it.

Escape Rating B: At first, the stories seem a bit random, as they often do in this kind of book. I’m thinking of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, The Dallergut Dream Department Store, What You are Looking For Is In the Library, and my personal favorite, The Kamogawa Food Detectives.

When the two cats deliver some rather tough love to the down-on-her-luck, has-been writer, it’s not just her life that needs to change. The following stories connect back to her, and to a time in her life when her dreams were still in front of her.

And they could be again if she just takes the more practical aspects of the cats’ advice. As she does.

What I wasn’t expecting – but should have because these books often work similarly – was that all the people involved remember her, remember her fondly, were inspired by her in their own ways, and were part of an event in their brief time together that affected them all deeply even if they didn’t specifically remember it.

It’s that event that leads back to the cats, and to a truth about animal companions regardless of species. That it’s not just that we rescue them, as this teacher turned scriptwriter and her students once did. It’s that they rescue us as well.

And it’s that truth that makes the whole story not just work, but work with a smile and just a touch of a tear at its just so delicious bittersweet ending.