The Full Moon Coffee Shop
by Mai Mochizuki
2020
translated by Jesse Kirkwood
2024

This is a charming story about interconnected characters facing difficulties in their various careers getting their lives sorted out and on a better path, via dreams of a little pop-up coffee shop run by cats/gods who explain their astrology charts to them.

So, to break that down:

• It’s charmingly written. Kudos to both the author and the translator!
• The characters are all adults struggling with adult issues, which I definitely appreciated.
• I also really enjoyed the magical-realism that merges very real world issues with mystical coffee shop: it’s hilarious as each character has their own approach to responding to having a magical experience in an otherwise non-magical world.
• The explanations of the astrology charts got a bit repetitive for me as the reader and that was not helped by the characters responding with complete confusion at first but then quickly agreeing that now they understood where they had gone wrong with their lives and what changes they needed to make given what the planets said about them.
• I was reminded of the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle series, which I last read as a grade-schooler so my memory could easily be faulty, but had the same structure applied to kids having bad habits and a mystical person with powers teaches them to be better. A very cute series of morality tales, targeted young.
• However, I did really enjoy the seemingly random interconnections of the characters, where each vignette includes as a side character the protagonist of the next vignette, as well as a reference to how much better the prior protagonist is doing having implemented the changes they needed.
• The epilogue explaining why this all happened and how these character were connected by a good deed as children and thus earned the gratitude of the cat gods felt both unnecessary and contrived, as well as a bit disappointing, in that it restricted the possibilities of who might wind up finding this mystical pop-up coffee shop to just that one group.
• But I did really enjoy the softness of showing characters struggling with failing career paths, finding a way forward into success and happiness.

All that to say: I enjoyed it but not without qualifications. I recommend it to readers looking for some soft reassurance and willing to put up with some basic lessons in astrology.