Cybelle is Canadian but has lived in Japan for the past 6.5 years teaching English lessons at a tutoring school for kids. Zaniel is a dream walker who is bound to help the demon Nightmare King, Akki in exchange for protection from other demons. A new demon, the Yokai, shows up in dreamland and shakes things up for Akki, which makes him angry. Cybelle and Zaniel's paths cross in the real world and they must work together to help the Yokai defeat Akki and free Zaniel from being duty-bound to serve him.

The beginning of this book is fairly boring and confusing. The story is told from Cybelle's POV and also the POV of Zaniel/Akki. One told in 1st person narrative and the other told in 3rd person narrative. I understand this was to showcase the difference between real world and dreamland, but I personally wish it was all written in one style. Right away you are thrown into the demon/dreamworld without a lot of explanation, and as dreams go it is a strange world. Cybelle's story is mundane and feels flat until she meets Zaniel and begins to experience the dreamland. Cybelle does experience a lot of microaggressions in Japan, which is based off the author's personal experiences.

I wasn't hooked until I was about 40% in, and this is a long book. That being said, once the story picked it up it was a constant wild ride that I didn't want to put down. It read like a fever dream - the chaotic, randomness was so well done it almost started to make sense at the end.

Heads up this book does have some gruesome scenes and is fairly violent.

Thank you Dundurn Publishers for granting me access to this boos as an E-ARC via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

Drawn in by the very colourful cover and the premise of Japanese folklore in a modern day setting I jumped into pressing “request” over at Netgalley. I thought I would like it because I find Japanese mythology and folklore extremely interesting and so different from my native Swedish folklore. But, it turns out I didn’t really enjoy the book that much.

The book has three different POV-characters, and I will write mostly about one of them – Cybelle, a Canadian black woman working as an English teacher in Japan. I had a hard time understanding WHY she did want to be a teacher at that particular workplace as she seemed to really dislike both her co-workers, her boss and the children she taught. I understand why as the management did seem to be extremely toxic – like changing her schedule constantly, moving around her classes without telling her, not letting her eat lunch.

The other POVs were centred around a group of yokai – but to be honest I mostly skimmed their parts as I didn’t find them interesting.

All in all, I did not really enjoy this book. I wish I could have.

dnf @ 37%

The premise of this book sounded so intriguing. Modern fantasy in Japan? HELL YES. However, the execution of the story fell a bit for me. This is told in dual POV which was my main issue. One perspective deals with the magical part of Japan with monsters and all that interesting detail. I was very invested. However, the other POV was simply about a teacher in Japan teaching people English. I was not a fan of this AT ALL. The writing style was easy to read but the story dragged on, especially for the POV. Like, I wouldn't have minded if we got a one or two chapters about the experiences of this teacher in Japan, however, it continued until 37% which is roughly 200 pages of this book. So, technically, the plot hasn't started yet since these two storylines are suppose to mesh and I kept anticipating when this would happen but everytime, I think something is going to happen, nothing happens. I appreciated, however, how the author talked about issues such as racism and living in Japan as a black woman. I love how it addressed that people of color can also be racists. With that being said, I think some chapters can be cut out to speed the story along. This could have been such a great book, however, the pacing just didn't do it for me, sadly. But, if you're a person who might not mind a very slow book, then you might still like this!