The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai (audiobook)

 Pages: 201 

 Narrator: Hanako Footman 

 Publisher: Mantle 

 Released: 5th of October 2023 

The Kamogawa Food Detectives, translated from Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood, is the first book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Japanese sleuthing series for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

What’s the one dish you’d do anything to taste just one more time?

Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner treats its customers to wonderfully extravagant meals. But that's not the main reason to stop by . . .

The father-daughter duo have started advertising their services as 'food detectives'. Through ingenious investigations, they are capable of recreating a dish from their customers' pasts – dishes that may well hold the keys to forgotten memories and future happiness.

From the widower looking for a specific noodle dish that his wife used to cook, to a first love's beef stew, the restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to the past – and a way to a more contented future.

A bestseller in Japan, The Kamogawa Food Detectives is a celebration of good company and the power of a delicious meal.

What I Have to Say 

This book was exactly what I wanted. Cosy Japanese fiction (featuring a cat) with heart-warming stories about food. It was short story format and I think was possibly serialised in a magazine judging from the style of it, so it was a little repetitive in places, but that didn't take away from it at all. 

There is a lot of delicious sounding food in this book so it's definitely not one to read when hungry! It had me drooling over descriptions of food that I wouldn't actually eat, it was so nicely described. The food detective part was interesting and well done, so it really felt like reading an actual detective story at times! 

The main theme of this story though is family. It shows the tight family of the father and daughter doing the detectiving and also highlights family in some of the customer's story. 

I took away from this book, warmth and cheerfulness and it was an absolute joy to listen to. 

 5 stars 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Mantle for providing me with this gifted copy for review. 

The Goodbye Cat by Hiro Arikawa

Pages: 256

Publisher: Doubleday 

Released: 12th of October 2023 

Against changing seasons in Japan, seven cats weave their way through their owners' lives ...

We meet Spin, a kitten rescued from the recycling bin, whose simple needs teach an anxious father how to parent his own human baby; a colony of wild cats on a holiday island shows a young boy not to stand in nature's way; a family is perplexed by their cat's devotion to their charismatic but uncaring father; a woman curses how her cat constantly visits her at night; and an elderly cat, Kota, hatches a plan to pass into the next world as a spirit so that he and his owner may be together for ever.

Bursting with empathy and love, The Goodbye Cat explores the unstoppable cycle of life as we see how the steadiness and devotion of a well-loved cat never lets us down. A huge bestseller in Japan, every page is a joyous celebration of cats and how we cannot resist sharing our lives with them.

What I Have to Say 

This was such a cute book. Though it got very sad in places (as you can probably tell from the title of the Goodbye Cat), I enjoyed reading it immensely. I really enjoyed the different personalities of each of the cats and the differences and similarities in the stories. 

As with all short story collections, there were some stories that I loved and some that I didn't like so much. In this book, I really liked the Cat Island story and the one about Hachi. I also enjoyed the last story in the book and I loved the connection between that one and Hachi, being stories about two cats owned at different times by the same owner. 

As with any translated book, it was very different from the style I'm used to in Western works. I feel like Japanese stuff in more thoughtful and is often more told than shown. I think a lot also gets lost in translation. So I wouldn't say the writing was amazing, but I do think a lot of that is down to the type of book and translating it from a Japanese style. 

Overall, if you like cats, this is a good book to choose! 

4 stars 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Doubleday for providing me with this gifted copy for review. 

Distortion by Victor Dixen

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Publisher: Hot Key Books
Released: 18th of October 2018 

Six girls, six boys: looking for glory and romance on Mars 

They thought they were masters of their destiny.

They are the twelve pioneers of the Genesis programme. 

They thought they were taking part in the most extraordinary of missions.

In fact, they are the victims of the cruellest of plots.

Leonor was looking for glory - and love - on Mars.

She thought she would be able to open her heart there. 

But what she has done is open up a Pandora's box of her past ...

What I Have to Say 

I've never had such a different reaction to a sequel as the first book before, but as much as I loved Ascension, I really hated Distortion. It was a massive disappointment. Sometimes I read a book and get caught up in the action and the mystery of it all and I don't notice that actually, the writing itself isn't so great. I think that's the case with Ascension. I'm not withdrawing my recommendation. I still loved Ascension. It's worth reading for all the secrets and lies and mystery. But having a book like Distortion, where most of the mystery is already revealed and there's not the big build up of the first book? It becomes clear that the actual writing is very lacking. I don't know whether this is a translation issue or the original text, but it's really off-putting 

I like the main 12 characters a lot. Their dialogue may be really stilted and formal, but their actions and their motivations shine through. I think this is what will keep me reading this series. Because even though Serena is turning into more and more of a comic book villain, even though I find the way that they've paired up nice and neatly with each six couples being madly in love completely and utterly ridiculous and unbelievable, I want to see what comes next for them. I want them to survive and win out against all the odds stacked against them. 

So this is a very mixed review. There are some really good things about the series, but it's not one that I want to shout about and push on my friends anymore. 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Hot Key Books for providing me with this copy for review. 

The Distance Between Me and the Cherry Tree by Paola Peretti

Synopsis (from Goodreads)

Pages: 256

Publisher: Hot Key Books 

Released: 9th of August 2018 

Mafalda is a nine-year-old girl who knows one thing: some time in the next six months her sight will fail completely. Can Mafalda find a way through a seemingly dark future and still go to school, play football and look after her beloved cat? With the help of her family, and her friends, Mafalda needs to discover the things that will be important to her when her sight has failed. 

What I Have to Say 

This is a beautiful heart-wrenching story about a girl slowly losing her sight. The way that Mafalda thought about things, her bond with the stories she read and her friendship with the people around her made up for a beautiful unique voice of a young girl. 

The story progresses through Mafalda's life as she slowly loses her eyesight, showing her life in the last six months before her world goes dark. It shows her parents trying to cope with it, moving house, getting everything sorted so that they can provide for her. The friendships she has at school, the long standing one with a janitor who tells her stories of amazon warriors, and new ones beginning to form. There are so many threads to this story that weave together through a young girl's perspective to show a snapshot in her life in such a beautiful way. 

Woven through it all this this beautiful character who loves stories and her cat. She's passionate, brave but most of all scared. And it was that fear and how she coped with it, her transition from a sighted world to one without was such an amazing story to read. 

A perfect book for someone who wants something short, beautiful and truly moving. 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Hot Key Books for providing me with this copy for review. 

Naondel by Maria Turtschaninoff

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 480

Publisher: Pushkin Children's Books 

Released: 6th of April 2017 

In the opulent palace of Ohaddin, women have one purpose - to obey. Some were brought here as girls, captured and enslaved; some as servants; some as wives. All of them must do what the Master tells them, for he wields a deadly and secret power. But the women have powers too. One is a healer. One can control dreams. One is a warrior. One can see everything that is coming. In their golden prison, the women wait. They plan. They write down their stories. They dream of a refuge, a safe place where girls can be free. And, finally, when the moon glows red, they will have their revenge. 

Trigger Warning: Rape, Abuse, Suicide, Depression, Miscarriage 

What I Have to Say 

The first of these books was okay. It was a bit slow, but it had a fairly good story. I liked it enough to want to read more, especially since Naondel is more of a prequel, showing the women who founded the Red Abbey. I was looking forward to seeing their journey and how they voyaged across to find the island. But what I got was just a lot of rape. 

I don't mind reading about rape any more than I mind reading about murder or abuse. If it's important to the story and written in a way that doesn't glorify it, I'm okay with it. But this book just had so much of it. There were about three girls in the whole novel who weren't raped. It was awful and I didn't really want to read on. This is a book about the oppression of women. I knew that going in. But there are other ways to oppress women. I expected a bit of abuse. I thought there probably would be some sort of rape or forced marriage, but this was just too much. Turtshaninoff didn't bother thinking of any other ways of oppressing women. I expected a feminist book about women fighting against oppression, but I honestly don't think this was very feminist at all. 

I'd also been looking forward to seeing the women sailing across the sea, maybe a bit of them setting up the island and working out the rules. I got about a paragraph summarizing their journey. I'd have rather this paragraph have been extended and made up the bulk of the book. 

There are so many ways they could have shown this book without so much detail about the rapes. It didn't have to be the way it was. They could have glossed over it, faded to black. Anything so I didn't have to read it all. But they didn't and so I hated this book. 

My thanks go to Pushkin Press and Netgalley for providing me with this copy for review.