by Hisashi Kashiwai ; translated by Jesse Kirkwood ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 8, 2024
This cozy book delights in Japanese cuisine.
A former police detective and his grown daughter research and re-create strangers’ half-remembered meals to help them overcome obstacles in their lives.
Koishi is in her 30s and works at a restaurant in Kyoto—it’s known as the Kamogawa Diner, though it doesn’t have a sign—with her father, Nagare Kamogawa, the chef. Both miss Koishi’s late mother, Kikuko. Their cat, Drowsy, spends its days trying to get into the restaurant, though he’s banned to protect the customers from wayward strands of hair. The book is a series of six small vignettes about unrelated people who arrive at the diner through the seasons to ask for help re-creating dishes from their pasts. Kyosuke Kitano is an Olympic-hopeful swimmer who isn’t sure if he should reach out to his sick father but yearns for a lunch dish his father made for him as a child. Kana Takeda is a single mother and food writer who is eager to prove her child wrong about the best dish he has ever eaten—a hamburger steak made by his grandfather. And Hatsuko Shirasaki, Koishi’s childhood best friend, is a successful model who’s unsure if she should accept a marriage proposal until her boyfriend understands her impoverished roots. Each of them, as well as the others, arrives, eats, speaks with Koishi about their lost meal, and then departs. Two weeks later they return to eat the meal that Nagare has meticulously researched and prepared. Readers looking for a throughline in the vignettes or a conclusion that ties them together or dives into why Nagare and Koishi have reached this point in their lives will find more questions than answers.
This cozy book delights in Japanese cuisine.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9780593717790
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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by Hisashi Kashiwai ; translated by Jesse Kirkwood
by Colleen Hoover ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
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New York Times Bestseller
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by Liane Moriarty ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2024
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.
What would you do if you knew when you were going to die?
In the first page and a half of her latest page-turner, bestselling Australian author Moriarty introduces a large cast of fascinating characters, all seated on a flight to Sydney that’s delayed on the tarmac. There’s the “bespectacled hipster” with his arm in a cast; a very pregnant woman; a young mom with a screaming infant and a sweaty toddler; a bride and groom, still in their wedding clothes; a surly 6-year-old forced to miss a laser-tag party; a darling elderly couple; a chatty tourist pair; several others. No one even notices the woman who will later become a household name as the “Death Lady” until she hops up from her seat and begins to deliver predictions to each of them about the age they’ll be when they die and the cause of their deaths. Age 30, assault, for the hipster. Age 7, drowning, for the baby in arms. Age 43, workplace accident, for a 42-year-old civil engineer. Self-harm, age 28, for the lovely flight attendant, who is that day celebrating her 28th birthday. Over the next 126 chapters (some just a paragraph), you will get to know all these people, and their reactions to the news of their demise, very well. Best of all, you will get to know Cherry Lockwood, the Death Lady, and the life that brought her to this day. Is it true, as she repeatedly intones on the plane, that “fate won’t be fought”? Does this novel support the idea that clairvoyance is real? Does it find a means to logically dismiss the whole thing? Or is it some complex amalgam of these possibilities? Sorry, you won’t find that out here, and in fact not until you’ve turned all 500-plus pages. The story is a brilliant, charming, and invigorating illustration of its closing quote from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (we’re not going to spill that either).
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593798607
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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