A young woman inherits a Tokyo pawn shop where you can sell your deepest regrets, sparking a dream-like and magical adventure-
Before the Coffee Gets Cold meets Studio Ghibli.
On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see only a cosy ramen restaurant. And just the chosen ones - those who are lost - will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets.
Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop's new owner to find it ransacked, the shop's most precious acquisition stolen and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike other customers. For he offers help, instead of seeking it.
Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana's father and the stolen choice - through rain puddles, hitching rides on paper cranes, across the bridge between midnight and morning and through a night market in the clouds.
But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own - and risk making a choice she will never be able to take back.
About the AuthorSamantha Sotto Yambao is a professional daydreamer, aspiring time traveller, and speculative fiction writer based in Manila. She is the author of
Before Ever After, Love and Gravity, A Dream of Trees, and
The Beginning of Always. Water Moon is her latest novel and UK debut.
Industry Reviews
Full of adventure and marvellous creativity, Water Moon surprises and delights with every turn of the page. I didn't want to leave this fascinating world. Sam Sotto Yambao has written an inventive, refreshing fantasy here * Megan Bannen, bestselling author of The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy *
Water Moon is unlike anything I've ever read, full of wonders and terrors...a haunting, half-remembered dream of a book * Gareth Brown, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Book of Doors *
A spellbinding journey into a magical Ghibliesque world where regrets and memories can be bartered, where appearances are not what they seem, and where dreams, free will, and destiny are pitted against fate. Endlessly inventive, this haunting and enchanting tale is not to be missed * A.Y. Chao, author of Shanghai Immortal *
What a bright, fresh voice Samantha Sotto Yambao has brought to the literary world. Water Moon is a novel for all the senses, but its true magic lies in being breathtakingly visual. You will be spirited away * Sarah Addison Allen, New York Times bestselling author of Other Birds *
Water Moon is a dreamy, ethereal fantasy, set in a fascinating faerie tale world with appropriately dark corners. Fans of Hayao Miyazaki will love this one * Olivia Atwater, author of Half a Soul *
A Studio Ghibliesque tale of whimsy and water in which the protagonists enter a fantasy world to find missing things and also themselves * Sunday Times Style *
