I was wanting a fun mystery or thriller book when this one caught my eye. I LOVE little mysteries and spooky things that happen at cafes! I had to get this one.

I unfortunately could not get into this one. I'm curious to see the other works this author has written because this book is very cool, I just personally didn't love the reading experience with this particular book.

The cover is quite cool though!

I appreciate the opportunity to leave honest feedback voluntarily. I received an eARC.

Besides The Little Sparrow Murders, I have read every Detective Kosuke Kindaichi Series book that was translated. I think out of all of them this was the least I liked.

The book title makes it feel like there is only one story while there are actually two. The first story itself was underwhelming but it was not very bad. There was not much of a plot twist as the previous books so it was easy to figure out. The maps were not translated within the images as the previous books but it might be because this is an early copy. However, there were translations of the words before the maps that could be used to refer to. I don't know if its my copy or not but I actually could not tell when the second story started as there wasn't a big title indication from what I saw. There was an epilogue of the first story, a slight title for the first part of the second story and a style change but as I was still waiting for a twist for the first story, I thought maybe it was just a follow up writing. The second story, which is written as correspondences, was even more boring. However, it was a different experience than the previous stories so that made it a bit interesting. Also there are many typos in the story such as around loc1563 and following paragraph that bothered me the most.

Overall, I would not say I regret reading this book at all but it definitely does not live up to the other translated works of the series.

I think the translator Bryan Karetnyk did a good job. The first story was a bit confusing to follow at times but I do not think its because of the translator but because of the book itself.

The cat illustration at the beginning of the chapters was very sweet but I have to say that I kind of miss the cover style of the other books in this series. However, because the book does not follow the same style as the previous books, I guess it works. Moreover, it would definitely catch your attention at a store.

I am still looking forward to the translation of the other books in this series. While I did not enjoy this book much, it did not make me lose interest in the series. I will still buy it when it comes out as I want to collect this series.

A bit of a spoiler, as it may be important for some people, there are some sad moments about a cat.

Huge thanks to Netgalley and Steerforth Press for this copy. I truly enjoy reading Pushkin Vertigo books and I am looking forward to other books in this series.

i love the Kosuke Kindaichi series and this was one of my most anticipated books of the year so i had high hopes but sadly, it didn’t live up to my expectations! 🙃

this short book has two stories and i’ve nothing much to say! good for one time read!
the first one — The Murder At The Black Cat Café — was a twisted version of “the faceless corpse” and the second one — Why Did The Well Wheel Creak? — was atmospheric and tragic!