I really wanted to like this, and I did put in maximum effort to try and get through it.

However, I think the concept of the book is excellent, and truly very enticing. But the execution, and the addition of the romantic relationship kind of took everything off the rails and I had a hard time really connecting to the characters, and caring about their storyline.

Overall, I'm sure it's a fine read, I just wish I liked it more. Wishing the book and the author nothing but the best.

4.25 ⭐️
Beautifully written, a blend of Inception and a studio Gibli movie.

I wouldn’t call this cozy exactly, it’s warm and magical but the non stop action and the stakes I think are higher than a cozy fantasy.

Loved the whimsy, but the romance at the beginning felt very insta-love and I didn’t love the way the MMC forced his help on the FMC, I felt like there could have been a better narrative reason as it did rub me the wrong way a bit.

Loved the ending, and the world was beautiful and unique.

More of a mystery/detective style than I expected. Not for me , but mystery enthusiasts will love this.

Soft DNF @ 35%.

I simply lost interest in this one. The chapters were choppy and the pace of this book was way too rapid to really develop the characters and the underlying plot in a way that made sense to me. The writing was gorgeous, but that simply wasn’t enough to keep me engaged.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

Thank you Del Rey and netgalley for the gifted eARC!

Wowowowow me irl at the end of this book: 😓😧😭🥰

I am obsessed with this world! The author does such a wonderful job bringing this quirky world to life. I felt like I was jumping through puddles and riding paper cranes with them 🥹

Hana was such a surprising character! We see so many different sides to her throughout this book and never quite know what to expect from her. I really enjoyed seeing her learn to embrace change and not following her designated path.

Kei was so fun to get to know! He’s very analytical and curious, so this journey was very eye opening for him 😌 I loved how sweet he was to Hana from the start and how selfless he is.

This story is so friggin beautiful 😭 Kei and Hana built such a sweet relationship and would do anything for the other. It was crazy how many choices that were made shaped what happened during this book. Some of the secrets that were revealed really shocked me!

This is the most amazing book. I'm obsessed with this and it was my favorite read of 2024. Water Moon is a stunning novel by Samantha Soto Yamboa that is other worldly, cinematic, and one of my favorite things I've ever read. People in our world head for ramen, but sometimes they end up in a pawn show in another world. It has people pawning their regrets for tea. When the pawn shop owner goes missing, his daughter, and an unlikely friend, must travel the world while being chased by the neutral arbiters of her world. They must travel on songs, fold back time, and more.

This is such a deep book that crawls under your skin and lives in your thoughts. It's so incredible. Please read it!!!

This book is perfect for readers who want to escape into another realm. The plot itself is intringuing, but the imagery is simply stunning. I would consider this a "cozy fantasy" -- it will whisk you away and leave you with a smile.

Rating: 4.5/5
I received an eARC for my honest opinion.

If you love fantasy, magical realism, romance, cozy mysteries, and Asian literature then you will need to read this book. I loved the lyrical and whimsical writing style of this author; she knows how to draw the readers into the book world that she built and keeps us there long after.

I loved the world building: the magical realism (pearls that hold one’s memories and so much more). I found the pace of the book to be just right, it was a little slow at first but that allowed the readers to know the characters and understand the plot, once the adventures start that is when the book picks up and doesn’t slow down until the ending and what a wonderful ending it was. I loved getting to see how the characters would travel through the different places, how birds are formed and what it means, and how time is traded for something, and you can also buy it as well. I loved getting to understand this realm more, and with the author’s attention to vivid details, I felt as though I was there with them on this adventure. The characters were well done, easy to relate/connect with and you will find yourself wanting to be their friends as well.

I found Keishin to be the perfect character to be paired with Hana’s, they complemented each other well. I liked that you got to see Keishin's science side come out to play with Hana more understanding the world that she comes from but wanting to know if there is more out there and having an understanding of what happened to her father. I loved getting to watch these characters understand grief and loss, and learning how to heal themselves, but it’s also about self-determination and understanding oneself more as well. I found the romance in this book to have been great, it didn’t take away from the story at all, but you will see/feel the love happening between them. I could go on and on but I know if I did that I would leave spoilers about the characters and their adventures, but let me tell you this: if you want a book that will wanting more of the beautiful world that the author brings you and with characters that will just melt your heart, and leave you with an amazing message; you need to read this book.

I want to thank NetGalley and Random House for the opportunity to review this book.

I could not put this book down. It was the perfect read for this insanely cold spell--a warm and cozy love story full of magic in a world straight out of Studio Ghibli. This is great for anyone who loves speculative fiction, where every word carries weight and wonder.

This book is so much more than I expected. I expected a cute cozy story with some nice family moments. What I got was a compelling journey through this world that revealed so many secrets and left me rooting for Hana and Keishin. I loved the journey they took and the people they met along the way. Neither was it an info dump nor was it up to me to infer what was going on. It was a good pace of finding out information about how this world works.
I liked the real world ending, but the fantasy world ending left me a little confused and seemed wrapped up a little too quickly. However, the focus of the story was not really the entire fantasy world, but more about Hana's role in it. And in that sense, the ending was really well done.
This audiobook helped me discover a new favorite audiobook narrator. Cindy Kay is amazing and really brings something special to the book as well.
Overall, this is a compelling story that will stick with me for a while.

Hana's first day running a Tokyo pawn shop that deals exclusively in choices takes a turn when she discovers that her father has gone missing. We follow Hana through a beautifully crafted world beyond the streets of Tokyo as she searches for her father and faces choices of her own.

Water Moon is a thoughtful examination of fate, longing, and regret. The rules of the magical/fantastical elements at times felt a bit loose, and some of the legs of the adventure could've benefitted from more depth and less breadth, but overall, this was a touching, cozy read that would be great for someone looking for a lighter fantasy novel.

Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Thanks to Del Rey for an e-ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review!

DNF'd at 41%! I wasn't a fan of the following: pacing, character's growing romantic attraction, and, to some extent, writing style. I appreciated some of the emotional sentiments, but the writing style was kinda lackluster for me. Hana and Keishin's growing attraction was even more lackluster than the writing style unfortunately. Neither characters were compelling on a thematic level and the pacing wasn't helpful either. I have only read up to this point because of the short chapters. Once the chapters took me more than 20 minutes, I started to notice how Hana and Keishin lacked chemistry. At last, I couldn't bother to keep going after they kissed.

Another thing about these two characters are why they like each other: they have never met anyone like them. For Hana, she was sheltered while growing in an otherworldly pawnshop. Nothing about Keishin's eyes could convince me why Hana would fall in love with him. For Keishin, he got an opportunity to see the world beyond what he thinks he knows about our universe as a physicist. He was instantly attracted to her and wanted to keep being in her personal space too many times. The only thing I have found interesting about him is his abandonment issues, which was mentioned only a couple of times. Nothing about these two can convince me that they are in love (this is not a romance, so uncertain on HEA).

The mystery behind Hana's father's disappearance is making this book longer than it should be. Hana and Keishin go to many places in her otherworld, but I never felt settled in any of them. We are just hopping around until we find more clues, which led to more questions than answers honestly. Unfortunately, this was a complete miss for me.

So, first of all, I don’t think I’d classify this as cozy fantasy, despite the marketing. Having that expectation actually made it harder for me to get into the book. Once I let they go, though, I fell in love with the story. It’s weird, wandering, and fantastical in the best way. There’s certainly romance, but there’s adventure at the heart of everything. A weird world where nothing is as it seems… with a deeply unexpected (to me) reveal late in the novel.

I loved Water Moon. It felt whimsical but not untethered. For each element of magic and myth there were deep emotions that felt real and personal to Hana and the reader. This was such a fun and sweet journey that had me hooked!

I thought I knew what the story was going to be after the first chapter, but I was so wrong. Water Moon took me on an adventure unlike any I’ve experienced before. It’s magical, fantastical, and reality-bending, with a touch of romance to boot. Samantha Sotto Yambao masterfully weaves a tale that feels both otherworldly and deeply human. This was a super special read!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the advanced copy. This was a journey I won’t soon forget!

I remember seeing the announcement for this book and eagerly awaited it ever since. The concept is original and beautiful, about a pawnshop that buys your regrets, and Hana and Keishin’s search for Hana’s father. I started reading this for the Ghibli vibes and the most gorgeous cover I’ve ever seen, and it 100% fulfilled the itch for me. I loved both the main characters, how relatable they were, and particularly really loved Keishin and how sweet he was to Hana. Overall, a delightful, whimsical, and heartfelt story about our choices in life and the cost of regret.

As much as I really wanted to love this because I absolutely loved the premise, I feel like it was hard for me to kind of connect with the characters and the writing style and therefore I didn't feel as invested in it as I was hoping to be. The ideas here were really fun, so it was probably more of a me thing.

There were definitely some parts that worked for me, but overall was a miss. I feel I would give Sotto Yambao another try in the future though.

This is a quiet dreamlike book where, like a dream, you just move from scene to scene without much reaction. Hana works at her father's pawnshop (where the only customers are people who thought they would be eating at a beloved ramen restaurant but instead magically end up at a store where you can pawn your regrets and be free of lost hopes). She's about to take over, but on the morning of the first day of her father's retirement, she wakes up to find him gone, and the store ransacked, with one of the wares missing. The story develops from there; it's a very visual world, with magic that would work well on a screen, some romance, and some adventure. Somehow, I still found myself outside the story, but other readers might find themselves caught up in it.

Thanks to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for my free earc in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley for the free copy in return for a fair review!

When a young scientist stumbles into a mysterious pawnshop that buys your greatest regrets, he and the new shopkeeper end up on a wild goose chase looking for the shopkeeper’s father through realms of dreams and nightmares, finding the devastating answers to questions they never asked. This standalone adult contemporary Japanese-inspired fantasy was a wonderful breath of fresh air for me.

The story’s setting is the particular star here, from the author’s careful and empathetic portrayals of the pawnshop’s business, to vivid descriptions of worlds etched in ink and museums built of memory cranes. The author also lovingly paints both protagonists' viewpoints so we get their unique ways of processing while still obscuring enough for some surprise twists later.

I think the only weakness was the story’s climax, when shopkeeper Hana finally finds her missing father. The story had pinned Hana’s determination to reunite her family as her goal, yet when she actually makes it to her destination, not only does she barely get to talk to him, but a surprise revelation about the scientist Kei draws away focus from what should be the emotional climax for Hana. While I know the plot needed to advance in certain ways, I wish she could’ve processed some of the answers uncovered during her journey with her family instead of by herself, as reaching closure before she found her father didn’t feel realistic.

Otherwise, I would highly recommend this book for the thoughtful meditations on the meaning of fate and purpose, while whisking this reader away on a dreamy adventure. I will be gazing into every puddle now, hoping to find another world within.

A beautiful and dreamy landscape of what ifs.

Oddly enough I found the pawnshop at the center of the story to be the least interesting part of this world, at least from a conceptual standpoint. I tend not to like high concept fantasy like this as well as other subgenres, but this has both an atmospheric aura about it that is wonderfully drawn, and some conceptual thought exercise-driven plot points that are intriguing to ponder.

While the pawn shop itself is a bit too out there and vague for me, the ideas of traveling on a rumor or hiding in a secret were fascinating, and while we didn’t find the central relationship of particular interest, the individual characters are well drawn and compelling.