What would you do if you were left behind when an earthquake broke time?

I absolutely loved this book.

It was a gorgeous mix of Japanese mythology, magic, science and philosophy. But it was also a coming-of-age story where you follow Sora learn more about her relationships with family and friends, all the while dealing with loss and the feeling of being different.

Along with gorgeous imagery, there were deep heart-wrenching discussions which balanced funny sarcastic dialogue.

P.S. we also get a nice sprinkling of LGBT rep and it made my heart warm and fuzzy.

Firmly in its genre of YA fantasy (rather magical realism) I would definitely recommend to everyone.

Trigger warnings - death, bereavement, illness, discrimination (especially mixed-race).

This is a magical realism book set in a world where there are different zones for time, in some zones time moves quicker and in some slower. These zones came into being after a large earthquake.
The main character – Sora – can navigate through these different zones. She’s looking for her mother who was lost during this earthquake.

It is a book about emotions, searching for an end but I wasn’t very engaged reading it.

CW: Loss of a loved one, mixed-race discrimination

Thank you to Netgalley for an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I think this is certainly one of those books where if the first couple sentences of the description interest you, just get the book and don't read the rest of the description.

Japan is known for earthquakes, but in this book they go a step further. One particular earthquake was so strong it managed to shatter time. Japan gets split up into different "time zones", some are slow, some are fast and they're all different speeds. No one in the regular speed time zones quite knows what happened to those who where within what came to be the different speed zones.

It's a slow-burner book, but written in such a way where it doesn't feel slow. There is however a lot of time theory, philosophical talks and all that jazz all throughout the book, but it's all relatively easy to understand and, at least to me, was quite interesting. I quite liked all the characters as well, they all had good motivations.

I think the only improvement I'd make is give the conflicts during the final part more time. A lot happens all at once and with all the time shifting it's hard to get a good grasp on the feeling for the ending. I would also just love a lot more time with all the revelations and such personally, but I also just absolutely love the world and the character dynamics (especially with Sora and a certain someone at the end :3) and would love to see more from it all and understand it all better.

Catfish Rolling was a book with a fascinating and original premise, and I enjoyed the combination of science and Japanese myth. Sora was a well-presented character; however, some of the other characters in the story didn't feel as well fleshed out. The prose was easy reading, but the story posed a number of questions and scenarios to do with the fast and slow zones that were never fully answered by the end, which I found a little disappointing after so much build up. Even so, this remained an interesting and enjoyable read and offered something a bit different in terms of plot, so I am still giving it 4 stars. Recommended to those who like YA fantasy with an original twist.

I didn't know what I expected from this book before going into it, but what I got, I loved. It was well written with an incredibly poignant and thought provoking storyline and well developed characters.
It is an effortless and visceral look on love, time, pain, grief and loss. I loved it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Head of Zeus for the opportunity to read this eARC.

Catfish Rolling is a story about one of the most impossible concepts that we have to face - the concept of time. Defining time, understanding time, and measuring it seems easy in the current day, though the rules for doing these things have been set by people long before us and, really, their theories and beliefs are all we have to rely on. When used as a literary device, 'time' can be a super interesting plot point, and it worked really well here.

We follow Sora, the main character who is half Japanese and half Canadian, who feels incredibly inbetween; even more so when the catfish rolls beneath the great country of Japan, causing an earthquake that sends a rift through the entire country. Time is broken in the Japan of this world; worse in some places, like the quiet village north of Tokyo where Sora lives with her father. In the aftermath, people are lost - vanished, it seems, until we learn that there seem to be different time zones all around the country. Some slow, some fast, some somewhere inbetween. All of them in close vicinity, and each of them having strange effects on those who enter.

Whilst her father researches the time zones, Sora sneaks into them illegally; she shows tourists around the time zones (for a fee), and conducts her own research, always searching for the mother she lost when the catfish rolled. But all that time in the zones have begun to have a bad effect on her father, whose health appears to be deteriorating rapidly with no real conclusion as to why.

The concept is interesting and the book is really well written. Some of the characters are well developed, whereas others felt more two dimensional to me. I liked the idea, and whilst I wouldn't necessarily say that the execution fell flat for me - I did enjoy reading this, after all - I felt like there was a little too much repetition, as well as a lot of information being thrown at the reader. It was difficult at times to keep up, and to understand what had actually happened/what was happening within these time zones. So a confusing read, sometimes, but it had real heart, and I loved the focus on Japanese fables and mythology, and it was really interesting learning about the culture from someone biracial, like Sora.

Though the ending ties up some loose ends, there are no real answers for a lot of questions posed, which might be annoying to some readers! I don't think all questions need answers, but I admit to wanting to understand a little more with regards to this one. At its heart, however, the novel deals with themes of grief, loss, coming of age, and self-realisation; and I think these themes in particular were dealt with very well.

A strong 3.75 (still waiting for the day I can use half stars on Goodreads and other websites...)

A spectacular read from start to finish. I couldn't have loved this more, from how it portrays grief and loss, experiences of being mixed race, to different kinds of love. Sora is a wonderfully written character and I especially adored her relationships with her father, Koki and Maya.