Best Wishes from The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki ~ a Review

by Donna Huber

What are they truly wishing for? In Best Wishes from The Full Moon Coffee Shop, the characters confront their past and present struggles while trying to find happiness and contentment in their lives.

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. A free book was provided for an honest review.

October 2025; Ballantine Books; 978-0593726846
audio, ebook, print (224 pages); magical realism

I love Japanese literature and quite a few translated novels have been hitting the U.S. shelves in recent years. I thought Best Wishes from The Full Moon Coffee Shop would be like Before the Coffee Gets Cold, or The Kamogawa Food Detective series book I just reviewed. 

In some ways, it was like those books, but in one notable way, it is different. The characters featured in each chapter are connected. Koyuki works for Satomi, and Satomi is Junko's sister-in-law.

While magical realism is part of most of the Japanese books I've read, I think it is particularly heavy in this book. There is also a lot of emphasis on astrology. I don't mind it being a plot device, but I felt like the author was trying to recruit people to astrology. In the afterword, the author more or less stated that it was her purpose in writing the book. 

This is book 2 in The Full Moon Coffee Shop series, but I didn't read the first book, which is titled the same as the series. I don't think you necessarily have to read book 1 to enjoy book 2. It very much reads like a standalone novel. I suspect you learn more about the "planetary" characters who are cats who run the pop-up coffee shop in book 1, but there is enough information provided at the beginning of the book to fill you in.

Magical realism often requires you to suspend belief about a few things, but I had trouble getting over the fact that the "Master" was a tortoise-shell cat. Also known as torties, these cats are like calicos, but instead of a background of white, they are black. Like calicos, it is extremely rare for one to be male. Seriously, 99.9% of torties are female. I wondered if the author was making a comment on the uniqueness and rarity of the "Master" by making him a tortoise-shell cat.

I really enjoyed the Koyuki, Satomi, and Junko. I would have loved more time with them as I became very invested in their lives. They are so well written that even in the relatively few pages devoted to each one, I felt like I had always known them. I felt like we didn't get a definitive resolution to Koyuki's and Satomi's situation. Does Satomi marry her country-loving boyfriend? Does Koyuki finally get a full-time, permanent position somewhere? Junko is the only one who we get to see what happens after she realizes what her true wish is.

If you enjoy these "slice-of-life" self-discovery stories, then you definitely should try out this book. 

Buy Best Wishes from The Full Moon Coffee Shop at Amazon

Donna Huber is an avid reader and natural encourager. She is the founder of Girl Who Reads and the author of how-to marketing book Secrets to a Successful Blog Tour.

 

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