“Water Moon” by Samantha Sotto Yambao

I found this book when it was featured at a bookstore as an exciting new fantasy story. And I’ll be so honest here, this book is super not for me. I didn’t like the story, found the conflict to be contrived, and the plot didn’t make integrated sense. I do think part of this is that it should be advertised differently, it’s much more of a romance than fantasy, and maybe that would help. But I’m also very confused why this was so hyped up when it doesn’t technically hold together very well.

The story starts with Hana, she’s the daughter of a pawnshop owner who pawns people’s regrets. The customers come in, trade out their choices for tea, and go on their way. The day Hana takes over the shop, her father steals a choice and disappears. Meanwhile Kei walks in and offers to help her, and the two of them go on a journey through Hana’s world to try and find her father. They fall in love, learn about the darker aspects of Hana’s world and life, and then are eventually reunited in Kei’s world.

Where to start with this book. First of all, the main advertisement seems false to me. This has a lot more romance, not in terms of steaminess or anything, but in terms of coherence. The romance is a much bigger driving factor in the story than the world building. In fact the world building feels like there isn’t a real coherence to the world we explore, it’s more “we go here and then here and then here” and each place has it’s own logic and rules. There isn’t anything linking it together other than maybe the author wanting to create these disparate places. Versus Hana and Kei are constantly whining about how they shouldn’t be together and yet are anyways. I’m not a big romance person, but I got so sick of the same talking points again and again with them.

The conflicts between them were also very contrived. They have a couple fights, the first is when Kei learns that Hana pawns choices to get a piece of someone’s soul to instill in babies in Hana’s world. And this comes out of freaking nowhere, plus Kei is a physicist. As a scientist I would think he would be more bothered by the existence of souls and all that, before getting mad about Hana taking them. Potentially this is a cultural difference, but to go from 0-60 like that felt like we just needed a fight here.

I think that’s enough of me dunking on this book. If it was accurately advertised as a romance rather than a trip through a fantasy world, I probably wouldn’t have picked this up as I would have known that it would piss me off. There’s minimal references to the romance on the back of the book and that feels absurd to me.