I don't generally read YA books but I loved the sound of this and was very intrigued.

It's such a beautiful yet sad story. Sora lost her mum to an earthquake in Japan, that also messed up time in certain zones.

This is the story of how she tries to find her mum in the zones, whilst risking her health as not much is known about prolonged time spent in those zones.

Meanwhile, her father has also become obsessed with the zones and is deteriorating due to his time spent in them.

There is also a struggle between father and daughter, who are both essentially trying to do the same thing whilst protecting the other.

I won't say this was an easy read in the sense that you had to really concentrate when they were trying to explain the time delays in scientific terms. I had to re read some parts a few times and found there were some minor grammatical errors. Other than this though I would recommend it.

This stunning story encompasses family, grief and hope in a Japanese inspired mythical world. This will capture your heart and hold it right till the last word.

"There's a catfish under the islands of Japan. It rolls and the ground trembles, water crashes, time cracks and breaks.
I hate that catfish."

Catfish Rolling is a thought-provoking book that walks us through the life of Sora and her experience when Japan is shaken up by an earthquake that causes loved ones to disappear without a trace and leaves destruction and broken time in its wake. Time now runs differently in some zones of Japan, with it running either faster or slower. In search for her missing mother, Sora scours these zones for answers.

It was a fascinating experience to unravel the mysteries of time throughout this novel - the concept was a good one and I enjoyed the direction the author guided the plot into. There was an abundance of Japanese folklore thrown in and it was a delight to read! With an array of diverse characters and some interesting science and fantasy, this book really hit the mark.

The only negative I can say for this book is that sometimes I was confused by certain aspects of the story and the characters didn't always feel like they were fully fleshed out. Despite this I had a lovely time reading this one and I'm looking forward to getting a nice hardback copy when it is released.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

A new adult speculative fiction book, about broken time areas in Japan after a terrible earthquake that caused the disappearance of the main character's mother. The story is blooming with Japanese folklore and everyday little beliefs, with friendship, with loss, time questions, and growing and choosing a path.
It looks at what it feels like when you are stuck, because choices are hard, because nothing is ever clear cut, and whatever you do, things are going to change for the best or the worst.
This is a fantastic initiatic journey of discovery, letting go of old pains, and learning that growing is leaving childhood hopes behind. This is a fascinating tale in simple words and yet it explores very interesting complex ideas. It's a very bittersweet look at life.
Sora is a great character to follow, we see her struggle through her problems, trying to make sense of her feelings and purpose, trying to find a place for herself in a world where she never seems to fit.
I highly recommend this book to readers looking for something that could remind them of "A Tale for the Time Being", another amazing Canadian Japanese novel, or books that explore difficult family dynamics like in the movie "Everything Everywhere all at Once."

I really really enjoyed this. Sora is such a great protagonist, exceptionally human in all the best ways, so compelling to read about. I love her grief and growth throughout the book, I really love this fascinating look into the nature of time. I get a little 'tongue-tied' when I really like a book, I stop being able to say anything other than "I really liked this book". So I'll quit while I'm ahead and just urge you to read it.

Also, the cover is beautiful, so there's that bonus.

I received this ARC in exchange for a fair review.

While this book sounded intriguing for me, I found myself struggling from the beginning.
I couldn't get into this and struggled to want to keep picking it up.
I retained nothing. The characters weren't engaging for me.
I do think maybe audiobook might work for me in the future. So I may give this a second chance at a later date.

A wonderful core concept -- what if earthquakes messed with time as well as space -- and some compelling central characters. As someone who spent a few months in Japan many years ago, it was lovely to catch many snippits of that culture throughout the book. There were a few key strands that were opened and not resolved, and the ending was a bit weaker than the rest of the book, but teasing through what it means for time to run fast and slow, and what that does to perceptions, allied with some lovely writing and a central coming-of-age story make up for that!

“We were all thrown about - some backwards, some forwards, because it wasn’t water or wind that had crashed over us. It was time.”

Sora was only young when a powerful earthquake struck Japan and tore a chasm in time itself. Japan was fractured into zones, where time runs slower or faster, resulting in thousands of citizens vanishing without a trace as the zones appeared. Sora lost her mother and her maternal grandfather in the Shake, leaving her and her father to go on exploratory research trips into the zones.

Catfish Rolling is a beautiful novel dealing with grief, having lost someone and being left behind, memories being lost, and the love that still lingers after someone has gone. I did get a bit confused between timelines and locations, but I adored how Kumagai plays off natural elements alongside the scientific. There is real growth in the novel, especially in how Sora tries to come to terms with her own identity and how this furthers her beliefs and understanding of nature and folklore.

Thank you to Head of Zeus and Netgalley for the arc EPUB. I will be posting this review to Waterstones.com, Twitter, and Instagram. I gave it 3.75 stars on StoryGraph and 4 on Goodreads. Catfish Rolling is available for purchase from March 2nd in the UK.

Clara Kumagai's exquisite, ecological, philosophical and genre defying debut is a haunting and emotionally searing novel that draws on Japanese folklore and the country's experience of the terror, disorientation and repercussions of earthquakes, mirrored at a human level in what can happen to the people. Ultimately, this is a story of identity, belonging, grief, loneliness, being lost, time and family. A magical legendary giant catfish resides beneath the islands of Japan, a creature that devastates with its ability to cause havoc through earthquakes and tsunamis, leaving behind pockets where different time zones exist. Sora has harboured a hatred of the catfish ever since her mother disappeared, and this is made worse when her Canadian scientist father, looking for answers, begins to disappear emotionally from her too as they explore the dangerous zones.

Sora obsessively seeks her Japanese mother, but finds herself hunting for her father when he too goes missing, venturing into shattered and desolate landscapes left behind where it feels virtually impossible to feel as if you can stand on solid ground, neither time wise, physically, or metaphorically. Sora's identity of being Japanese is questioned, she is traumatised, burdened with a grief that cannot be shaken off, facing the prospect of her only friend leaving her too, it is no surprise she is left to drift without mooring within a mass of emotional turbulence. This is a hard hitting, yet beautiful and thought provoking read on a ecological and personal level, that I think many readers will love as much as I did. Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

This book is one of my absolute favourite reads for a long, long time. It's a compelling, richly drawn world in which an earthquake doesn't just rip apart Sora's family, but the very fabric of time, leaving slow zones and fast zones, where time behaves differently. Her father, who has never really recovered from the results of the quake, is spending more and more time in the zones, until finally he goes missing. Sora must find him, and also confront her own life, and how she's choosing to live it. I loved this book, you should read it immediately. It has echoes of Sophie's Choice and flashes of The Night Circus, and is its own wonderful, fantastic world.

Catfish Rolling is about Sora, a young adult who lost her mother when an earthquake hit their home. This earthquake was so strong that it cracked time itself. Sora's father is a scientist studying the areas of land affected - the parts where time moves faster or slower. This is a story about how this crack in time impacts all areas of Sora's life, including her friendships, relationships, future and family.

There are lots of people who will absolutely adore this book. The world-building is incredible and entirely believable - a contemporary Japan but one twisted to house the land and people affected by time shifts. I loved the magic-realism of the story behind the earthquake - a giant catfish stuck beneath a rock, rolling as it tries to evade its capture. I liked how some of the characters were so full and vivid in my mind, such as Sora's father and best friend, Koki. I also liked the links between grief and time - how it makes life move so quickly at times but so slowly at others, how it can corrode and wear away all that surrounds it but how the love behind the grief is waiting to be released and blossom again. The nausea and sickness that comes as you sway between the two extremes and cling on for stability. I loved those aspects of the story.

I found some of the time jumps confusing and this made the story disjointed for me and therefore difficult to really become immersed in it. I also felt that I never really got to know the main character, Sora that well, and therefore couldn't always understand some of her interactions with others. It also unfortunately meant that I wasn't as invested in the story as much as I would have been if I'd have truly known her and wanted to go on the journey with her.

It is a well-written story and I know that many others will absolutely love it. There were just a few things that weren't for me, however. Thank you to NetGalley and Zephyr for allowing me to read this in advance in exchange for an honest review.

A YA book, which did not work for the inner YA of this adult 2.5 rating, raised to 3

Firstly, due to my low rating its probably important to say I am not the target audience – which I think is probably early or mid teens, particularly females

Having said that – I am a keen reader of children and YA, fiction as I have found that authors like Phillip Pullman, Geraldine McNaughton, Michael Rosen, Marcus Sedgwick, Alan Garner, not only present with beautiful writing, deep, thought provoking content and compelling narrative and characters, but have much to teach adults. Sometimes, I’m also aware of a more honest writing, less directed towards literary critics!

Kumagai’s book is set in Japan, modern day, but is in some ways speculative fiction, positing a world where a catastrophic earthquake ruptures time, creating overlocking and intertwining zones where time stops, speeds up, or slows down.

Central character and first person narrator Sora, who is a ‘hafu’ – Caucasian father, Japanese mother, is deeply in shock, trauma, grief and bereavement. As is her father. Sora and her father are mourning the loss of her mother, his wife, in that earthquake, 7 years earlier. Her father is a physicist who switched to researching time, and the strange zones, after the earthquake. He works for a rather mysterious organisation which is interested in making profits out of the time fluid zones

So far, so good. We have some major themes – grief, memory, ageing, environmental disasters, adolescent first loves, adolescent sexuality, ‘what is my purpose and life direction’ themes

The problem for me is that these don’t feel seamlessly held within the plot, characters, or writing. And even more so by the first person narration approach. There are pages and pages and pages of dialogue. Not all of it convincingly in the different voices Sora talks to and listens to. There’s a lot of exposition.

The book begins well and dramatically, and finally ends well and beautifully

BUT, there is a very very long, very very repetitive in and out of time zones, what happens in each, and dangers on the way.

It follows a classic adventure fairy tale structure trope, but I’m afraid I stayed firmly in observing what the writer was doing, but never surrendered to the ride.

I felt, clearly, this one was not a book for an adult reader, unlike those other mentioned authors’ books.

I’ve raised my negative rating to an okay one, given I am not the target audience. Would I have surrendered to it at the age of 14 or 15. Not sure, to be honest, as I was reading adult books – as well as books with characters of my own age as narrators and protagonists.

A fascinating blend of magic realism and science fiction, dusted with some Japanese mythology, all combined to make a engrossing read.
Sora is visiting her maternal grandfather in Japan an enormous earthquake happens that is so powerful it shakes time out of kilter. Japan is left, along with huge physical devastation and loss of life, with time anomalies, where time moves at different speeds in different places. These areas, called zones, are put off limits as the authorities are uncertain how they will affect people. Sora and her father explore these zones, her father as part of his work, Sora, because she is looking for her mother but these areas are not safe and when her father explores too far, Sora must go in to find him.
The story, focussing on grief and loss, and the rebuilding of relationships, is closely bound up with the time zones that speed up or slow down things for the characters. Sora comes across at first as a typical, rather self centred teenager, but through the book she grows and is able to assume responsibility. Being a 'hafu', half Japanese and half Canadian, she is at first bewildered by Japanese beliefs, such as the giant catfish that is under the world, twisting and turning causing the earth shakes, but gradually she comes to accept the many different traditions that make up her country and society.
Having lived in Japan, shortly after the big quake of 2011, I could relate to many of the things in this story. I love the details of life, taking off shoes to go into the houses, bowing at the temple, giving mochi to the jizus. I was totally immersed in the place and thought it was beautifully captured in the text.
Like Sora, I spent the whole book, wondering what was just beyond reach, willing her to find it and find solace. Catfish Rolling is not a fast paced read, it slowly grows on you, wrapping you up in the language and the mind twisting concepts of differing time.
A beautiful debut novel. With huge thanks to Head of Zeus, Netgalley and the author for an arc in return for an honest review.

The promise of magic-realism blended with Japanese myth and legend grabbed my attention and made me pick up this story, that, and the beautiful cover. The story deals with a lot in its pages, set in a world where different time zones have been created following a powerful earthquake which cracked the earth and took her mother. The main character Sora is trying to unravel the mystery while dealing with her grief and disbelief and also her Father's grief.

I found it really difficult to become engaged with the story or the characters. The story jumped about so much that I never felt it flowed. It had a really slow build-up to an almost frenetic ending. I felt there was just too much going on and while I appreciated the storytelling I found it just a bit too much. The characters were good and well-developed, I liked Sora and felt for her and everything she was dealing with.

This story certainly is a mix of genres and should appeal to a lot of different readers. However, for me, it just never hit the mark.

Catfish Rolling was an interesting, though at times confusing read. I would describe it as Inception meets Your Name, but with some very cute LGBTQ vibes.
It deals a lot with time, which can become quite confusing, but I admire the way the author used it to create this world. I really enjoyed reading about this version of Japan and the characters were all very enjoyable. I liked the inclusivity as well. My biggest issue with the book was that the plot hook in the blurb (her dad going missing) didn't happen until about 70% into the book. Everything up until then felt a bit like a sad slice of life. After that, the story jumped really fast and the ending was a bit confusing to make sense of.
Overall, I enjoyed this read and I liked the author's writing style, however I think it could have benefitted from a bit more even pacing.

Sora's life is completely changed when the Catfish Rolls and fractures time as we know it, her mum is one of the casualties of the fracture and her absentee dad spends more time try to understand time than with his growing daughter.

First I loved the concept of this novel, I've never read anything like it, I thought it was super clever and very well planned. But for the first half of this novel it was treated as a scientific marvel but in the second half it was fantasy, I think the author could have shown a larger difference between Sora (being the believer of something's you can't explain) and her dad (being the science side). For a larger part of this novel it felt like perhaps the author would make the fantasy scientific but just sort of gave up.

The characters were brilliant, well written and their motivations were easy to follow.

I'd definitely pick up more by this author but I wouldn't suggest this book to everyone.

Beautifully written and masterfully crafted – this book is a hidden gem!

There are so many layers to this story, and they’re woven together to create a powerful and moving story. The plot itself is a blend of mythology, fantasy, and science-fiction. Combining these elements together this well is incredibly effective. I loved the way the time zones (the cracks in time) worked, how they affected the people and creatures inside, and the way people utilise them. The whole world is so vivid and well-thought out, but never feels overwhelming with information.

Alongside the fantastical plot elements is the main character, Sora, dealing with the grief from the loss of her mother, an ill and ageing father, and the tentative first steps of romance. Throughout the course of the book we get to know her better as she slowly lets her guard down, and her emotional arc is incredibly moving. The way all the different threads – Sora’s grief, the mythology, the fantastical – come together at the end is perfectly done.

The story grips you from the first page and doesn’t let go until long after the end. I read the whole book in one day (it would have been one sitting if I hadn’t had to go to work!) and I was taking every opportunity to pick it up and find out what happened next. It’s utterly absorbing, and packs such an emotional punch.

This book has earned all the praise and success that I am sure will come, and it has definitely secured its place as a favourite for me.

Thank you to the publishers for providing me with a copy for review. All opinions are my own.

“And what I believe and Dad doesn’t is that maybe they will come back. Maybe she will return. Maybe we just keep missing each other by minutes.”

In a world where time has developed its own mind, Sora struggles to find a place where she belongs. Ever since the earthquake that changed her life forever, she has been stuck between past and present, unable to move on. Losing her mother has devastated her, but she has not given up on finding her between the cracks of time yet. Is she forever chasing ghosts? Or is her mother still alive?

I’m not typically a fan of the slow writing style that’s so popular in Japan, but this book struck a chord with me. I felt deeply for the main character and her loss. The slow pacing mimicked her internal struggles; every page oozing with the pain people only know if they have lost a loved one. It won’t be an enjoyable read for everyone, and I don’t think a book for the masses was the author’s intention.

Read Catfish Rolling if you like magical realism, literature, and stories that are carried by emotion rather than plot.

A beautifully written book about grief, loss and loneliness and the passage of time. The Japanese culture is gently interwoven between scientific explanations and coming-of-age romance to make an enchanting fable-like story which can be read on any number of levels. I chose to drift along with the beautiful prose without trying to understand the time shifts and their effects on everyday life, others may choose to delve more deeply but whichever way you go this is a fabulous book which I thoroughly enjoyed.

This is a super YA debut novel full of myth and grief. Sora is part Canadian/part Japanese and so doesn't really feel that she fits in anywhere. When at school in Japan, she is not Japanese enough to be accepted but not Canadian enough to be thought of as a foreigner. The story begins when an earthquake hits Japan and it is not only the earth that is broken, time is broken too and pockets of created where time either runs fast or slow. Sora's mother is lost during the earthquake and Sora believes that she has become trapped in one of the zones. Because of the danger, these zones are forbidden places, but over the years Sora and her father venture into these places to study the effects and - in Sora's case - to search for her mother. There is a dystopian element to this novel because of the time shifts, but mainly it is a coming of age novel, a novel about grief. There is also the myth of the catfish who lives below Japan and has been weighted down by a rock to stop it moving. But, every now and then it manages to move the rock and roll in the water causing earthquakes. The characters are well fleshed out and real and so a reader can relate to Sora's grief and her fear when her father seems to be slipping away from time because of his continued trips into the forbidden zones. Love of nature also is a large part of this novel. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the different zones and the detail that we are given. An excellent debut novel.